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Watford are ready to make midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure the club's highest-paid player by offering him a new five-year deal.

The Hornets will not sell their six-goal top scorer, in the number-crunchers' top 10 for the most completed passes this season, at any price in the January transfer window.

And they are understood to have opened talks with Doucoure, who will be 25 on New Year's Day, about an improved contract worth up to £70,000-a-week.

Head coach Marco Silva has described his box-to-box sensation as the “heartbeat” of Watford's season.

(Image: Clive Rose) (Image: Getty Images Europe)

Arsenal, who train next door to the Hornets at London Colney, are among the big hitters tracking Doucoure, whose market value has soared way beyond the £6million they paid Rennes to bring him to English football in January 2016.

Watford owner Gino Pozzo reluctantly accepts Doucoure, one of the Premier League's rising stars, may prove too hot to handle in the long term.

But eve a monster offer, massively in excess of the club record £20m they banked for striker Odion Ighalo 12 months ago, would not make him part with a player whose mobility has been compared with former Gunners stars Patrick Vieira and Abou Diaby.

Doucoure thought he had scored his seventh goal of the season on Boxing Day, but the Hornets' winner against Leicester at Vicarage Road was debited as a Foxes keeper Kasper Schmeichel own goal.