Arsenal blow with defensive target set to join Man United

Arsenal have been struggling to bring in new players in recent weeks, with a number of defensive and attacking knock-backs, and they now look to be missing out on Jose Fonte’s signature, who looks set to join Manchester United.

The 32 year-old enjoyed an impressive summer, winning the European Championships with Portugal, playing the full 90 minutes of both the semi-final and final, having also impressed with Southampton over the past six-and-a-half seasons.

Fonte is now claimed to be keen on making a move away from the Saints, after his international exploits raised his stocks somewhat, and Arsenal and Manchester United had both been linked with a deal.

The Gunners have been in desperate need of a new centre-back in recent weeks, following the disastrous loss of Per Mertesacker for the next five months, before the problem worsened by the six-week injury of Gabriel Paulista a week before the season was due to kick off.

Laurent Koscielny was also unable to return to action for the opening Premier League weekend, and Calum Chambers and Rob Holding were fielded at centre-back, and failed to stop rivals Liverpool from putting four goals past them, highlighting the lack of numbers at the back.

Shkodran Mustafi had been expected to join shortly after the loss to Liverpool, but the deal seemingly hit the rocks, and the club have so far failed to bring in any defenders since.

The Red Devils now appear set to win the race to sign Southampton’s Fonte, with the club apparently ‘convinced‘ he is moving to Old Trafford this summer.

The Portuguese centre-back could have brought some much needed experience to our squad this season, with trio Mathieu Flamini, Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky all having departed already, and with a relatively young squad for the current campaign.

Will we pay the price for having missed out on Fonte?

Tags Arsenal Fonte Man United Southampton

21 Comments

  1. Fonte will be third or fourth choice at ManU behind Bailly, Smalling and possibly Blind. Interesting choice for him. Interesting choice for ManU – something to be admired and loathed in equal measure. How does FFP work again?

  2. I think we should all have the word ‘Mug’ tattooed on our foreheads none more so than Arsene because we are being taken for a bunch of them… Really and truly its time to make that statement of intent no more dithering… I mean when one hit wonder novelty strikers turn you down questions have to be asked about our transfer Policy… If we spend big probably go ofter the defender Chelsea where after and someone like Griezmann success would not be short lived.. why does Wenger fear these types of signings its not like Griezmann is a bigger risk in comparison to the risk weve been taking believing Giroud is finally going to become word class…

    1. We talk about players like grizeman but are they available, are their clubs willing to sell and do they want to come to arsenal?

      1. For the right amount of money every one is willing to sell.. especially when they insert a buyout clause into a players contract, that’s a clear indication someone is willing to do business much as I would hate to loose Ozil if someone gave us 90 million honestly tell me you wouldn’t accept..

        1. The buy out clause is more of an insurance against the boss-man ruling. It came after the boss-man. But yeah, some clubs are happy to see a buy out met, not sure if Atletico would be though seeing as they can have their cake and eat it ..all in due course.

  3. I have had a look on the internet to see if we are linked with any strikers an all I can find are the same names we have discussed on here ad finitum.

    Unless something very unexpected happens then I think we are in for a big disappointment. I have a little more hope that we may sign a defender, if Kos gets injured then we are in real trouble.

    But then what do we do?

    Get behind the team and hope that we get top four and a new manager next year. New manager with CL and hopefully money to spend can perhaps persuade top players to stay and reinforce the team. Risk is that wenger gets a new contract.

    Not support the team, possibly miss out on CL, upset our best players (who wants to play for a team who’s fans do not support them) so they want to leave. Give new manager a difficult job, no CL, hard to persuade top players to stay.

    Why did wenger stay on after winning the FA cup. All this doom and gloom is so unneccessary.

    1. I’ve always felt that winning that FA cup doesn’t help us much.

      The Arsenal supporter has no other choice but to resign himself to the fact that his club is just not meant or built to fight for top honors.
      Just enjoy the “good football” if and when the team plays good football. No point talking about trophies, for now.

      I expect United to reclaim the EPL title. I expect City to go very far in the UCL. Arsenal and Chelsea would most likely make some noise here and there and that would be it.

      Arsenal may end up winning the double. Not impossible, but certainly very improbable at this point. No solid reason to think that Arsenal will win to honors in the foreseeable future.

    2. The fundamental flaws of the team aren’t new… We keep saying this line every year “let’s get behind the team maybe they’ll do well”… But you realize what hasn’t happened they haven’t done well these underlying tensions have been creeping up for ages and now they’ve surfaced because rather than address the problems we bury them repeating them over and over aging and failing to learn from our mistakes (well the manger at least) and you expect our star players to be sympathetic to that; they see exactly what we see probably even more except for them what’s keeping them at the club is a contract.

    3. The lack of rumours is the least of our worries! Compared to other teams, there tends to be very little chatter about genuine Arsenal targets until an offer is on the table (think Vardy). Lots of noise about players that we were probably never in for – click bait is how most sites make their money and they all know how desperate Gooners are for transfer news.

  4. Wasn’t Bravo linked with City only a couple of days ago, now he is in Manchester for a medical…. Can we pay whoever deals with transfers at City to give Arsene a masterclass.

    1. You may not understand this, but it is 80% down to the stadium going fans. What is acceptable to the fanbase. To the Arsenal fanbase, what is really acceptable? That failed protest at the Emirates last season is enough answer to that question.

      1. There were boos after pool game, at end of leicester game chants about spend some money and a small number of wenger out.

  5. All this doom and gloom, so I had a look at the top 20 clubs in terms of income per annum. After all it is income which is used to buy players and pay wages, so should determine our “clout” in the transfer market.

    According to Deloitte in january 2016, the top 20 clubs in the world had the following yearly incomesmeasured in £m

    1. Real Madrid. 439
    2. Barcelona 427
    3. Manu. 395
    4. PSG. 366
    5. Bayern 361
    6. ManC. 352
    7. Arsenal 331
    8. Chelsea 319
    9. Liverpool 298
    10. Juventus 246
    11. Borussia Dortmund 213
    12. Tottenham 196
    13. Schalke 04 167
    14. AC Milan 152
    15. Athletico Madrid 142
    16. Roma 137
    17. Newcastle 129
    18. Everton 126
    19. Internationale 125
    20. West Ham 122

    According to this our top competitors in the PL should be, in order, manu, manc, chelsea and liverpool. Of course what this does not take in to account is the ability of manc to raise capital by sheik mansour giving it to them, chelsea getting an interest free loan from abramovich and manu seeming to be able to borrow money with no concern about paying it back.

    Anyway, world wide we are right near the top in seventh place. So we should have a top class team and certainly a top class striker.

    What is odd however is that the realy top class strikers are at RM, barca, BM and BD. In the PL we only have aguerro who I regard as top class,

    1. “….who I regard as top class,”

      Well, that’s true. It is really down to personal definition/interpretation most of the time.
      If your idea of a top class striker is CFs like Aguero, Suarez, Lewandowski, Ibrahimovich and maybe Higuain, then yes, there are only a handful of such top class strikers existing on planet earth today.

      However, there exist a tier of quality strikers just below that top class, which going by many standards could also be called “top”. It seems the practice in the EPL is to have two CFs from this class available for selection.

      E.g Deigo Costa/Batshuayi, Harry Kane/Jansen, Vardy/A. Musa,

      At Arsenal we have Giroud who -despite his limited talents and notorious inconsistencies in front of goal- has scored enough goals in his career (Montpelier-Arsenal) to indicate that he belongs to this second tier class. Going by the custom in the EPL, who partners him then? Welbeck? Definitely not in this class!

      I don’t even want to talk about Sanogo, Akpom and Theo.

      1. Synth, i was just making an observation that given the high incomes of the PL clubs and the access to additional free funds that manc and chelsea have it seems strange that there are not more of the really top strikers in the PL.

        But I agree with what you have said, we only have one fit striker and need someone in addition to giroud, and preferably better than giroud to chose from.

  6. The injury to Mert was meant to be a blessing in disguise seeing it only takes injuries to certain average players in Arsenal to get a better replacement. Knowing the type of manager we have, the only thing that will qualify as a disaster is if Wenger signs a new contract. Planning is a core part of management, and for a well educated man like Wenger, he has demonstrated lack of astuteness and gross incompetence in the running of Arsenal as a football club. He could have brought back Vermalen for cheap and used the remaining cash to put in a big bid for Aubermayeng, instead of insulting Arsenal football club with a ridiculous bid for Lacazette.

    1. Personally I think that any injury to an arsenal player is bad news. There are no mitigating circumstances or silver lining.

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