If you thought the start of La Liga season had no impact on the Premier League, think again. The tremors of the dull draw between Real Madrid and the newly promoted Sporting Gijon could be felt as far as North London. The stutter of the much acclaimed Los Blancos sent a message to the Emirates that Karim Benzema is Still needed more at Real than he is at Arsenal.
The Gunners have been eternally linked to the French striker. Not a single transfer window goes without linking him to the club. Some of the over-enthusiastic tabloids also pointed to a special jet being sent to ferry him for a medical. If anything, this transfer window has already seen Benzema sign for the club multiple times.
Unfortunately, there is nothing of this sort being heard from Madrid. The player himself if recuperating from an injury and his absence is dearly felt all over the pitch in the opening match by Real Madrid.
Benzema is a player highly rated not just for his striking prowess but also for his work ethic. He is a very unselfish player who revels as much in the goals by Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale as much in his own. Truth be told, he is an unheralded hero in the midst of giants of the Madrid team.
The misery of the strike force combining Ronaldo, Bale and Jese only highlights the virtue of having Benzema in your squad. It is a stark reminder why he is wanted at the Emirates. Sadly for Wenger and the Gunners’ supporters, this could be one move which may have died its natural death in the weekend.
It is not that the Madrid hierarchy does not value Benzema. Ever since the Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain is sold to Napoli in 2013, the value of Benzema to the side has grown multifold.
Wenger is right when he bemoaned the paucity of ‘quality strikers’ recently. Benzema is up there with the best and brings the unique ability of making everyone around him look better. It would be a huge bonus for Wenger if he can pull the coup of signing Benzema but it would be really foolish of Madrid if they sell him. Going by the current trend, it looks highly unlikely that Wenger will have his wish fulfilled. As he said after last nights game: “That story [is dead] but it has always been created every week, again and again. We do not master that situation. When the player has a contract it’s the club who owns the contract who decides that and I have said that many times.
“We want to master the situation of the players who are under contract with us. We had Wilshere and Welbeck out tonight, Alexis is not completely at his best. We know that we can score goals and we will score goals again.”
So can we all safely forget about this interminable transfer rumour?
Sridhar
Anyone thought we should have gone for Schurrle? I know he’s not a proper no. 9 (and he only left Chelsea last season) but he sure knows where the net is. And he’s classy. Cavani doesn’t excite me really. I think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now as far as strikers are concerned.
Andy Carroll is available ???
Now that wouldn’t surprise me,
He fits all the criteria of a typical wenger panic buy ?
Wenger has lost. His time is up. Time to move on now. Bring in klopp for the rest of the season
Hey fellow Arsenal fans ur wet dream of Cavani or Lewandowski will never be true as long as that
greedy, dumb and arrogant guy is in charge. You know who ?
Were Ozil and Alexis just wet dreams?
No Wenger paid over £75 million for them
If he can do it the last two years why is it impossible for him to do it this summer?
Are u serious? Who is Wenger going to buy?get real.time is up.yes Andy Carroll would be the type of signing wenger could make with the time left.
We signed Ozil and Alexis because Real and Barca were signing superior players and they needed money to offload them. Also no other top team showed any interest in both of them. If PSG, Man City or Chelsea had shown interest they would have snubbed us. Cavani or Lewandowski are their top players. They wont sell them even if
we offer 50-60 m.
“Cavani doesn’t excite me…..should we have went for Schurrle?” – New to football I see
Thanks for that ??
Your post was a bit slower than Giroud but thanks all the same.
But the question that needs answering is. ..
why did it take Benzema nearly 2 months to come out and say “Madrid is my home” ?
Correct me if im wrong, but both sides of the table stated pretty early on that Benzema would not leave Real Madrid.
That’s normal when Arsenal are involved,
Correct me if I’m wrong … Wenger once stated that he didn’t know who Cazorla was… aweek later he signed him.
I was referring to Benzema, he could have said what he recently said two months ago!
For me.. This means the player was waiting and once the negotiations broke down he came out and started calling people clowns for imaging him leaving Madrid!
The clowns could also be a dig at Wenger and Arsenal for not going that extra £ 2M to sign him… Nothing new there!
Thats what i meant, correct me if im wrong, but benzema said long time ago that he’s not joining Arsenal
Maybe I didn’t hear that from Benzema because of the noise of munching on 10 packets of crisps! ?
So tell me why did Benzema post a photo of himself on a private jet on Instagram…
with the words … leave the past in the past. ..
onwards to the future!
?
Anyways.. if Arsenal would have offered £50M
Madrid would have sold him.. they are debt and they also want De Gea and Reus
Benzema was never a realistic target,Real Madrid only sell a player when they no longer want him or need to balance the books like when they bought Bale and sold Ozil
Watching Arsenal isn’t as fun as it used to be. There was always hope that ‘one day, when Wenger is no longer bound by the shackles of the financial plan for Emirates, we will see an Arsenal on top of the league and champions of Europe.’
This is the third season without those shackles, and there’s little to no indication of change. Wenger and the board incite so much frustration to Arsenal-fans that I’m seriously considering hibernating through the rest of the Wenger era as an Arsenal fan.
Don’t get me wrong – I said from the beginning that Benzema wouldn’t be sold unless Real Madrid were replacing him, like they and Barcelona did with Özil and Sanchez – but the fact that we have an obvious need for a striker and a cover DM, Wenger / those in charge seem to be content with the current squad makes me sympathize with Robin Van Persie for leaving when he had bigger ambitions than what those in charge had. It’s close to unbearable.
meh
the only way to be happy for arsenal fans is to lower expectation as long as wenger is a manager.
Get Daniel Sturridge from Liverpool. He’d be pa great signing. He would fit right in with our medical staff and doctors. Never fit/ always injured.
Be a brilliant Wenger signing
The striker situation at arsenal is just pathetic. Most people who praise giroud don’t understand why he is so hated by many. They say his stats are close to benzemas. They say other top strikers like aguero and costa have 1 goal each too. They say other top strikers miss sitters too. So why does giroud always come under fire? The answer is this: His ball control is so awful. No wonder many call him donkey. If u watch arsenal games, you will notice that he always breaks down our attack and fine passing with his bad control. As a result exposing us to a counter attack. In the liverpool game, benteke didn’t score but he was a joy to watch. I can’t say the same about giroud. We have lost out on benzema and if we can’t buy anyone else before the window closes then I would prefer theo or sanchez to take up the no9 role. It is not a coincidence that we scored a lot of goals toward the end of last season and in pre-season
I actually haven’t noticed this bad ball control you describe. I always thought Giroud was a great teamplayer, but maybe I’m wrong. My problem with Giroud is that he’s even more unstable than Arsenal. He can have great periods (like the one this spring) and miserable periods (the following after his goal bonanza ended). Add this up and you get decent stats. I personally think Giroud is being used in a more technical way than what’s ideal for him.
Crosses into the box he becomes very dangerous. Walking the ball into goal is not his strong point. Our wide players which in this attack is Bellerin and Monreal maybe had 1 or 2 crosses all game. Against a team that is playing behind the ball like Liverpool did second half there is no reason to not continually cross balls into the box rather than passing around the box for the entire half.
Anyways…
We will have to wait for the final hour of the transfer window as per usual!
The latest rumour is from Arsenal’s so called biggest fan Claude what’s his face that interviews fan’s outside the Emirates.
He says that a friend ? who has inside information at Arsenal, that we are trying to sign two players from the same club!
And apparently the fan’s won’t be disappointed!
Question is, which club??
psg
What do u guys think of Claude’s (arsenal tv) comments last night about the 2 players from the same team were trying hard to get , don’t see why Claude would even risk the wrath of the arsenal fan especially how sensitive we are at the moment and with what happened with Benz yesterday, and wen ever have you seen Claude happy and upbeat after a sh#t performance from the team he usally looks like he wants to top himself. something must be in this
From last article – “Three games played and five points dropped already. Clearly we are not going to win the league.”
By that logic,
Chelsea have played 3 games and have conceded 7 goals already as well as they have 2 red cards as well. Clearly they are not going to keep any clean sheet this season.
We were never going for Benzema and Madrid will only sell if they got Aguero or a top striker…. Media and some agents just deceived us and we fell for it…SMH.
Hahaha this article has come in just late.It should have came the first time we were linked to him.By the way were is TH14 who was saying Santi Cazorla is a better box to box player than Ramsey which to me is clearly untrue.Why should Cazorla and Ozil be in the same team together like seriously.Peeps keep insulting Ramsey yet he is being played out of position.They defended Mesut Ozil being played out of position by Wenger Ei! why are we so bias.Have we forgotten the man utd match last season where Ramsey changed everything in the midfield.Or maybe i watch a different arsenal playing altogether and i need glasses to tell me that Cazorla is better than Ozil and Ramsey is better than Cazorla at box to box.Well now I see why the team aint moving forward.I wonder which other top manager would play them together or the trio in the same lineup.How?Well @TH14 i hope you show your face here when this actually comes to a stumbling block and we might as well sell Ramsey according to what you are saying.
Arsenal 4 pts
Chelsea 4 pts
The different is they got 4pts even though got red card in both game, that’s champ mentality about & good tactically too…
Now do we have this mentality or not..?
As far i could grasp, our team just the same like last second half season… Our good run that time not fluke, that’s mean other team already improved more than last season. it’s gonna difficult long season for this team…
Logically, if the last champion team had difficult time to gain points, do we still have chance to winning the league ? As for assessment we’re behind 12 pts in the end of season & still haven’t adding surplus in outfield player yet…
@TH14atl the list of the players you gave me were players who were naturally central midfielders but could play in cmf position and you also gave me no 10’s who could also play cmf so i do not get your take.However did you see that they were being played in their best positions.I am also against Ramsey on the wing but i will not be blinded by the fact that if he should be put in box to box role he will be better than santi in that role.But from what you said i think we might just sell cant we.Have you forgotten the man utd match last season where peeps were like O! Ramsey is an engine and all that and Cazorla best position is no 10. were we not here why did you not shed your view because younknew it was true.Even Cazorla as a winger is so ineffective so speak the truth so that we can be saved.
Wenger will not sign anyone. If u are dreaming about Cavani or Lewandowski then keep dreaming wont happen. Do u honestly think those top players would want to join a manager
who thinks 4th place is like winning trophy. We were lucky with Alexis, Ozil and Cech.
Cech we signed because we was old and second choice at Chelsea and wanted to stay in London, Alexis because Barca signed
Suarez and with all due resepect no other big clubs were interested in signing Alexis same with
Ozil.
Giroud almost scores than actually really scoring the goals. This has to be one of the most weird sentences I have ever constructed!
For the record for people saying Chelsea have 3 CBs they have 4, Ivanovic is naturally a CB and does a better job there than he does at RB. Some of you might be saying well heck we have several wingers then our depth must be through the roof but it’s not quite the same.
Ramsey is a B2B playing ot wide, Ivanovic is a CB playing RB. Ivanovic plays better in the CB role which is his better position. Liken it to Lahm playing midfield for Bayern even though he’s a full back or Azpilicueta playing LB or Ozil playing LW wing for us. So it covers the depth issues for Chelsea in that position. We have very few natural CB alternatives if both our CBs get injured as we saw last night.
He should have started with TW not OG simple and our captain should have been on the park to help the defending. I can’t understand this where it’s a new thing that the defenders never play together? Why because they must train together they must. Go get our lad back from West Ham and use him because he is so much better then CC
Walcott was utterly anonymous for 20 mins …. Everyone goes on about not playing players out of position then indulges the whippet in his belief about striker potential …he ain’t and never will b …the difference with the ox when he came on was obvious last night … We have been lumbered with this overrated guy forb a decade now … Why we upped his wages is a mystery to me but torpedoes any talk of wenger’s managerial prowess that is for sure
And the other thing taking off FQ my god if you can’t win the game make sure you save that point just like other teams do
And that great German team BM well there manager will be out at the end of the season it’s our job to get PG as our new start
Benzema is a CLOWN!
LOOOOOLLL!!!Admin knew just now…HaHHAa
Fact is that we can’t just purchase players like purchasing things. The club must be willing to sell and player must be happy to leave.
Cavani would be good alternative or perhaps Higuain but at a much lesser price than in his release clause.
Other than that Wenger is correct. There are few CF available. We missed out on Dybala, Jackson Martinez, Lacazette, Mandzukic
An alternative would be to try to get Reus, Greizmann, Gotze or Draxler.
I think we need to strengthen our defense too after seeing Chambers yesterday. Right now I don’t feel comfortable with him at RB or CB.
We need another CM: Krychowiak, Bender, Carvalho, Wyanama, Moutinho
We missed ouT on Kondogbia, Vidal, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger
Trouble is, without games Chambers won’t get better, so it’s either a loan out or play him in ‘easier’ games (if they exist anymore).
Do not worry my brother for Wenger himself is sitting on a ticking timebomb.The day will come when he will leave in shame if he does not do the right thing.Juat look at Flamini average from day one and his timebomb exploded.He is nowhere to be seen so shall this same thing happen to Wenger and some other players in the team whom i woill not mention for some reasons.I feel so sorry for him.He looks like a worried man and the man on the hot seat yet when the chance comes for him to relieve himself he mostly enters the hot water again.Its a pity because there is really no need for him to leave if he makes the right decisions and buys the right players.By the way where is TH14atl
Madrid were never selling Benzema and he never wanted to leave. This has been s 100 percent fabricated story all along yet many of you will fall for the next BS transfer these trolls invent, such as Cavani who is also not coming.
why are people criticising Ramsey so much. The only thing which makes our team unbalanced is playing the luxury item we bought called ozil.I thought he would need time to adjust to physicality of premier league so i supported him,but the guy hasn’t improved he tries to dribble past ppl but runs into them somehow,tries to do showboating at unnecessary time which he fails to do miserably.And i see him giving too many back passes when he should drive forward.And the biggest reason i stopped liking him as a player is bcoz of his sulky attitude.No passion or drive for the club ,as if he wanted to be at some other club and is just doing the job without his heart in it.He neeeds to be placed on the bench and make him work hard to retain his place.Ramsey and coq in middle with ox and sanchez on both wing and cazorla as cam will make us a more balanced midfield.