SUPER Eagles and Arsenal striker, Alex Iwobi set for 'second bumper pay rise in a year' after strong start to new season.
The 20-year-old has cemented himself a vital component in Arsene Wenger’s side as they chase silverware on all fronts in what could possibly be the Frenchman’s final season in north London with his own contract set to elapse next summer.
Iwobi who's currently with the Nigerian national male team camp in preparations for the Russia 2018 World Cup qualifiers against Zambia in Ndola, bagged a brace in a warm-up game against Plateau United on Wednesday.
He has however made five appearances for the Gunners this term and is expected to double his salary at the Emirates having broken into the first-team under Wenger last season.
According to the Daily Mail, the Nigeria international is likely to be offered up to £50,000-a-week (about 19,925,533) in a standard weekly wage while it is almost inevitable that a series of lucrative incentives will be added for winning either the Premier League or the Champions League.
Writing in his programme notes ahead of the Champions League match against Basel last week, following the 3-0 rout of title rivals Chelsea, Wenger said: “After a display like that, you want to praise the whole team. It was, however, especially encouraging to once again see Alex Iwobi perform so well in a big game.
“Alex has a discreet way of assessing his place in the team. He doesn’t talk a lot and he’s not what you’d call a flashy player. He’s a player who connects the team, and that’s why I think he’s integrated so quickly – because our game is based on those combinations.
“At the start nobody talked too much about him, because he does his job very well. But now people realise more and more that he can play at a high pace, that he has real quality, he works for the team, and when it comes to distributing the ball, he does that very intelligently.
“When the ball gets to him, you always feel the game can become quicker now. He’s developed that in the last 18 months. When I saw him in the youth team, he was more of a dribbler, an individual player.
"He’s slowly discovered from training with the first team that he needed to find a mixture between the individual and the collective game. That mixture is right now.”
