By Sir Hardly Anyone
It’s a funny old business, this transfer lark. You remember Carlos Tevez and how with WHU in 2007 he conspired illegally to keep State Aid Utd in the Premier League at the expense of Sheffield Utd. Sheffield got £18m in compensation for the behaviour of State Aid (then known as West Ham) but of course WHU should have been thrown out of the league.
Anyway State Aid are now saying they want Tevez back, and I guess that would fit for the club funded with the money of those of us who pay British taxation.
Mind you, not to be outdone Messi is reported as going to Chelsea. Seems that the club that behaved as it did through most of last year, including an insane court case, now sees Messi as the perfect fit. No one actually said, “he’s a tax cheat so fits our profile perfectly” but you can just imagine the thought process.
And that’s not all (and yes I will get to Arsenal in a moment).
Having been humiliated in international matches this summer, after using the tactic of employing five Tottenham players in the team, the FA have decided that what was wrong was not that they had too many Tottenham associated people linked with the team, but rather that there were not enough Tottenham associated men in the affair. So they are now turning to Harry Redknapp and Gary Lineker to help them sort of out the future of the England team.
Meanwhile Petr Cech is reported as having talked to reporters. Now that is always dangerous in the extreme, because what comes out the mouth is not what goes out in the media but it seems that he told Sky something and they say that he “admitted to reporters that the Frenchman (that’s Mr Wenger to you and me) had the necessary qualities for the England job, but urged him to stay at Arsenal for the time being.
“Obviously that is a question for Mr Wenger, if he would like to take this (England) job, but he is someone who has been coaching in England for such a long time, he definitely has the pedigree and the quality. He knows the atmosphere, the mentality and knows the expectation and the love England has for football, so obviously this is to his big advantage.
“But I think he is enjoying his time at Arsenal being a club manager, having the day-to-day job and it would be more of a question for him.”
Elsewhere L’Equipe today has the story that Arsenal has made a bid of €15 million for the Djibril Sidibé from Lille, and the bid has been accepted.
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Sidibé joined Lille in July 2012 as cover for Mathieu Debuchy. He is now 23 and is known for his passing out of defence directly onto the front runners. He has played both at right and left back and in defensive midfield. He’s played 96 league games for Lille, scoring seven.
But that is not all the new news today, because suddenly out of the blue the Telegraph is suggesting that “Alvaro Morata prepared to snub Chelsea in favour of Arsenal move”.
Now the word “snub” is usually used when the editor of the made up sections of the paper (which these days is most of it) says that a new story is needed NOW!!!
They then go on to repeat the headline in the text, in order to make it look as if they have done more than 0.1 seconds research. And true enough the paper is saying the Morata is “reportedly favouring a move to the Emirates because of his desire to play in the Champions League.” And yes it is true that most of the papers are ignoring the fact that Man U and Chelsea will not be in the Champs this coming season. Best to keep it quite I guess.
The fee is supposed to be £65m.
Mind you the Telegraph is also saying that “Another area that Arsenal need reinforcement in is in the midfield, with Welsh star Aaron Ramsey set to miss the beginning of the season.”
So if we pause on this for a moment what we have is the notion that Ramsey will miss a couple of games at the start of the season and so for cover ARSENAL NEED TO BUY SOMEONE FOR THOSE TWO GAMES.
I can only presume that they have forgotten exactly what Arsenal’s midfield looks like.
Moving on the Evening Standard have now said that Alvaro Morata is coming Arsenal’s way. He’s the guy who is with Real Mad but with the buy back clause from Juventus. They buy him back for £23m and sell him for £57m to Arsenal – that’s the deal.
Anyway there’s another player on the horizon now, Guy Smit, a goalkeeper who has a two week trial with Arsenal. Seems he has had enough of NEC Nijmegen.
The first thing to do is to note that everyone else is buying. The first bit of reality to avoid is the fact that only 25% of new signings actually make much of an impact in year one.
Then time for noting that the latest new signing is Japanese, and we all know what we think of the Japanese. Well actually some of us manage to avoid ludicrous national stereotypes but not the Independent who go for “Remember Ryo Miyaichi? No, nor do I.” Untold wrote about Ryo too, but without the notion that because one Japanese player failed another would also.
Where does it stop? Because we signed goal keeper Frank Moss from Oldham in 1932 and he was a great success does that mean we should sign all future goalkeepers from Oldham? It is the same sort of bent logic.
The article then notes that Olivier Giroud went 15 games without a goal last season, and say that is “not title-winning form by any stretch.” Except that Arsenal only scored three goals fewer than the champions. So maybe you can’t judge everything by the top scorer. And as Untold showed in its analysis there is no link between having any of the top scorers in the league in your side, and actually winning the league. Sometimes it happens, but mostly not. (Does having top league scorer help you win the league? Here’s the stats…)
The article rambles on, suggesting that we need to replace Gabriel, but then as always with such articles telling us that Arsenal fans, “could be forgiven for wanting to see the chequebook opening sooner rather than later. If not, the club and its fans could be heading down a path well-trodden.”
The piece does also say that there is a way to go in the window, although rather forgetting that actually it has only been open for eight days thus far – and misjudging exactly how long is left. But it is a handy piece, for it will become the benchmark for all the other papers. We’ve had the rumours, now we will have the endless put downs and the “fans will be angry that…”
It was ever thus.
- Comparison of fouls across the years
- How Arsenal could buy the next Messi or the next Ronaldo
- It’s now 18 Arsenal players tipped to leave the club this summer; 76 to arrive in the great Transfer Fairy Story.