Of course he would get a wage bump, but I compared it to Neto who is in an EPL team and older. I agree mostly, but Neto is way too expensive. Gakpo is LW, while we need someone who can rest/rotate Saka mainly.
Diaby seems to want to stay for another year with UCL, and is pretty expensive too.
Pino wouldn't cause problems to the squad, as then there would be four young wingers in Saka, Martinelli, ESR and Pino who would play according to who is performing the best.
In this sense it would be most important just to get a player who is happy to compete and gives quality depth as Pepe isn't trusted, and Saka is clearly a starter for us compared to the others so his backup doesn't have to be the best.
(Zaha would more likely block positions for youngsters similar to Willian, but a lot better, and like I have said many times, I would still likely go for Zaha if he cost like max. 25 million. But the club seems to think the most about resale value and building a squad that can be together for years possibly. Zaha would also mean huge wages).
The point of his wage bump is that we would likely give him much heavier wages than a club like liverpool in order to attract the player.
There's a reason Pool can get 17m for a nothing player like Minamino, while we struggle to move our own nothing players on.
If you pay 40m for Pino and he doesn't work out, you don't want to be stuck with another Pepe situation where no one wants to fork out a salary close to what Arsenal is giving them. It's why Mari is moving on loan once again, with an obligation if his new team stays upand not permanently from the get go.
Neto is not happening anyway, and injury not withstanding, he is prem proven (something the club has prioritized heavily the past two windows) which is where that obviously higher transfer fee and weekly wages would be going.
Zaha makes too much sense for the club to do it, which is a shame. Wouldn't stand in the way of any of the youngsters in the two-three years he'd would be here.