Contracts for aging players

Beginning my ninth season in charge of Arsenal and I have several players who have been with me for a long time, who I would be happy to have see out their careers with me and maybe even come on board in a staff role. However, their stats are starting to drop off a cliff as they get to 33, 34, 35. I try to offer them a contract - a reasonable contract - and they just throw a fit. I think it's a bit of poor programming that no player seems able to grasp that at the age of 32 or higher he will not get a better contract offer from a club than he got when he was 27-28. They won't even accept an equivalent offer. They always want what they got before and more besides. It's not realistic.

For example - Edison Cavani was my star player and was given 165k p/w contract at age 27 and was worth every penny. I'm trying to offer him a new deal at age 32 so that he can see out his career with me and retire a club legend. He wants nothing less than 220k p/w...

offer in the last months they come down by a huge amount

What Blidly said, also if you play Cavani for a lot of game this season then the assumption despite his lowered attributes is that he's still an important player in the club (and rightly so too, lowered attributes doesn't equal to him not needed anymore it's just mean you can't yet find a better player to replace him on regular basis). I usually don't even bother with that kind of loyalty stuff, if he's good enough to play for the club next season as at least a back up then I resign him if he is willing to receive lower pay (usually I offer them this when last of month of contract message was announced) if not then good luck to him with his next club

All I do is offer them a contract in the final few days of December, they usually ask for a huge deal less and all is good. For example I offered a 26 y/o Kurt Zouma a contract on December the 29th and all he asked for was 53k p/w despite him previously being on £69k a week.

No one is really going to be interested in signing your golden oldies on bosman's anyway I imagine so they shouldn't be too hard to handle.

i usually wait until theres 3 months left and see what they want if it isnt less or at least the same i just wait, if they have an inflated ego about how much they want (sometimes its the agent-especially if the agent dislikes you) then i just wait it out, no one holds me hostage

I wait till the very last week or two of the older players' contract renewals. There is very little likelyhood of any competition for these guys & good luck to them if someone comes in for them. Agree, they have delusions of "living on past glories" until they see their contracts about to expire.