So why WAS Mustafi linked with summer transfer from Arsenal?

Even though there is a good chance that the Arsenal starting line-up for the first Europa League group game tonight, against the German side FC Cologne, will see the return of our young centre back Rob Holding, it could well also include Shkodran Mustafi with Laurent Koscielny and Nacho Monreal likely to be rested ahead of the Premier League trip to face Chelsea early on Sunday.

Arsenal fans will be hoping to see Mustafi perform as he did against Bournemouth last weekend, which saw the German play in the committed and aggressive style of defending that caused Arsene Wenger to make him the most expensive defender in the club’s history in last summer’s transfer window.

Mustafi had an up and down debut season as a Gunner but he showed signs of being a good addition so it was a surprise to most of us when this the football media this summer was full of Arsenal transfer rumours linking him with a move away from north London after just one year.

Metro were reporting in the final days of the window that he was set to sign for Inter Milan and Wenger had suggested that he might go although not that he was up for sale as such. There were reports that the deal fell through because the Italian’s wanted him on loan or that Arsenal’s hunt for a replacement did not bear fruit, but it was all a bit odd to say the least.

Did Wenger really not rate the World Cup winning German? Or was it Mustafi that was not happy at Arsenal as some reports suggested? The boss has now stated that his defender did not ask to leave, reports the Evening Standard.

He said, “He wanted to stay.

“Look at him today.”

Ivan Gazidis also told a fans meeting that the club never intended to cash in so why all the rumours? Simply by talking about it the Arsenal chiefs have revealed that the transfer might have happened, so has anyone got any idea what was going on with Arsenal and Mustafi this summer? And have we avoided a huge mistake by not selling him?

Bob.

31 Comments

  1. I never believed the rumor about Mustafa wanting out, it was just the media drivel methinks. The best quote from our Great Supreme Leader says,”I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art.” Optimism doesn’t just make us feel happier. It also makes us more confident. Optimism helps us believe in ourselves and our ability to bring about a solution. Le Prof is still the right man to lead our club to greatness and we must be careful what we wish for as there are not so many elite managers like him. Our Great Supreme Leader is a person to divulge the secret to winning, to meeting and exceeding goals, to feeling fulfilled and accomplished, and he’ll usually say that optimism is key.
    **ADMIN edited this comment as I am bored of the repetition. Please make your comments shorter and original please**

    So support our team and the manager.

    ARSENE KNOWS BEST.

      1. outright banning him from the site would be better. he just repeat the same bullshit everytime. isnt this called spamming the comment section which is prohibited in most sites.

        perhaps he has administer privilege…

        1. Oi! You would not believe how many of his I delete. Luckily YOU don’t have to read all of them!
          Also look above to what I wrote on his ridiculously long repetitive comment…..

    1. you sir, are in the wrong circle and would be better positioned among the followers of kim jung un, while the reality is wenger’s record, particularly of late is by no means beyond criticism. id prefer a truthful and honest picture to depict the consensus among our fans in the current modern period under wenger – rather we be straight-up than a tapestry presenting something of a “bogus reality”.

    2. Supreme Leader is what they call the heads of Terrorist Organizations , Supreme Leader is what they call the Head of an Outlaw Motorcycle Club the 1%er’s . Are you a terrorist or a head of a biker club JembutArsene, why do you use this lingo . If anybody’s the Supreme Leader off AFC it’s Stan and Josh Kroenke . Not that deluded fool Arsene Wenger. I think Kroenke is the root off all the problems at AFC but Wenger is just as much to blame because he is complies with the Kroenke’s. If he was to come out and say I’m trying to do what the fans want but my hands are tied because the owner is not making the funds available to me all the respect I have lost for him would flood back . Instead he just sits back idley and says nothing while Kroenke bleeds this club and its fans dry happy collecting his £10.5 million pounds a year . Shame really a real shame I used to love this man he bought me the best years off my life in football .

  2. Where is Chambers by the way?? He is with us right? Why don’t give him a chance at Europa? Nobody here seems to mention him!! Is he injured?

  3. It was a strange one with Mustafi, pretty much came out of nowhere. Perhaps it was just rumours, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had wanted out, considering how many others we have at the club that don’t want to play for Wenger anymore. Hopefully Mustafi can regain the form he showed early on last season.

    1. What made it particularly strange IMO was that the club didn’t come out and contradict the rumors the way they did with Sanchez and Ox add to that the sale of Gabriel and our supposed switch to 3 at the back and you have a real mystery.

    2. Have faith, sister. Eventually Sanchez, Ooooozill, and other will renew their contracts and Mustafawill be happy to see us as a big one happy family followed by Next May announcement of Our Great Supreme Leader Extention to 2030.

      VIVE LE PROF.

      1. Alexis will not sign now. Do you know how much money Arsenal have saved by not treating Alexis fairly, by not giving him everything he’s worth. He’s on what average players can reach these days, yet he’s in that smallest of groups, way up the ladder. Arsenal saved a fortune by not letting Alexis’s pay coincide with the market, the market and performances dictate the pay, but not at Arsenal, because Arsene does. We have saved more on Alexis than we have paid out to him, this is going on for years, and now even in his last one. Why the heck would he want to sign for us ..Lukaku Lacazette Gilfi Salah are all on more than him, in their first season.

        1. Yes, and Neymar is 200 million. Not sure what your point is. Don’t understand what “we didn’t pay Alexis what he’s worth” means. I am absolutely convinced that we have treated and paid him fair otherwise he would be throwing more than a tantrum. We paid him the biggest salary in the squad when we bought him. No one had 150k at Arsenal except Ozil. Yes, we did the mistake to pay underperformers big wages but it looks like at least we learn from them mistakes. But that just shows we pay too much and not less.

    3. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had wanted out, considering how many others we have at the club that don’t want to play for Wenger anymore.” You will always make it about Wenger because it sooth your agendas. It is not about a club who is constantly under attack from the media, pundits ex players and her fans. It is not about how the players were made to play under toxic atmosphere due to fans agitation and protest. It is not how the players were incessantly attack my ex players and fans on social media. Suddenly every players that joined the club because of Wenger will suddenly want to leave because of him. How logical that is. We can even sensed the hostilities between the said players and the coach in training pics made available by the club. I bet if you are a player you will want out of same club. The same amount of abuse directed towards the coach should be directed towards some of us. We blame every body but ourselves. We are suffering from the same Wenger’s delusion if we think we don’t have a hand in our problems.

      1. How logical is that?? It is like an ex-wife, you wanted to marry her because of her and then you wanted to divorce her because of her. 🙂

      2. @Mobella

        Obviously Kroenke is to blame as well, but I only mentioned Wenger’s name, because he’s the one that is mostly responsible for the mess we’re in. Kroenke, and Wenger both have a huge impact off the pitch, but Kroenke as 0% direct impact on the pitch, whereas as Wenger has 100% Wenger direct impact on the pitch. I hope that clears things up for you, as I do not have agenda, other than what is in Arsenal’s best interests. I also have to say that you’re an absolute disgrace of a fan for blaming other fans for our problems! Shame on you! Ask yourself one very simple question…why is it that the majority of the fan base is unhappy?

  4. To be fair 50 players were “linked”
    with Arsenal yet only 2 arrived
    18 Arsenal Players were “linked”
    with moves away including
    Ospina Szczesny Jenkinson Debuchy Bellerin Monreal Gibbs Mustafi Holding
    Gabriel Chambers Wilshere Chamberlain Sanchez Ozil Walcott Giroud Perez
    Of the 18 only four were sold Szczesny Gabriel Gibbs Chamberlain
    and 2 went on loan Perez and Jenkinson.
    More should have gone because now Wenger is
    faced with a massive clear out next summer up to 12
    going and needing to be replaced including
    Mertesacker (retiring) Cazorla 32 and injured
    Monreal 32 Jenkinson Debuchy 34 Wilshere injury prone
    Cech (35) Sanchez 29 Giroud 32 Perez 29.
    May be Ozil 30 Walcott 30 also.

    1. This might be Wenger’s last season Davindz. The reason he didn’t put a one season contract down could be because there’d be allot of talk about players not knowing who the next manager is and pundits be talking about candidates and what changes those candidates are gonna make.

      1. The club needs a change and a fresh approach to coaching. That cant happen with AW.
        The massive massive problem we face is our incompetent board. Another reason for giving Arsene 2 years is it gives our useless board a longer time to not have to come up with a succession plan.
        For a club full of money grubbers, falling out of the CL is one thing. But losing over 150 mil (Alexis, Ozil) through poor contract management is outrageous. How Kroenke could accept this is beyond me.

  5. I guess Wenger realized his mistake. Mustafi was kind of a panic buy in order to shut the fans about buying a defender.
    Mustafi is a liability: he’s slow, isn’t good at marking his attackers, physically not strong, makes bad mistakes… Everytime he has the ball and is attacked, or needs to clear the ball with a header, I have mini-heart attack.
    Wenger might have understood that and wanted to get back the amount invested in Mustafi.

    1. Is it Wenger realized or Wenger never wanted in the 1st place?

      Elneny had a bid accepted and we all read how Wenger spoke to Xhaka 6 months before we signed Elneny and we ended up signing Xhaka 6 months after Elneny anyway…

      Perez was scouted but we declined to bid on him until last day, Wenger wanted Lacazette but we ended up with a player Wenger didn’t rate, he scored and got the fans curious but Wenger didn’t trust him.

      Maybe Mustafi was one of these, maybe Wenger wanted someone else and we ended up with Mustafi as a panic buy because we missed Wengers main CB target. Like how Wenger wanted Xhaka but had to wait and we ended up with Elneny in the meantime.

      Difference this year was Wenger was told we had to sell players before signing any more, instead of buying then sell… Sell Mustafi and put funds towards a CB Wenger wanted but as that failed we didn’t sell Mustafi.

      Wengers twisted sense of honour means he will not cause drama and rage about the inner workings of AFC to the media, he is a yes man for Silent Stan.

      1. Bidding for Mbappe didn’t matter selling players first? Or was it his usual smoke screen to fool the fans into believing this time we are really into it, only to find ourselves renewing our season tickets and then mr. Liar stops any business going on, except selling of course, money-in is better than money-out

    2. Not really sure Mustafi is that bad. I recall 11 games in a row where we haven’t lost. Once he got injured we were out of the title race. Yes, probably would happened anyway but is just that it coincided with his injury.

  6. while we are arguing among us AW is earning 25K today and every day of the year and has been for decades, who would you lie to for that kind of money? so if your expecting the dirty laundry to come out no chance, we will never know what happens at arsenal because everyone has signed the secrecy clause in their contract,
    just thought i throw that out there

    if reports are right we are changing too many players for today’s game that’s not taking the competition seriously and isn’t it AW who always say don’t change the team with too many new players specially every window?

    good luck tonight boys hope you do well specially the youth 🙂 and bring back some pride like almost all EPL teams did this week apart from Liverpool which was expected because they have OX :)))

  7. Howedes was shopped around in England, his agent came to Arsenal because he heard that Mustafi and Inter Milan were both keen on joining up. There is something to this story as agents will speak amongst themselves. Then there was our VVD liks, before the Mustafi story. So Mustafi might not have been happy how only a season later we are going for yet another CB, to add to himself Koscielny Holding Mertesacker, don’t forget Bielik Chambers. Maybe he thinks too much competition is unwise, as you need settled back-lines like Ferdinand told of.

    Another reason could be, and this is true allot of the time even though it’s weak and silly. The choice is between the capital of England v the capital of Italy, Milan v London. Milan is the fashion capital of the world, they say Paris but it’s Milan, v England it’s Milan for sure. Girlfriends and wives are notorious for helping make this decision, if Mustafi’s GF is the one calling the shots, and he is one of those weak willed and loves being dominated by her, maybe she reminds him of his mother. That could be why this cropped up unexpectedly.

  8. Its more than likely kroenke needed to top up the arsenal bank account to justify to the backerss of his rams stadium that his credit is good should he need more money.
    Incidentally, talking of rams stadium, i dropped by there on recent usa trip and it is frecking huge ! Not just one stadium but like a whole town…there is to be malls and entertainment venues as well as a theme park. The bad weather has put back the finish date back by a year resulting in huge financial oncosts. already nfl have withdrawn from hosting a superbowl there apparently for fears of it not being open in time.
    Rumours also abound that stan is panicking because it may become detrimental to his hopes of staging any future world cup or olympic games there due to it not being finished on time

  9. Mustafi is a bang average centre back who has neither the physical stature ,speed and composure required to be a success in the Premier league. He is yet another example of the incompetence displayed by AW and his recruitment team.In my opinion Gabriel for all his faults is better than Mustafi and for £10m Valencia have made a sound acquisition for a player who like Perez has been treated very shabbily by the Arsenal Manager. Arsenal will find it difficult to sell Mustafi who at £35m is grossly overpriced.Spurs have recently recruited a real gem in Sanches from Ajax who is exactly what we need. Yet another opportunity missed by the incompetent regime at Arsenal

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