AC Milan announced the arrival of Mathieu Flamini this week. At 24 years of age he will add some youth and vim to a very doddery team of old duffers at Milan and has clearly left Arsenal against Arsene Wenger's wishes.

Arsenal players who leave are normally bookends at either end of their careers, young inexperienced whelps who have been examined by Arsene and are deemed ever-so-slightly surplus to requirements, or aged legends released just as they were on a downward arc - but Flamini is different from most Gunner escapees.

Arsene Wenger is notorious for his canny chess-like transfer manouvers, always thinking several moves ahead. The release of Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, may have caused a few gasps when they were announced, but both have proven to be tepid at best after having the Wenger umbilical cord cut.

' . . . he could prove to be an excellent signing for Milan, especially with Bayern Munich eyeing a swoop for Genarro Gattuso'


Henry, especially, looks like he wants to be somewhere, anywhere, but the Nou Camp, so much so that he plays like he is having a permanent out-of-body experience.

The French striker has also boxed himself into a corner by suggesting that Arsenal are the only Premier League club he would move to, meaning that his career is now in a blind alley and he is effectively taking his playing days to the corner flag and running the clock down.

The departure of Flamini, a young and important Arsenal player, is very unusual then, and he could prove to be an excellent signing for Milan, especially with Bayern Munich eyeing a swoop for Genarro Gattuso.

So why did Flamini leave? The common thinking is either of the "easy come, easy go; he came on a free so we didn't lose anything" variety or that the huge bulging wheelbarrows full of dosh that Milan offered him, clouded his judgement.

But listen to football writer Raphael Honigstein talk on the Guardian's football podcast and there is a third theory - yes, the move was money related, but only because of the shockingly stingy wage packet Flamini was getting at Arsenal.

Honigstein claimed that he heard from a reliable source that "all the official figures quoted about twenty grand are so far out, that you would not believe it - he was just on so little money" and Rafa continued revealing that"Twenty grand a week was half right - the figure is right" - but evidently not the amount of time; could Flamini really have been on 20 grand a month?

Not only does this suggest that Arsenal have pretty ropey finances, but this turns the whole loyalty question on its head, and begs the question: did Arsenal betray Flamini rather than the other way around?