Paul Pogba will demand his wages are doubled to match £400,000-a-week recruit Alexis Sanchez.
Manchester United have offered the Chile striker a basic salary of almost £100million over the next four-and-a-half years, and that has raised the bar in the Old Trafford pay stakes.
Now Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola is ready to tell United that his current £200,000-a-week salary is no longer the going rate for a player of his stature.
The 24-year-old will have three years left on the contract he signed in 2016 when he returned to United from Juventus for a then-world record £89m.
United can also take up a further 12-month option, but they are aware of the need to secure Pogba’s future throughout the peak years of his career.
That will mean handing him a new mega deal.
Sanchez was in Manchester last night having a medical. He is expected to seal his protracted arrival from Arsenal in the next 24 hours after Henrikh Mkhitaryan agreed to move to the Emirates as part of the deal.
Raiola, who also represents the Armenia star as well as £75m striker Romelu Lukaku, threatened to scupper the transfer unless United gave his client a hefty pay-off on the last two-and-a-half years of his contract.
Mkhitaryan will also get a wage increase at Arsenal that will take him past the £200,000-a-week barrier.
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Raiola’s role in the deal has given the agent an insight into how much United are willing to pay for elite players.
Pogba is now in that bracket. He agreed to a £167,000-a-week salary when he returned to Manchester – but that was hiked to £200,000-a-week by a clause triggered when United returned to the Champions League by lifting the Europa League.
Now Raiola will be negotiating from a position of strength when he goes back to the Old Trafford table this summer.
The agent managed to convince United to make striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic the club’s highest-ever earner in 2016 when the Swede was handed £367,000-a-week to come to the Premier League.