Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal masterplan with Jamie Vardy, Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez revealed

Arsene Wenger has once again opened up on Arsenal’s failed move for Jamie Vardy.

After helping Leicester City shock the world by winning the Premier League title in the 2015/2016 season, the striker appeared to be on the verge of a transfer to the Emirates Stadium.

Arsenal reportedly bid £20m for Vardy, only for the England international to reject the opportunity to leave the King Power Stadium.

That decision has proven to be the Foxes gain as the 34-year-old has continued to score goals at the highest level ever since and was on the scorehseet in a 3-1 win over Liverpool on Saturday afternoon.

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Wenger was on punditry duty for the game and delivered his opinion on the striker he failed to sign almost five years ago.

“He’s always in the game”, Wenger told beIN Sport. “He looks like he mentally doesn’t get out of the game and the great strikers are like that. They are convinced somewhere that they will score at some stage.

“That allows them, even when he misses a chance, he stays in the game.”

The conversation then turned to how close Wenger was to signing Vardy in the summer of 2016 and the Frenchman admitted he tried to tempt the striker to the Emirates with a financially lucrative offer.

“I offered him a lot of money at the time,” Wenger added. But Leicester had just won the Championship, Srivaddhanaprabha at the time, who unfortunately (died) after the helicopter accident, did absolutely not want to lose him.

“They offered him a longer contract and approximately with the same money, if not more.”

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At the time, the Frenchman was on the market for an alternative to Olivier Giroud that would have complimented Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil in attack.

This lead to Wenger also addressing suggestions that Vardy would have struggled at Arsenal due to the contrast in playing styles with the Gunners a possession-based team while the Foxes relied on the counter-attack.

“We had more of the ball, yes,” Wenger added. “I think around the box the timing of his runs and he finds the space to go.

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“When you see the big strikers, they are on the move when others stand still in the box and he has that.

“They read earlier than others, they anticipate better, they understand quicker than other people.”

After missing out on Vardy, Wenger did end up signing a striker in Lucas Perez later in the summer, but that turned out to be a £17m transfer mistake with the Spaniard lasting one season in north London before being sold to West Ham United for £5m after a loan spell with Deportivo.

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