Former footballer and pundit Stan Collymore has had his say on the way Arsenal are conducting their transfer business this summer and he has not held back in his opinion.
Now, Collymore does not carry much credibility because of his antics in his personal life and while I do not personally agree with a lot of what he says his comments are good for a debate.
Writing in the Sunday people, the former England and Aston Villa forward called out Arsenal for the £40 Million bid for Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha
“I’m not sure what Arsenal are playing at, offering £40m for Wilfried Zaha,” Collymore wrote.
“Not when they know he’s valued at double that by Crystal Palace, who sold promising, but inexperienced, full-back Aaron Wan-Bissaka to Manchester United for more than that.
“It smacks of Arsene Wenger’s days at the club, when he was on a crusade for financial prudence in football and didn’t want to fuel a transfer market fire already burning out of control.
“I thought they had moved beyond that mentality and had brought their transfer policy into the 21st century, but clearly not.
“Unai Emery obviously likes Zaha, and that’s easy to understand because he’s fast, strong and aggressive and only 26.
“As that’s the case, pay the going rate and stop embarrassing yourselves with bids that won’t succeed and just make you look foolish.”
He further goes on to compare our transfer dealings to that of Tottenham but I will not bore you with that part.
So, does he have a point? Are we embarrassing ourselves?
Personally, I do not think we are, I do feel that we are acting like amateurs and that all we have achieved is to annoy the hell out of Palace but Arsenal are not the first and will not be the last club to put in a lowball figure.
Also, Palace are having a laugh valuing Zaha at £80 Million, he is not worth that and they are in cuckoo land if they think a club will pay that.
But of course, Collymore will not call out Palace, it is far more lucrative in terms of getting peoples attention to have a go at Arsenal.
Anyway, that is my opinion. Do you think Collymore is right? Has Arsenal embarrassed themselves?
Not interested in anything that low life woman beater has to say
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Well said Sue
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didnt city pay £60million for marhrez a player with very similar stats as Zaha so explain why we have to accept paying a 1/3 more for a similar player??
Its call transfer negotiations for a reason you need to start somewhere an only fools offer to pay what a seller demands that’s not negotiating that’s paying the asking price!!
Mahrez was mvp un one season and is too much better than zaha…zahas value is 40mm, not More…if we have 60mm then go for pepe who is better and younger…
If Pepe dont want to come, then go for frasier and a proper defender
Let s forget the guy s personnal life. People in charge are embarrassing our club right now. Let s don t try to hide the sun with our hand. The truth is the truth !!
zaha is overrated, what has he achieved to worth 80m??
He helped Palace won treble and his country won world cup two times in a row while being a top scorer and MVP. Recently he is nominated for Balon d’Or award.
The beauty of sarcasm.
I wonder how we sold Bannacer to assemble these set of midfielders
If palace value zaha at 80m an Hazard just got sign at 86m , what justification is there
Try understanding that Hazard only had one year left on his contract. Meanwhile Zaha had recently signed a long term contract.
He is a woman beater.
Can’t Stand him
Could care less what he says
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Just some irrelevant info 2 games now in row that Yacine Brahimi had been an unused on the bench for Algeria in the Afcon Cup.
Are u expecting Brahimi to start ahead of Mahrez who’s the captain? The fact that he doesn’t start doesn’t mean he ain’t good.
Moreover they play in the same position. So if u were the coach who will u choose?
I wouldn’t even Pay 40 million for Zaha!
Not proven enough, and stats lack end product.
Rather re-acquire Sanchez or get Vasquez
Kids only need to play one half decent season, and they’re proclaimed the new best thing! Mahrez is was better than Zaha
His name begins with C for a reason and he doesn’t deserve to be heard by anyone and should certainly never be mentioned on any self respecting Arsenal blog. He’s a lowlife piece of dog?.
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Madrid is being reported to open a bid of €80m do Pogba. Is that disrespectful and will be fools if they do cone with the said amount?. Some posters and pundits alike need to understand that negotiating deals ain’t straight forward as we read in papers.
Well said boss!
He is wrong,in France when a British club comes for one of our players we are rubbing our hands all the way to the bank, latest example spurs paid 60M for Ndombele from Lyon who bought him for 7M a year earlier,sorry to say British players are over valued,look at man utd 50M for a 21 years defender who didn’t play a full season for palace and had a crap under 21 tournament scoring an own goal, his head was turned before signing imaging when he will have to play at old Trafford?there are worse examples….why no clubs have agreed to pay the 25M for Tierney,well he plays in Scotland,he is young and might not fullfil his potential and make the step up to the pl,look at zaha at manure ok he was younger but we need ready players we can’t afford to wait 3 or 4 years for Tierney to come good!
Paint it how ever you like palace will never even see that as something to negotiate about not after selling Aaron Wan-Bissaka way more to me arsenal wanted to act like they wanted the player in reality it’s just to entice the fans knowing that merchandise is on sale and season ticket renewal around too
Just because a DAMAGED man chose to beat a woman does not mean his views on football, the career he chose and on Arsenal, are incorrect. The man is correct about Arsenals embarrassing transfer policy and sick in the head to have beaten a woman. NASTY PEOPLE CAN ALSO SPEAK SENSE. To equate the fact that he beat a woman with him being unable to make a pertinent comment on Arsenal is plain unthinking. Conversely, lovely people can and often do speak nonsense.
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The fact that he beat a woman indicates that something is wrong in his head, like believing lies and craps media feed us on daily basis. Do you suggest we start the negotiation by offering them 100m, or pay the full asking price at 80m? That is very dumb, of course we start by lowballing them, especially that there are no other suitors and more than 30 days until the window closed.
Trust me the guy is not one of the ITK the fact that he comes up with 40M as arsenal budget tells me that like everybody else he gets his infos from the papers and the net and not from clubs insiders so I would not take notice of what he says or thinks, speaking of his private life he did what he did but what worries me is the kind of people who would employ him knowing his past, no moral compass!!
I wonder, if we talk about British talent….why has Hudson odoi not signed a new contract? Is it alone that he just wants to go to Munich or is he he just wants to leave for first team footballs? hudson odoi And nelson together at arsenal could be interesting. As unlikely it is, why is a 50m offer for Hudson not worth a go? If Munich are only offer 30m Chelsea might just be tempted.
Though money is not an issue for them.
Cheap jibes from pundits are 10 a penny.
They’re only nicking a living from firms who are mug enough to pay em.
Ignore em and they will disappear up their own Arsenal.
I wasn’t a pundit but hearing about that bid from arsenal i started laughing and asked myself what are this people smoking at the Emirates
Arsenal have a history of faffing around with tranfer fees. Suarez, £40,000,001, probably sealed our fate as a going nowhere team. This window it seems we are truely winning the world faffing award. What hurts is the Spuds have just spent £60 million on a quality player, no quibble. Even West Ham have woken from their slumber and are alive and kicking. Chelsea are doing better than us and the are ‘banned’ Let’s not kid ourselves something is severly ‘wrong’ at the Emirates.
Satan Keowke out.
Suarez had a release clause if 40M,so if a bid higher than 40M no matter how much higher Liverpool were obliged to inform the player of the bid and allow him to speak with the club in question, knowing full well that Suarez wanted to come to arsenal that was meant to get things started,in that case Liverpool were in breach of regulations and arsenal could have taken them to an arbitration court and would have a case!
Yes they spent 60M on a player that Lyon bought for 7M a year earlier, don’t you think it’s crazy, would you buy a car for 10 times the price the bloke bought it a year earlier?
I absolutely disagree with Collymore.
Arsenal aren’t embarrassing themselves, they’re fooling gullible fans into buying merch. Simple fact. Transfer window has been used to sell merch for a while now.
Surely we would/should do our own market assessment to determine what we think a player is worth, and if we decide that we like a player, then make an offer based on our assessment?
Transfermarkt rates Zaha at 45 Euros, so our offer isn’t embarrassing, it is spot on. Palace can say yes or no, that is their problem not ours.
Furthermore, if the 45m budget is true, then we have 40m left after the Martinelli purchase, so 40m would then be all we have left, which is why there is some talk of other players going to Palace to “sweeten” the deal. Furthermore, Zaha seems to want to leave, and no other clubs are showing an interest. This gives us a considerable advantage in the negotiation, as such we are totally justified in offering less than Palaces grossly inflated rate.
To me, paying 80m would be a lot more embarrassing than our 40m offer. However, the fact that the news is full of winger interest is my main concern, we have much bigger fish to fry than that.
Defense, defense, defense!
DDK3, the voice of reason and common-sense.
Stan Collymore has never had a good word to say about Arsenal; probably due to him receiving a few hidings from good Arsenal teams over the years. The scars are there for all to see.