Whichever way you look at, the acquisition of Petr Cech is a great statement of intent from Arsenal. The Czech Republic goalkeeper has joined the club in a deal worth about £10 million deal from Chelsea.
The arrival of the venerable Cech is the perfect start to the transfer window for the Gunners. The club is looking to get back to title-winning ways under their longest serving manager. The icing on the cake is the one up that Wenger could score over his long standing rival Jose Mourinho.
For many long years, Arsenal fans had to settle for second best in such an important position. Cech is one of the best in his position and will be a confident figure between the sticks. He has the best saves-to-shots ratio percentage in the Premier League in the last three seasons – a whopping 78%.
Cech played more than 400 games in 11 seasons at Stamford Bridge and won 13 trophies with Chelsea – including one Champions League and four Premier League titles. These numbers alone are enough to emphasize the influence Cech brings to the squad.
The arrival of Cech has already boosted the squad. Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey and Wojciech Szczesny were quick to express happiness to have their nemesis from Chelsea joining them. His availability for the pre-season is another master stroke from Wenger. This gives a perfect platform for him to integrate into the squad.
Wenger is known to be choosy when it is time to loosen the purse strings. But, over the last two summers the arrivals of Alexis Sanchez for £35 million and Mesut Ozil for £42 million would have changed that perception. The financial means to spend big was never a question; it is just a matter of intent.
But, supporters should be warned from being over confident of Cech’s arrival. In no certain terms, his capture alone will propel Arsenal to EPL title. Just to make matters clear, Arsenal were 12 points off the steam from winners Chelsea. There are improvements to be made at other positions in the squad.
Wenger has every reason to believe that the arrival of Cech will complete Arsenal’s jigsaw. And supporters have every reason to believe that this is the first of many activities this transfer window. As the team builds to a new dawn, this could end many seasons of hurt for the Gunners. Cech could just be the tonic that the club needs!
Sridhar
“I didn’t miss much”. I don’t know how to feel about that, hahahahahahaha.
gues u missed yourself either bcoz the feeling was sweet. but he is a gunner now
Well he unfortunately has a point…
And the clean up has begun..
Diaby – goodbye and good luck, you deserved more, but wasn’t to be.
Poldi – Really you are just going to be sold for 1.5m what a shame for a player like you, frankly I expected at least 5mm from his sale
Flamini – time to move on buddy, you dont really cut it at this level.
Rosicky – It is better for you to go get some 1st team ball some where else… great player, too many injuries and too little playing time
Arteta – Time to move and play a couple of seasons at a less ambitious team.. Sociedad, Everton are more his level of team at age 33
Ospina – so sorry to see you go, you are so much better than Scez. You deserve to be number 1 somewhere else.
That’s 6 players around 10-15 million in sales and over 20 million in salary savings. 400K per week.
This way we can pay 100K to Cech give another 30-40k per week to Theo and still have enough salary savings left for two top players.
Cleaning up is never Wenger’s strong suite but i hope he does it this summer.
What the hell did Theo do to earn an extra 40k? That’s the difference between bringing in a decent player on 60k or offering a quality player 100k. Theo can stay where he is wage-wise until he performs with some consistency to earn such wages.
Why rosicky to leave??I think he still has a part to play as a sub. He brings an aggressive Stle of play when he comes on.very useful player to have on the bench.I say keep rosicky we need him
Rosicky is very unhappy, he wants to play more. I think he is right and we should honor it.
@Charlie – I was being realistic that he will get a bump in his salary. Maybe he wont then we will have 40k more. Nevertheless, if Arsene cleans house, we will have plenty of money to pay salaries to top players.
Still don’t like the precedent of just chucking money at current players. A pay rise should be a reward for input….how can you justify an increase in wages for Theo? Almost a whole year out but he scores a hattrick last day of the season?
The extension is reward enough, the idea of having Theo on 120k+ blows my mind. FAR more deserving players in our team, and out playing in Europe.
We need two more top players in DM and striker position. I’m sure Wenger promised cech of a couple of top signings.Wenger and the board must provide us with two more decent players,we deserve that after all these years of heartbreak.I’m not a big fan of carvalho but would take him now.Liverpool have made 6 signings already.they are going crazy again. Very stupid thing to do bringing in 7 or 8 players at once. I’m happy we don’t need to do that but we need two more signings
If theres one thing you learn during the summer transfer window, it is the fact that media always think they have inside information when they spread sheer poo in the papers/websites.
All it takes is one word in quotation and there they can make an article about it 80% of rumours are like this. The papers help each others out as well by mentioning according to (INSERT NAME OF PAPER).
Don’t worry Admin or poster of the above article this isn’t aimed at you.
A lot of the time they do have the info, but there’s certain publications that print based solely on guesswork. Nevertheless some journos have affiliations with particular clubs and get fed genuine goings on, David Ornstein, Jeremy Wilson, John Cross all talk based on insider info about Arsenal.
The transfer market is fluid however, rarely is a club set in stone in who they recruit so it’s guesswork to a degree. All in all this window is bubbling under nicely and is yet to burst into action with it’s first proper signing from one big club to another. When an Isco, Ibra, Di Maria, Lewy, Reus make a move the market will finally be triggered and we’ll see some movement. I expect a considerable signing to be made in the next fortnight.
there’s this particular website that keeps saying we have signed Vidal …….when all others are squashing the rumour! ….Haha i Just don’t understand any of it
We might have already signed Vidal.who knows,we might be in for a surprise!!!!
Very difficult to rate our team:
’12 points behind chelsea is a lot’. But we had major injuries with Ozil, Koscielny, Giroud, Ox, Welbeck, Debuchy, Ramsey and Wilshere all out for large parts of the season. We even had to play our 3rd choice goalkeeper in a few games – how many teams had to do that? Not to mention our season was pretty much split into two halves. We threw it all away in the first half but we’re exceptional after the New Year. The team that started the season and threw it away aren’t the same team that finished it so strongly.
‘Our defence was awful last season’. But we missed Koscielny and had no decent backup. We had to experiment with Monreal, Debuchy and the unproven Chambers as CB’s. Plus the injury to Debuchy meant having to play inexperienced teenagers pretty much all season in the RB position – Bellerin and Chambers. Not to mention for half the season we didn’t have Coquelin and we’re playing Flamini instead. Our defence was hugely improved with Coquelin in and Koscielny back. And we only conceded 4 more goals that Chelsea the entire season, with their ‘rock solid’ defence and ‘world class’ goalkeeper and defensive midfielder. Would we have conceded even fewer than Chelsea if we had Coquelin and Koscielny the whole season?
‘We lack a world class attack.’ But we only scored 2 less goals than Chelsea all season, despite missing Giroud, our main striker, for a couple of months in the autumn. Plus we also missed key attacking players like Özil and Walcott for long periods of the season too. Chelsea didn’t have many injury issues. Costa missed a few games but not as many as Giroud. So if we kept our attacking players fit, would we have scored more than Chelsea? Maybe, but keep in mind we scored 12 fewer than Man City, we wouldn’t have scored as many as them even if we had everyone fit. But we conceded fewer than Man City too.
Like I said, very difficult to judge how good our current team is. Plus it’s not just about how many you score or concede, it’s also about when and which team you score/concede against. I could care less about conceding if we still win 2-1. Personally I think Cech will get us 5 points a season. 12-15 if he was replacing an average goalkeeper, but he’s not, he’s replacing a very good goalkeeper as it is.
Great comment.agreed 100%
Yet we finished 12 points off Chelsea. Injuries are nothing new at Arsenal. I agree that we have a good team if they all stay fit most of the season. But, if you look at quality of players in every position then you see that at Striker our competitors have better quality. And at DM without Coq, we have no one to cover. In every other position, I think we have ample quality and ample cover.
vidal reminds me of veira tussling keane in the middle of the park
“Arsenal were 12 points off the steam from winners Chelsea.”
Yes and we aknowledge how poor our start to the season was, not having enough cover in def and Szcz not being at his best…
Since then we have Gabriel which is a big difference, he has had to settle but we should not expect the same issues at the beginning of next season unless we sell CBs.
The def was a big reason why we didn’t win more and we wouldn’t be so far behind, the 12 points only happened due to the bad def start.
Most of the people on these site on these site always want every comment to be positive and praise wenger and the club and if one tries not to they are crucified..Well guess what people, the world is two-sided, there is always a female and a male part of something which shows completeness and thats nature guys…whats wrong with hafiz saying we will not win the pl without 3 top additions or anyone else saying that we need certain players should be benched if they dont perform to standard??…
The fact that majority of the fans are one sided only shows that the club isn’t complete because true fans except positive criticism which in turn enables the club to grow in the right direction…After all players or managers come and go but fans remain there until death
If we were to buy only one world class player for the rest of the window, what would you prefer?
An experienced DM or an experienced striker? Like Vidal vs Cavani or whomever you want
Striker thumbs up, DM thumbs down.
Lets see what the fans really want.
I would go for Vidal, we are OK in the striker role.there still could be a huge upgrade but we need someone like Vidal the most.we can give Theo good chance to play upfront. Giroud is there and we still have a player called welbeck who many don’t even count on him anymore.give the dude a break.he had an OK first season,he will come good in the coming season.I actually would liklike Vidal and rues
I actually agree with you, I think Vidal’s energy, his toughness, and his never say die attitude would create a positive atmosphere in the team. Add to that the fact that he is great pals with Alexis and will probably make him happier and play better as well, and he looks a no brainer to me.
On the other side, i can not see any striker that we actually can buy in this window make that bug of a difference in the team.
DM all day long…
Simple argument: Giroud plays crap or gets injured and Theo/Alexis/Welbz fill in. Whereas Coquelin plays crap or gets injured and it’s Arteta/Flamini/maybe Jack deep, which are all a much greater drop off in quality.
I pray we don’t regret selling ospina
Yea I think Cech can fill David ‘the Legend’ Ospina’s gloves well enough..
Cech alone cant win the league for us but his effect on the team will be huge.
ospina is still arsenal player
Ofcourse a tree cannot make a forest on it’s self but can help make one if it stood well. Let’s hope Petr Cech will stand well at Arsenal for us become a forest in the Premeir League and the Ucl. I trust the Boss will not make the mistake to throw away his top quality Ospina because people have said so. He has for security reason keep Ospina and Szczesny at Arsenal and ration Arsenal games to them to make them match fit for Arsenal and their countries. I think the release of Diaby has freed up a space for Cech to occupy and Podolski should also soon free up another space for my favoured possible LB Ghoulam Faouzi from Napoli to pick up. That’s leave us looking for another space to free up for a top quality right winger to come-in. And Arsenal should be done in this summer window. The Boss should forget about signing a DM save he finds an Arsenal quality. The Scorerless Calvaho may however be considered if the Boss insist on signings one. But I want him to convert Gibbs to DM if possible and keeps his money.
I hope Ooospina stays. It would be great to get a world class striker and a DM, but even without these two additions, if we can have most of our current players fit for most of the seasons, i think we can still perform well if not better just as we did in the 2nd half of last season. Just do not take any team lightly just as we did with Monaco in the first leg of the CL, we should have a good enough team to win even win the CL.
i hope sky sports are wrong cause they are reporting vidal has signed 5yr deal with real madrid
they just need to sort fee, would love this nutcase at arsenal
i am on Sky sports and dont see anything like that
go on the transfer centre on sky sports then
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