There have been numerous Arsenal transfer rumours linking the Gunners with the outstanding Leicester midfielder N’Golo Kante in the last few weeks, and even Henry Winter revealed to the Arsenal Supporters that he thought Wenger would buy him this summer.
Wenger has already revealed his admiration for the Frenchman when he was talking about Leicester’s success a couple of weeks ago: “It’s down to the quality of players you bring in and sometimes the opportunities are not always necessarily linked with the amount of money.
“If you look well, they finished very strongly last season and on top of that they brought some players in who have given them something more, like N’Golo Kante.
“He had a huge impact. We have spoken about [West Ham’s] Dimitri Payet – you could say along with Payet he is one of the players who had a big impact in this league.”
Last month Wenger also admitted that he had been watching Kante since he was a young boy in France. “Kante is a huge force in their team,” said Wenger. “Of course I know him.
“You look at his career and you will be amazed. Because he played in Suresnes in Paris at the age of nine, 10 years old.
“After, he went to Boulogne as an amateur. They didn’t want to sign him pro.
“After, he went to Caen, and then he came finally to England. But, everywhere he has been, he has always adapted to the level where he was.”
Surely Wenger wil be kicking himself that he didn’t buy him earlier, but with the latest revelation that he has a buyout clause of just 20 million surely this is Le Prof’s last chance to get him for a bargain price. We all know that Arteta, Flamini and Rosicky will be leaving the Emirates this summer so there is ample room to bring Kante into the Arsenal squad.
Don’t hang about Wenger, go get him!
Get him…
Assumption is the mother of “Luck”
oh wait….did i just say LUCK?
But Arsenal are not synonymous with this Luck thingy
Forgive me for my ignorance but is Kante a DM or CM player by nature? Follow up question, who would he kick out in our current first 11?
I don’t watch a lot of LFC games unless its against us? From what I saw especially from the game at the Emirates is that he can kick Ramsey and El out of that box 2 box spot. His an all action kind of guy with a free role.
@007
He’s a CM by nature…He would dislodge anyone of our Midfielders on his sheer engine alone. A true B2B, both offensively and defensively…
Thanks NY. So meaning he would play next to a DM a head of Ramsey, Elneny, Jack and Carzola in our current set up?
If yes, then no, Wenger cant buy a player to replace Ramsey in the starting 11 or limits Jack’s play time even more despite that player been better than both.
@007
He can also slot in as DM. He’s that good. And one thing he does, which both Jack and Aaron go astray on, is DEFEND…
You are showing your shallow mindedness here. Ramsey only played B2B when Carzola was injured and Elneny was being eased into the team. Ramsey’s position is in the false wideman so your argument is just lame. Kante if he were to come to Arsenal will have to contend with players like Coqualin, Crzola, and Elneny. You also need to know that this is what one would call his breakthrough season at the age of 24/25. Prior to that he spent time playing French second tier and third tier football. He could just be a player on form as was Ramsey in 2013/2014 season.
Is it just me or does Wenger use this line alot… ” Of course I know him… We have been watching him for awhile….. He was always a huge talent”.
Now here is my question…. WHY DID YOU NOT BUY THEM….. How long do you watch players for…… Was it a choice between Sanogo and Kante and you chose the “brilliant” Sanogo.
You say you are looking for talent that can improve your team so how do you miss these awesome players if you were watching them for awhile….
Makes me mad when you say that…..
sorry but your ranting and post does not even make the slightes bit of sense… wenger and the scouts probably keep watching hundreds to thousands of players and youth players and from them there are probably hundreds of talented youth players but wenger obviously cant buy every single one, there are and were soooo many young players who were dubbed “the next blabla” and how many of them succeeded? almost none! you can blame wenger for many things but absolutely not for missing on unknown gem players.. look all the managers of the top clubs probably have all watched and scouted the same young player so it isnt a surprise when a manager says that he had known the player…
How does my rant not make sense. We have a manager that every time a player does well tells us that yes he was watching the player for awhile and knows the player. For what reason do we just watch. A scouts job is to find talent. And good scouts see good talent quickly. If we go by Wengers words then all his scouts do is watches and never approaches.
We watched Hazard, Ronaldo, Wayama, Kante and the list goes on and on and never approach or semi approach…. It seems as though our scouts cannot see talent anymore. With Wenger there is always an excuse.
And one last thing. How could Kante be a risk/not succeeded. If Wenger and the scouts had watched him since he was 9 then his talent must have been obvious. So his risk was minimal it was just Wenger not wanting to buy.
You need to grow up man. Wenger answers questions asked, it is not his fault that journalists only ask him about players who are doing well. If you bothered checking on Kante’s progression since the age of 20 you will understand why Arsenal did not sign and he was bought by Leicester for a paltry 5 million pounds. He is 25 years by the way, and would you have given him a chance if he had been brought he at the age of 21 and ended up playing league 2 football? Just notice how you have not even given Sanogo a chance, a player with a progression path almost similar to that of Kante.
20 million Lol.
Coquelin free.
Flamini free.
Kallstrom free
Bielik 2 mill.
Elneny 7 mill.
So now Wenger is gonna toss 20 mill at a DM?
If he sells Wilshere for 20 mill then that’s another story.
Prefer he bought Granit X-Haka.
But more like 15 mill not 20.
Kante would be a great addition but will we buy him is another question…
Who will we get rid of and who will be benched? Coqulin or Elneny?
I do think we need to sell both Whilsre and Ramsey they are just taken up space and wages.
We need a real shake up come summer a big shake up!
@infumous25
I agree with you about Jack and Aaron. If we were to buy Kante, we would have 3 quality midfielders who could rotate without missing a beat…
we need 7 new players
2 new centre halves
a left back
a dm
a cm
a winger
a striker
My preference would be
Sokratis
van dijik
rodriguez
kante
xhaxa
isco
lukaku
our new lineup
cech
bellerin sokratis van dijik rodriguez
kante xhaxa
sanchez ozil isco
lukaku
bench:ospina monreal koscienly coquelin cazorla el neny welbeck
145 mill in transfer fees.
So where’s the money
coming from?
Wilshere 20 mill?
Ramsey 25 mill?
Chamberlain 15 mill?
Walcott 20 mill?
Giroud 15 mill?
Still 55 mill short.
There were talks of Ramsey being worth 50 million and Wheelchair 40 million ?
Walcott 35 million and as for the Ox we paid 15 million for him ?he has to be 35-40 million at least.
But you gone and overpriced Giroud 15 million ?..
Unless his heading to China ??
Hahaha ..Wheelchair hahahahahaha
Whoever set those prices is crazy….
For Ramsey 50 mil? Maybe…
but 35 for Theo and 40 for Ox?
Only maadman will pay that much.
@tetra Are you in FIFA mode again? How do you expect 7 new players to come in and play as a team straight away?
I find it a little odd how Wenger goes into such detail, retracing his career all the way back to when he was a ten year old?? He is good friends with someone close to Kante too, I remember him saying how he was in communication with someone very close to Kante. This is probably why that dude from the papers plucked Kante’s name out of nowhere, Xhaka all done everyone was saying and then this story came from nowhere. 20m price tag for a player people would put 40m buyout on, this would constitute a bargain, so I wouldn’t be surprised. Problem is, I was watching ESPNs Steve Nicol and he brought up what he thought, he says Arsenal don’t even need another DM. Now that they have two DMs and one or two others who can play there, they have other priorities. He says a top cb and a top striker is what Arsenal must do. He is right, but I want us to be as strong as possible in the engine room, so am hoping.
Buying 7 (what looks like first team players) in one window will NOT win you a title in that season. So no doubt if he did, the usual “McDonald” fans would be screaming about the money we spent and the lack of success (in one season)
Given wenger will never buy a large number of players in 1 transfer window. I would much sooner see a world class centre back and a 30+ Goal machine.
I’m more then happy with our midfield
Kante is worth getting to replace Flamini. Look how many games the Flam has played this year. Kante would be a vast improvement.
Flamini came free of charge. If anything Kante could replace any of Coquelin, Ramsey, Cazorla. But if Arsenal won’t sell any from our crowded midfield then I don’t see it happen. Or maybe, just maybe they will do a good thing for a change and prepare for unexpected and throwing numbers into the game.
Wenger will not buy Kante for £20 mil he will do as he always does and get a FREE-BE.
The man is never going to Change and with the board backing him all the way it’s not going to happen. 4th Place, Champions league last 16 and the odd FA Cup job done with very little money spent. The Board love him Big Dividends for them.
Kante Santi 🙂
Wenger doesn’t spend money or more than 5 million on DMs. He spends big money on Attackers and he does that rarely (Ozil, Alexis, Arshavin)
Maybe he will demand the price be £10 million plus £1 lol
£5mil… I assume that at the value it is today in football.
Gilberto Silva was £4.5 mil in 2002.
To put that in perspective…
Juninho who won the WC in the same year was sold for £6mil.
The previous CM partnership was Petit and Vieira.
You do know that Wenger didn’t care about how much we payed but he requested Vieira to be signed before he joined us?
Petit was the 2nd highest transfer we made in 1997.
After that period of time we lost Dein and since then we have been spineless in a lot of transfers, this is Deins fault though, anyone who can read can find out the dates, places etc and put the jigsaw together.
I don’t know why everyone is raving about Kante. Ok he’s had a good season with Leicester but he’s only made the impact he has, because he’s with Leicester. The manner in which they play and how they employ him is the only reason he looks a million dollars.
Arsenal have had those sort of midfield enforcers before such as Song, Frimpong to name a few, I’m sure there’s others but just can’t recall them at the mo and they haven’t had the same impact as Kante. The reason for this is that we play a entirely different style of football to Leicester.
Whilst we play football based on flair and finesse, Leicester’s is more direct, based on guile and attrition and being more pragmatic. With our style of play, Kante would be like a fish out of water and reduced to lumbering around our midfield whilst the rest of the team pass the ball to each other around him. Eventualy he’ll try to acclimatise to the Arsenal way but won’t have the deftness of touch and skill to really be of any use and he’ll end up just like Song or Frimpong i.e surplus to any real requirement.
Arsenal don’t need that type of player, Leicester and any team that just likes to press and harass on mass such as Stoke, Sunderland and any Sam Allardyce type of team would revel in his inclusion but, as for Arsenal, we’d be doing ourselves and Kante a grave injustice. However, if we ever go back to the good old bad days of George Graham and have the same type of team set up of those days gone by, then Kante would prove a revelation !
Have you thought that part of the reason why they have pressed so much is because they have had the enthusiasm to do so?
Wenger never looks happy when his players do not press and he has been overjoyed when asked about periods of play where Alexis has been pressing high up…
Maybe he would do brilliantly in the squad because he has the desire to close down asap and help win the ball back, that effort and desire to win the ball back alongside Coquelin who also has the desire to win the ball back could become a formidable partnership.
Vieira was a box to box player yet he gets mistaken as a holding player because he got back and defended as often as needed, same with Kante. Maybe Kante can grow on this season, maybe he wont. I do not know and you don’t either. If Wenger backs him then I would bet on him growing in the EPL over time.
I don’t need to know Kantes progression of play or career but what I do know is that he will have no positive impact on Arsenal and their forward progression.
One man charging around the midfield breaking up play wont all of a sudden change Arsenals fortunes. Juat throwing money at everyone that’s had a decent season or is a particular sweetheart of the footballing media isn’t always the way forward.
Arsenal’s main problem is that they’ve got good enough players but need a methodology in their team play that utilises all those players to the maximum in any given event.
That may involve forgoing the finesse and flourish football in certain games where the opposition just want a war of attrition.
Methodology is Arsenal’s problem, not a lack of quality players
“but with the latest revelation that he has a buyout clause of just 20 million ”
Same source as Suarez having £40mil release?
Hope Gazidis has learnt from the past and don’t make a £20mil +£1 offer for him >.<
Could this also be the reason we only offered £24mil for Xhaka?