Arsenal Considers Move for PSG’s William Pacho Amid Salary Concerns
Arsenal’s summer business looked ruthless and precise. Illan Meslier arrived on a free from Leeds. Piero Hincapie came in from Bayer Leverkusen for £34.5m. Christos Tzolis cost £34.12m from Club Brugge. Bruno Guimaraes, the statement signing, landed from Newcastle for £75m. Ezri Konsa followed from Aston Villa for £51m.
Quality over quantity. That was the line from inside the club as the window shut on September 1, with Mikel Arteta and new sporting director Andrea Berta resisting the urge to panic-buy an attacker.
They had chased big names. Morgan Rogers, Vinicius Junior and Julian Alvarez all sat high on Arsenal’s list. When none of those deals reached a price the club felt comfortable with, they walked away and backed what they already had.
Defensively, Arsenal look stacked. Hincapie and Konsa have been added to a core that already includes William Saliba, Cristhian Mosquera, Ben White, Gabriel Magalhaes, Jurrien Timber, Riccardo Calafiori and Myles Lewis-Skelly. On paper, it’s a back line built to last.
Yet the market never really sleeps.
Arsenal and Man City circle Pacho
According to Bolavip, Arsenal are still monitoring Paris Saint-Germain centre-back William Pacho, despite the Ecuadorian recently renewing his contract at the Parc des Princes.
The report claims “the Ecuadorian player still has a market and has entered the plans of teams like Arsenal and Manchester City.” In other words, that new PSG deal has not closed the door to England.
Arsenal are described as “open to making a move” for the former Eintracht Frankfurt defender, with both Premier League giants ready to put a “very lucrative salary” on the table to tempt him away from Paris.
This is where the story tightens.
Pacho currently earns around €11m per year at PSG. Any move to the Emirates would require Arsenal to go above that figure. Bolavip notes that “in Arsenal’s case, it’s a bit more complicated, since the Gunners have the money, but they don’t usually pay these kinds of figures to their players. Their highest-paid defender is Saliba with 14 million per year, and only five players earn more than 11 million.”
For Manchester City, those numbers “wouldn’t be a problem.” For Arsenal, they test the limits of a carefully constructed wage structure that has underpinned their rebuild.
If Arteta and Berta decide Pacho is the final piece in an already deep defensive unit, they may have to break habits, if not quite the bank.
Carragher and Wright question missed Barcola chance
While Arsenal weigh up a potential splurge on a centre-back, questions still hang over the one area of the pitch that feels light: the left wing.
Jamie Carragher could not hide his surprise that Arsenal never truly went to war for Bradley Barcola in the summer. The PSG winger ended up at Liverpool, and the former Reds defender admitted on The Overlap that he had been bracing for Arsenal to make their move.
“For me with Arsenal, left wing has always felt like where the drop is compared to [Bukayo] Saka, [Martin] Odegaard, [Kai] Havertz,” Carragher said.
He acknowledged that “the new kid [Christos] Tzolis has made a decent start.” Even so, as the Barcola saga dragged on and Arsenal missed out on Vinicius Jr and Alvarez, Carragher kept expecting the London club to pounce. “I was thinking is that [signing Barcola] not the one?” he admitted.
Ian Wright agreed without hesitation.
“That is the player Arsenal need to sign,” the club legend insisted. Barcola, he argued, comes from “a brilliant PSG side” and has already operated alongside elite talent. Now, moving into a Liverpool team where he can be “that superstar,” Wright believes he will drag the level of those around him upwards.
“That’s what we needed,” Wright said. He would have accepted a move for Morgan Rogers, but Barcola, in his eyes, was the ideal fit — and crucially, he was available.
So Arsenal head into the heart of the season with a fortified defence, an untouched wage hierarchy, and a lingering question: will the next big cheque go on another centre-back like Pacho, or on the wide forward so many around the club believe they still lack?
