The £73m package that lured Robin van Persie to Manchester United

According to Goal.com, Manchester United have put together an astonishing £73 million package in order to sign Robin van Persie from Arsenal.

The Dutchman is due in Manchester for a medical on Thursday afternoon before he puts pen to paper on a four-year contract understood to be worth £235,000-a-week once image rights are taken into account.

Van Persie knew that, at the age of 29 and in the form of his life, the next contract would be the biggest of his career, and it is no wonder that he did not even want to discuss Arsenal’s proposed £130,000-a-week offer.

That means he will earn £12.2m-a-year, a whopping £48.9m over the course of his United contract.

In addition to the £24m fee United are paying - with no obvious sell-on potential at the end of the deal - the 19-time English champions will spend a grand total of £72.9m on Robin van Persie.

Questions may well be asked as to where the money has come from, especially given the deep concerns over United’s finances, which has received plenty of publicity in light of the Glazer family’s flotation of 10 per cent of the club on the New York Stock Exchange.

But United chief operating officer Michael Bolingbroke had spoken of the club’s projection for a net spend of £40m in the summer transfer window.

The failure to land Lucas Moura - who has agreed to join Paris Saint-Germain from Sao Paulo for £35m - is likely to have freed up some of the budget for United to push for Van Persie.

In addition, United had already freed up the best part of £180,000-a-week in wages following the summer departures of Michael Owen, Park Ji-Sung and Tomasz Kuszczak.

United’s bid for Van Persie was aided by the player’s desire to move to Old Trafford, plus Sir Alex Ferguson’s clever ploy to ramp up the pressure on Arsenal to sell by publicly discussing his move for the Dutchman.