If this is true then it seems that Real Madrid don’t want to sell Karim Benzema to Arsenal, and there are no other top strikers anywhere else that are on the market. It seems clear that there is no-one available that Wenger thinks will be better than the strikers we already have, or that will want (or be allowed) to come to Arsenal.
Talking to the media in the pre-match conference, Wenger told the Evening Standard: “There’s a shortage [of top class strikers] in the world,”
“It confirms that there’s a difference between financial power nowadays and the availability of top-class players.
“It is simple. For any deal, when you want to buy something you go to see the owner and if he doesn’t want to sell, he doesn’t want to sell. You cannot buy. In our job it is exactly like that. When the players are not free you cannot buy them because it’s the club who decides, the person who owns the contract who decides. In Europe you have maybe 15 clubs with a huge financial resource.
“It is hard, believe me, to get a deal over the line. It’s difficult as well if you’re not completely inside the deal, to know what happens. Did Pedro not want to go? Did Manchester United not want to spend more? I don’t know.”
“It was a surprise to me because I thought he was landing at Manchester but he finally landed in London. The story was out for such a long time that I thought he was going to go to Manchester, but then suddenly in 24 hours [he joined Chelsea]. We’ve seen that before on the transfer market. I don’t know what happened exactly.
“I’m always more focused on developing the team, the players we have and getting everyone on board that we have at the club. We want to develop players as well rather than overthinking whether to buy.
“I’m not against buying when it is a plus for your team. If it’s just to buy a player at the level of the players that you have to make people happy, I’m not ready for that. If it’s somebody who brings something that you don’t already have in the squad, then of course you want to do that.”
I can certainly see hy he would prefer to develop from within, especially when you think of how many super-promising players we have going out on loan this season. What on Earth will we do if they all perform brilliantly at their loan clubs. Surely we won’t be able to keep all of them?
And I wonder if he’s talking about Pedro because Arsenal were also in the running for the Barcelona winger. Surely he could have improved our side,especially if Walcott is now going to be a permanent centre-forward…..