Hucks on a pay-as-you-play deal?

Darren Huckerby gave the biggest hint yet that he won’t be staying at Carrow Road next season after the West Brom game.

Reading between the lines it doesn’t particularly sound like he wants to leave, so what’s the problem?

Some would say his form this season hasn’t warranted a new contract, but the argument of whether he is passed his best or not is almost irrelevant when you think of the amount of money it would cost to replace him with a player of similar quality. Let’s put it this way – it would not be cheap.

The most obvious reason therefore is money. I don’t have a clue about player wages etc but it doesn’t take an enormous leap of faith to come to the conclusion that Huckerby is probably one of the highest paid players at the club. If the unthinkable happens and we end up in League One next season that’s potentially a lot of money tied up with one player.

So I have a possible solution. I’ve not hidden it particularly well by sticking it in the title of the post, but how about giving him a pay-as-you-play deal?

Stranger things have certainly happened, and if money is the deciding factor for the club, and Hucks wants to stay, it could be win-win.

What do you think?

Why did Gibbs start? If I were to hazard a guess…

A lot of people (including myself) were a little surprised that Kieran Gibbs started against West Brom on Saturday. Then I came across this on the Arsenal site and it became a little clearer.

I think it is fair to say that realistically the West Brom game was the least important of the run-in. If you look at our last half dozen games and picked one you thought we may struggle in, few wouldn’t have chosen Saturday.

With that in mind Sir Glenn has already said that he is busily planning for next season and that the loan market will in all likelihood be key again. Gibbs hasn’t played much. Arsenal probably won’t be too chuffed about that. We want more young, hungry ’stars of the future’ next season.

It doesn’t take much working out, and to be fair it makes a lot of sense to get him in the game that has the least amount of risk and keep Mr Wenger happy.

Of course it may well be complete and utter garbage and Roeder felt that the skills of Gibbs were required against the likes of Robinson, Gera et al, but I’m in a speculative mood and I’m sticking with my theory.