by Sir Hardly Anyone
Since we had our little technical break the news of Arsenal’s transfers has become even more extraordinary than it was before. Here, without any ado, agitation, fuss, difficulty, concern or delay, are the veritable details of the players recently touted as being most certainly and without fear of contradiction on their way to Arsenal.
1: Pontus Dahlberg
Do we need another goalkeeper? Probably not as we already have a netfull of them. But Pontus Dahlberg has “become one of the keenly watched prospects in European football with the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham keen to sign the 18-year-old goalkeeper”, according to reports from FotbollDirekt.
He is currently the first choice goalkeeper for Swedish club IFK Goteborg according to those talking up the keeper, but has only played eight times thus far for the club, according to Wiki.
2: Robert Lewandowski
Robert is unhappy at Bayern Munich, amid interest from Arsenal and Chelsea according to the Daily Canon. He’s 28, he’s Polish he plays as a striker for Bayern Munich, and captains the Poland national team. Amazingly he has scored 77 goals in 96 league games. Including 30 in 33 this past season. Now that is scoring.
Can you imagine him leaving?
3: Lemar not coming our way
Barcelona are reportedly planning to hijack Arsenal’s bid for Monaco star Thomas Lemar (Daily Express).
4: Dalbert Henrique
Nice’s 23-year-old left back Dalbert has been a target of Inter for several weeks, but now there is competition for Arsenal have been put on red alert or whatever it is they are doing at the moment, and will put in a BIG OFFER. He played 33 times for Nice last season.
5: Pedro Neto
The Mirror says, Arsenal are “set to” “battle it out” with Barcelona for Portuguese “wonderkid” Pedro Neto — touted as a future superstar by Jose Mourinho who has been watching the player closely from his hotel window.
The player has a £17.5m release clause in his contract and his club will not even consider discussing a deal unless it is met. Barca are reportedly ready to activate the clause.
Now according to the Portuguese “media outlet” A Bola (which sounds more like a disease than a news source to me but we’ll let that pass) Arsenal have already had a £13 million bid for the “highly-rated starlet” rejected by Braga for whom he plays on the left wing, can play on the right wing, and is a mere 17 years old.
6: Riyad Mahrez
The Metro tells us that Leicester have been trying to flog Mahrez to Barcelona, on the grounds that any team backed by blockaded Qatar will tend to buy anyone that moves and pay over the odds. But they have given up on that one and so will sell to Arsenal after all.
‘I think it would be the right time for me to leave, I have experienced everything at this football club,’ is just one of the quotes Mr Mahrez is supposed to have offered the press. Chelsea and Liverpool are also interested but that is according to R E Ports, that most unreliable of sources.
Some journalists are quoting a price as high as £80m for the man who was PFA Player of the Year just a year ago. In that season he played 37 league games and scored 17. In the season just ended it was 36 games but only six in the net so his value is going down fast.
7: Gaëtan Laborde
Both Liverpool and Arsenal are “keen on” Laborde according to the Star who appear to be quoting Foot Mercato and Le Parisien.
He’s a 23 year old centre forward, and Liverpool are also hovering around, or is that hoovering – it’s hard to say. Laborde plays for Bordeaux, having had loan spells with Red Star, Brest and Clermont, and having also graduated through the France teams from under 17 to under 20
8: Aguero for Alexis
Manchester City have made Alexis their prime target according to most of the Commentariat, but given Arsenal’s abject refusal to lie down and be walked over, in the manner that all the reporters claim is their normal state at this time of year, it might not happen.
According to the club of the UAE’s second biggest airline, Arsenal are being very difficult about things this time. So they have offered a swap deal. At least that is what he Mirror has said – and virtually everyone else is copying the story.
And that is the problem, because with the story now being in the Daily Express the chances of it being true are about as strong as the chances of a baby’s toy being found on Mars (which the paper has also reported).
Meanwhile Arturo Vidal has repeatedly urged Alexis to leave Arsenal and join him at Bayern Munich according to those who claim to know such things – and this type of story – one player “urging” another to leave, appears to be the new form of tapping up. Only the old dinosaurs like Liverpool do the crude old fashioned tapping – now clubs get a player to do it.
Bayern are apparently also still hopeful and former Munich boss Ottmar Hitzfeld has said, “It’s important to make decisions as quickly as possible, because the longer you wait the more expensive a player becomes.”
But oh! He’s let the cat out of the bag. No one thought of this before!!!! So surely now Arsenal have been told that they will drag the issue out til deadline day!!! Wow, what a mistake to make!!!
(Actually what really amazes me, and what makes me record all this stuff, is that there are some people out there who are actually taken in by all these wild stories. Remember last summer under 3% of them were true – and those that were only broke about four days before the deal was signed and sealed.)
9: Mbappe
In a desperate bid to hold on to their man Monaco have offered the 18-year-old golden boy a 900 per cent pay rise from €18,000 to €162,000 – drawing him in line with the club’s top earner Falcao. And given that this comes out of Monaco and not France it would all be tax free, which is rather neat.
However James Richardson is quoted as saying, “My understanding is that Arsenal are very confident of signing Mbappe.” Now this is quite clever journalistic whatnot because if Richardson is right he will look like a pretty nifty tipster, but if he is wrong, everyone can laugh at stupid Arsenal for having been way out – yet again.
The centre of right wing hate, the Mail says Arsenal are “out of Kylian Mbappe race”. The Metro says Arsenal have “abandoned” the race. The Mirror says Arsenal have “ended their interest”.
10: Leon Goretzka on speculation about his future
In case you have lost track he plays as a midfielder for Schalke 04 and he says, “I do not want to say anything about the transfer rumours. I’m not going to give state-of-play updates, but if there are facts, I will announce them. I’m not the type to be impressed by newspaper reports, I know what my qualities are, but I will not build myself up.”
Now that sounds reasonable for once.
- Untold Arsenal returns. Thank you for waiting
- How transfer rumours really work: the inside story from The Commentariat
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- If you are made redundant or are threatened with redundancy, you must read this first
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if we can manage to bring in Lacazette and Lemar then manage to keep our best players..it would be a successful transfer ..
We all know the stories are not 100% true, but we all also know that there is usually fire where there is smoke, so some elements of these “transfers” will be true no doubt, at least in the going ons behind the scenes.
Would the midfielder Leon Goretzka 22, of Schalke 04 and Germany fit in very well into the Arsenal midfield play and be very productive in terms of high goals scoring and assists if Arsenal sign him this summer? That’s assuming if Arsenal want him, first on the interim replacement and later as a permanent replacement for the injury prone Santi Cazorla, and Schalke agree to sell him to us and Goretzka himself too want to come to us to play for Arsenal.
For, if it’s true that Barcelona want to highjack our ongoing transfer negotiations for Thomas Lemar transfer from Monaco to us, the onus is on Barca to beat us to the deal for Lemar. For, while Barca look to have the financial capacity to ex ordinarily pay above the odds to get Lemar if they prioritize his transfer this summer, Arsenal don’t look to have the financial capacity that can accommodate paying crazily above the odds to get their targeted signings in the transfer market. Or do they?
Para
The problem is knowing which are the 3 per cent which are true ….
Considering that fact that you can bet MBappe will get his 10 % of the transfer fee that would be huge, upping his salary does not come close the what he can get via a huge transfer….so I do not believe this is going to make him change his mind – if his mind is set on leaving, which nobody knows.
Then again, an employer (AS Monaco) giving an employee (Mbappe) a raise to reward his excellent services and a promotion is normal…
So I do not believe in reading too much significance into this. Just normal business as far as I am concerned
A few years back it was reported about Alexis and Vidals relationship;
“But La Tercera claims that even though the two stars used to play together at Chilean side Colo Colo and share the same agent in prestigious Fernando Felicevich, they are not friends. The publication claims they have a feud due to jealousy…”
Para, there’s plenty of examples of smoke without fire (refer to British Leyland/Austin Rover and their Lucas electrical systems for just one of them).
In football transfer terms it’s usually either a journalist completely fabricating a story (loads of possible reasons behind it) or an agent trying to create a buzz around his player to extract more money from his existing team via a new contract.