Pale rumours fly by as time is ticking on… by KM
Hello fellow Arsenal people! Are you as excited as me to see a real Arsenal transfer? I hope not, because you’d be disappointed at the realistic chances. First, let’s look at the areas we need to improve – a CB, a Midfielder/Winger and a Striker to add to the lonely addition of Granit Xhaka.
So going through the papers, rumours from Sky Germany suggest that we’ve opened talks with Valencia for Shkodran Mustafi. The German international on papers looks like a decent signing, and I’ll take decent instead of nothing. Reports suggest that the Spanish team would agree on a offer around 25 million, regardless of the 50 million release clause.
Moving down the list Riyad Mahrez is a player that is so Arsenal, you could easily see why we are linked with him. Ranieri even said that Arsenal talks are turning his head. He’d be in the range of 40 million which is a high price, but the market is so absurdly overpriced, that this is the reality.
And finally latest news suggest Lyon would sell their star striker Lacazzete if the right price comes in and again it’s reported to be around 40 million. His stats in the French league were impressive and he’s French. You could see the pattern and how it would typically make sense, knowing the fact Arsene doesn’t really change.
So how possible would you rate all those transfers? My guess is that if we are extremely lucky, we’d get two of the three players at best. Realistically getting all three would cost close or more than 100 million pounds added to the fact we bought Xhaka for 30 already. It’s hard to imagine Arsene would spend such money, especially with the fact that he and Ivan Gazidis came out and said we’ll not spend “reckless”…
City and United are spending big with Chelsea not too far behind. Worst is the fact those teams have already made their transfers while we are yet to open talks, if we ever do it for the above mentioned people. I agree with Arsene on the fact that no player costs 100 million as United are trying to give for Pogba, but the question here is how much are we ready to give to win the title?
If Arsene delivers a profit and the top 4, another 3 years on his contract will be certain. It’s sad, but we have no real ambition to finish first and Ozil and Sanchez will be the first to be unhappy with that and they might be looking for a new club if we fail once again to put up a team that will be able to challenge and will also have the numbers.
I don’t expect that Akpom and Rob Holding are the missing striker and CB that would lead us to glory, with all my respect to the youngsters, who scored in the friendlies we played (against lesser opposition).
Finally I cannot go past the fact Wenger looks like he’ll be giving the Ox and Jack another chance, despite the fact both will probably miss at least half of the season due to injuries. The premier league starts in just 2 weeks and again I feel our squad is just not prepared. We lack the necessary quality and quantity at the moment.
I really wish I am wrong about the situation, but if we start the season bad and then try reconstructing the pyramid on September the second, honestly I’d be less than surprised. Anyway, enough is enough, enjoy your warm summer holidays!
Konstantin
Yea. .makes mi wonder too. If you want a player, you will try your best to get him. You will go all out to get him. For example a striker is a pressing need in the team. This should have been address long time ago in the transfer window because it’s a pressing need but we wait and wait and wait… .clubs also need replacement asap so that means we should be doing our business earlier..
I prefer signing the players we need then we get those promising players later in the window as icing on the cake.. .unless Wenger sees Holding and Asano as the players that will take us to glory. What do I know….
Anyway, we can only wait and see what happens before the season starts. The rumour mill ain’t helping matters … Everyone is linked to Arsenal literally. .. Some players are flying In for medical, some deals are close, some have agreed terms.. .i can’t comprehend all that but let’s wait and see.. .
Another word for arsenal in the dictionary should be patience. Oh dear!
Now, Walcott wants to be a winger….dude just wasted the last 3 years of his footballing lifespan chasing shadows and the illusions of being a striker. Now I say stand up for the Theo Walcott we expected 10 years ago, the one who beat six Liverpool players in that Champions game, and basically did the same against AC Milan, in both cases to set up Adebayor for crucial goals, when he wore the number 32 jersey not thinking he was Thierry 2.0, that Walcott, I’ll prefer over Mahrez or any other on the right wing.
theos been talking again?!!!
has china rang yet?
no?
pffft
*pushes furby off the desk
According to “reports”
Lacazette Mahrez and Mustafi are
all nailed on to join Arsenal.
80-90 mill quids worth.
OT. World class midfielder on the brink of signing for Gunners.
Apparently Kelechi to sign at 2.57 pm today.
OT. Jiangsu Suning F.C. turn down Walcotts wonton wage demands.
The “reports” you have quoted must be from the back of milk boxes. So illusive but delicious and healthy, hahaha…
Walcott to China? Seems ideal for us. But it sounds so BS even for over rich Chinese conglomerates.
We not purchase anyone anymore till January Windows :/ DISAPPOINTMENTS!!!
Boxing day sales 🙂
Wenger said giroud will be arsenals main man upfront.
He also said he hopes this will be the year of the ox.
He is planning to give holding and bielik a chance.
Any hopes of signing 2 or 3 worldclass players should all be flashed in the toilet and be deleted from our brains.
The only positive note I can see about all this circus is that.
This is the last chance for oxlade walcott debuchy giroud and most importantly wenger
after 10 years theo gets another last chance loooool
circus indeed
For some reason I am optimistic. I believe (for no good reason because we all know you can’t listen to the press) we will sign Lacazette. A striker with speed was my number one wish. We sign Lacazatte and I will be of Wenger’s back about a striker whether Lacazette takes to the PL or not.
If we sign a CD, Mustafi would be good, we are a much better team than last season. IMHO the lack of speed of both Mert and Giroud hurt us against the better teams last season. Should we sign Lacazette and Mustafi or an other CD, the spine of our starting 11 just got a lot faster and that’s a good thing in my book.
Wenger expresses interest in a player, meets with the player wth his agent, talks both of them into agreement for a move, agent tells him release clause, Wenger bids half the release clause, parent club rejects the bid, Wenger waits for player to hand in a transfer request, Chelsea hears the Wenger bid, bids the full clause, signs player swiftly, player shines at Chelsea…3 years later, ” We almost signed Mustafi” , Wenger
You missed out the bit about chelsea’s interest free loan from abramovich increasing by £60m to £1.1 billion.
Of course this is rubbish, just another club and Wenger lack ambition story ignoring hard cold facts to push a story and line that suits you and your position. The facts I’m talking about are xhaka signed and three young players all signed before the transfer window opened. Then of course there was Jamie vardy also tried to get him signed before window was open however, vardy didn’t want to sign for us. Of course since then things have been quiet and yes that’s frustrating but clubs have to want to sell players and players have to want to come. Say he paid Lyon and or Leicester what they demanded and both players flopped he would be murdered in the blogettas and media for having lost his touch And buying inadequate players. You state we need a striker yet we scored two less than the title winners seven less than city, 2014/2015 we scored three less than Chelsea and 12 less than city you have to go back to 2013/14 to find a time where we were way behind in terms of goals scored and that was a massive 33 and 34 goals behind city and Utd with both those teams scoring 100 goals plus, the reason we need a striker is not as you and others push to win the title but to give strength and depth to an area that is thin on ground. We need a CB now with per out that’s a priority just again to add depth and experience to our back line. However, none of what I have shown above will matter to you or others like you because acknowledging it would mean your arguments and stories against the board and Wenger were invalid and insubstantial and people would listen to you or bother reading what you had to say.
You say that but when has Wenger EVER worried about what the press or the fans think? and he’s signed plenty of flops since David Dein left the club, I dont think this is reason to excuse the inactivity in the transfer window in any way.
Other clubs and players now view Arsenal as non progressive and not ambitious and thats a big reason why we dont attract the players interest and clubs see us as bargain basement and they know we wont offer the asking price which is why they just avaoid dealing with us is as simple as that really.
I didn’t know Arsene Wenger has an account on just Arsenal until I read your comment.. now that you are here, listen to us..we need a striker and a defender. then you can tell us how many goals we scored less/ more than other teams..the only thing you didn’t tell us is how many premier league trophies we won wth those goals
@richy – what are your facts about goals supposed to argue or support? Wenger himself said we lacked goals last season. Giroud went missing for a long stretch of games. Is there any doubt we had trouble scoring when it mattered most last season? If anything we should mention that defensively we conceded the same amount of goals as the champions and only two teams bettered us but by only one goal. Still we managed to miss the title by 10 points. What does that tell you?
Giroud simply is not good enough for a title winning team IMHO. If Wenger signs Lacazette and Lacazette does a Shevchenko and scores only 5 goals all season, I will not hold it against Wenger. I would be deeply disappointment like any normal fan with high expectations, but I will applaud Wenger for trying. Last summer with the same need we tried nothing as far as outfield players were concerned.
You never know if a foreign player will replicate his past in the PL, the most competitive league in the world. I am willing to accept that. I just want to see ambition. Ibra might not succeed at Man U the same way he did at PSG, Falcao failed at Man U yet Mourinho rolled the dice and lost by bringing him to Chelsea, Torres was fantastic for Liverpool and failure for Chelsea. No one can predict these things not even the best managers in the game. But not trying to succeed and not trying to bring in a top quality striker that is always failure in my book.
For me it has never been about results but about ambition. We sign Lacazette, to me that’s a statement of ambition (unless he is bought to warm the bench for Giroud) and that is good enough to get me excited for next season. Doesn’t make us favorites for the PL title in my book but gives me things to look forward to. How does he link up with Ozil, with Sanchez, how does he deal with the PL physicality. How do we utilize his speed? Does it finally limit our endless and aimless passing around the opponents box with no results to show for it? Does his and Xhaka’s presence lift the team (like the signing of Sanchez did). Many things to look forward to with a new top striker, that’s all I ask for. Just not an other season of Giroud leading the line. It will be hard enough to deal with an other season of painful injuries not an other season of the same suspects, at least give us a few new faces to look at and to support and be optimistic about.
PS: If Lacazette is a PL failure but we fail to recognize that after 2 seasons I will start to express my frustration again.
I can just hear it already.
Wenger: “We tried to make some additions but we were just unable to get any special players. Transfers can be very complicated and we did not want to just make signings that would not benefit our club.”
“Asano, however, is a very talented player so we are happy with that. And Chamberlain looks to be fully fit so that is just like a new signing.”
A bit unconventional for a poet but I have decided to do a remix. So here is my interpretation of it’s raining, it’s pouring:
It’s season 2016/2017
The gunners are going to struggle scoring
Just over a week to the first game and Wenger is snoring
Transfer prices make him see red
A misplaced shot from Giroud at target practice left him with a bump on his head
He couldn’t sign anyone on transfer deadline day morning
I can see that this “Arsenal bad time” is flourishing your talent RVP. I think somewhere in your head you feel grateful that we are messing, hahaha…
I bet you can’t make any poetry if we did clinch the title. You’ll be speechless.
As long as we have Giroud I will have no shortage of material
One great poem deserves another 🙂
Three blind wingers
Three blind wingers
See how they run
See how they run
They all run after the ball so fast
trip on their shadow, fall on their ar#e
didya ever see such a thing in your life
as three blind wingers.
Sorry Dave, your poet is not making me laugh but it does make me think. Who’s the three blind wingers? I just count one, Theo Walcott.
I think you are much better on making sarcasm Dave. Stay there!
Good to know I make people think 🙂
Think harder brother 🙂
Chamberlain Walcott and Wellbeck.
That’s what we called “missing link”, dude. We aren’t connecting.
Ox is looking find today. Wellbeck? Didn’t AW move him to front?
Wellbeck just runs round
all day trying to look busy.
Oxo only looks good in friendlies.
Walcott is fast… getting injured.
At work, thinking about the transfers
Arsene and the board never have the answers
Lacazette, Mustafi, even Koulibaly
Please Arsenal board spend on anybody
with quality, or you’ll be sure to regret it
record cash reserves but YOU REALLY NEED TO SPEND IT
I would like to make a very small promotion for Akpom and Holding.
No, they are not like getting actual experienced quality signings, but Akpom is better than Walcott and Holding is almost certainly better than Chambers so at least they represent a very small step in the right direction.
Just my opinion but Walcott is irrelevant in the squad as Iwobi and Campbell do much better than him. If anything, we should measure Akpom against these two as they are really who he should be competing with to at least get into squad contention, assuming no other forwards are signed.
So walcott now knows he is a winger. After holding the club to ransom during the contract negotiation that he should be promised the strikers role. He is certainly way down the pecking order. Sanchez, Iwobi, Campbell, and possibly Mahrez are better than him
Unfortunately the worse Theo
performs the higher his
salary is raised.
Another case of less is more 🙂
Or in football parlance “The Rshavin-Bendt-squid formula”
Let’s be brutally honest here, the Mustafi.deal is being chased by Arsene Because we are in the plop plop as the Mertesaker injury was not foreseen, (not that injuries can be but,) and this situation has come about because Wenger was unwilling to spend on a new CB over the last two transfer windows when the rest of the world knew he should be looking at Centre Backs he sat on his hands.
Now what we really need is a top notch Striker and we’ve all seen how Giroud and Walcott and Welbeck to a lesser degree are not capable of being the main point of the spear for a variety of reasons yet here we are spending time and money on a CB that we should have brought in a season ago.
OK Lacazette would be a slight improvement or at least a variation but he’s not a top tier striker in the same vien as say Ronaldo or Higuain, and while I know we could never get in the former, there was a chance that however highly priced he was the latter could have been ours several seasons ago but was scuppered by Arsenals reluctance to get the deal done quickly and by their distracted bid for Suarez.
Wenger struts into the transfer market with a confidence that is very much misplaced and ALWAYS acts like he doesn’t need any one and this ALWAYS backfires and then we are forced to pay over the odds for players that we need rather than what we want.
My biggest grip is that due to Wengers approach we are now viewed as a club that is a good target for second tier players rather than the Cream of European football and this is down to a perceived lack of ambition and a lack of willingness to spend the money when it’s needed.
I mean Imagine if we HAD bid say 60 million for Suarez ??? We would now be in possession of one the world’s most prolific strikers and we would almost certainly have won far more than we have done and our brand would be far higher in people’s minds than it is now, BUT instead we offered a bid that was certain to insult the seller and off Suarez went to Barcelona.
It happened time and time again and it just proves what most fans think now that rather than being an ambitious competitive football club we are a financial institution treading water in a sporting arena.
Imagine if Suarez had become an arsenal player and we had won the CL which is not beyond the realms of possibility had we had the man in our squad, we would now be a far more attractive prospect to the top tier players in Europe than we are and that sort of thing once lost is very hard to regain and make no bones about it we have lost it and this is why we have so much trouble buying in top notch players. That and the arrogant way we approach other clubs makes them feel that they should hike prices as we go in so low for players that they value.
It also gives you a psychological edge when you have respected and feared players on the pitch and we DO have a clutch of them BUT the one we really need is the main goal scorer and the opposition know that even our own fans don’t respect Giroud and that’s not something that makes them wary of him.
We have also wasted time and a large amount of money on players like Walcott (who now says he’s willing to play on the wings again, that’s very generous of you Theo at 130 grand a week for two seasons doing F@ck all) and when we should have offloaded his when he wanted his money upped.
We are just not feared and respected any more either on the pitch or in the transfer market and that’s down to Wenger I’m afraid to say.
Suarez is having good time in the “top of the world” dude. I think he’ll forget to look “down”, to where Arsenal life.
Yes mate he is now but im talking about four years ago when he was our (supposed) target
same with Higuain if we’d have made a proper effort to get him, now he’s the third most expensive player in the world
Its all smoke and mirrors with AW is my point
Aren’t you a ray of sunshine, Konstantin… geez, man, how about you wait until the transfer window ends to start your annual Wenger bashing? I’m sure even if we sign another couple of decent players, you’ll still find a reason to whine about it. There’s just no pleasing some of the so-called “fans”.