By Sir Hardly Anyone
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has joined Arsenal for £56m. You might recall that this is transfer deadline day, but I thought I would mention it again, just in case you nodded off.
There is still the expectation that Olivier Giroud will go to Chelsea and Michy Batshuayi from thence to Borussia Dortmund.
The transfer of Aubameyang was tied up after he passed a medical and his agent sorted out the fine tuning on the deal at London Colney.
On the Dortmund web site their sporting director, Michael Zorc, wrote, “Apart from the unpleasant episodes in the past few weeks we would like to remember that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at BVB was a real success story.
“In this team he performed superbly for Borussia Dortmund and scored many important goals and was part of the team that won the German Cup in 2017. We wish Pierre-Emerick all the best for his future at Arsenal.”
Sven Mislintat, who previously worked for Dortmund is the man who is credited with pushing the whole thing through having brought Aubameyang to his employers from Saint-Étienne.
Mr Wenger said, “Yes, it is good news. We need people who can give us more offensive power. At the moment, we aren’t enough going forward and I am convinced he will give us that.
“He has a big challenge in front of him. He wants to do well in the Premier League. It is absolutely good news for us. His pace, his finishing. The quality of his runs. His huge physical capacity, that will be important in the Premier League.”
Here’s his record
| Club | Season | League | Cup | Europe | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | % | ||
| Dijon | 2008/9 | 34 | 8 | 5 | 2 | — | 39 | 10 | .26 | |
| Lille | 2009/10 | 14 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 24 | 2 | .08 |
| Monaco | 2010/11 | 19 | 2 | 4 | 0 | — | 23 | 2 | .09 | |
| Saint-Étienne | 2010/11 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 0 | — | 14 | 2 | .14 | |
| 2011/12 | 36 | 16 | 2 | 2 | — | 38 | 18 | .47 | ||
| 2012/13 | 37 | 19 | 8 | 2 | — | 45 | 21 | .47 | ||
| Total | 87 | 37 | 10 | 4 | — | 97 | 41 | .42 | ||
| Borussia Dortmund | 2013/14 | 32 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 1 | 48 | 16 | .33 |
| 2014/15 | 33 | 16 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 46 | 25 | .55 | |
| 2015/16 | 31 | 25 | 4 | 3 | 14 | 11 | 49 | 39 | .80 | |
| 2016/17 | 32 | 31 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 7 | 46 | 40 | .87 | |
| 2017/18 | 16 | 13 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 24 | 21 | .88 | |
| Total | 144 | 98 | 23 | 17 | 46 | 26 | 213 | 141 | .66 | |
| Career total | 298 | 147 | 43 | 23 | 55 | 26 | 395 | 196 | .50 | |
Aubameyang has a remarkable scoring record as the percentage column shows – with his figures growing year by year. We can see that he slipped back in his first year with Borussia Dortmund from 0.47 goals a game to 0.33 goals a game, so maybe we should expect a slower start, but he moved up year by year. The last two years of around 0.87 goals a game is extraordinary.
Hopefully his appearance in the team will take the pressure off Lacazette who will not be looked at to score in every game, and can now get his own goal scoring back up to the speed he had with Lyon where he was scoring 0.82 goals per game in his final season.
Then with all this going on the Guardian published this
Looks like being a quiet day in the the half of north London apart from the deal to sign Lucas Moura for £25m.
The what half? The “the” half. The dark half? Of course what they meant to say was the “blue” half, or maybe the favoured half, or maybe “the half we love to promote”, but before we could stop chuckling we got this…
EXCLUSIVE:
Mesut Ozil signs a new three-and-a-half year contract to remain at Arsenal until summer 2021. Becomes highest-paid player in club history on around £350k per week before tax. Deal agreed last weekend, signed at Colney this morning. Could take him to 8yrs at AFC.
So….
Players in
- Konstantinos Mavropanos, from PAS Giannina, £1.9m
- Henrikh Mkhitaryan, from Manchester United, swap
- Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, from Borussia Dortmund, £56m
Players out
- Stephy Mavididi, to Charlton Athletic, loan
- Francis Coquelin, to Valencia, £12m
- Tafari Moore, to Wycombe Wanderers, loan
- Theo Walcott, to Everton, £20m
- Alexis Sánchez, to Manchester United, swap
- Ben Sheaf, to Stevenage, loan
- Marcus McGuane, to Barcelona, undisclosed
A nice end to the shattering window. We can now sit back and enjoy everyone else have a frantic time of it.
- When the group performance declines, what is to be done next?
- 9-man Arsenal beat Tottenham 1-4 at the Lane
Great news about Mesut! Take that, Spurs! And the media! Aubameyang sounds suited to the premier league as well. Come on you reds!
Aubameyang’s record v Spurs:
4 goals in 4 games.
He even scored one goal this season plus one that was wrongly disallowed so he will be ready for PGMO.
Hope Auba does take Arsenal to top four next season.We urgently needed a defender to support the already leaking defence line.All the same its one of the best transfer window in the recent past.
The signing of Pete Auba is up there with the clubs most exciting deals. Dennis, Wrighty, Charlie Nic, Supermac and recently Ozil.
A real statement of intent.
One can only hope that now all the deals are done, the players can settle down and take a rest from the roller-coaster of uncertainty for the last few weeks.
I suspect that, after yesterday, both Czech and Zhaka will be “rested”.
Iwobi may also find his playing time curtailed, although AW tends to wean his new players in as substitutes for a few games.
The defenders need to take a long hard look at themselves because they repeatedly let us down.
I know that hindsight is wonderful, but I could see last night’s disaster coming. It seems to happen every year, especially after a good result. An away midweek game in the cold north is usually a recipe for just a reaction.
The players relax, and their concentration levels go down.
Their concentration seems to dip alarmingly just after they have scored, or conceded.
I would expect AW gave them a real talking to last night. I just wish that it would have a long-term effect, which it appears it has not in the past.
Well it’s been a very good window especially as Wenger hates this winter window. I suspect that the arrival of both mikhitaryin and Aubameyang persuaded Ozil that we can go places alongside that nice rise must have been plenty of incentive. Of course we have several games to go now in which we will need to do our utmost to catch the other teams above us.
My big worry here is that we’ve now committed big money to 2 29-year olds and a guy turning 29 this summer, without doing anything to build a midfield or rebuild and aging defense. Hopefully we’ve got a solid recruitment plan for this summer, because we need to do a lot.
This can’t be correct, I’ve been told that Arsenal can no longer attract top class players if AW is still manager. 2 new top class players signed and another just renewed, all happened under that ‘clueless and out of date manager who will never attract top class players again. Funny that.
And this piece. Reading it again just make me laugh.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3340341/why-would-top-players-want-to-sign-for-arsenal-no-success-or-ambition-mean-gunners-are-not-an-attractive-club/
After yesterday’s loss , its quite heartening with the signing of PEA and the 3 year contract extension of Ozil.
Apparently we still are an attractive proposition for World Class players !
Just hope that our recent failings are all addressed and we move on and up the league .
Thank god , January is just about over , and we don’t have to play at Stoke !
While wishing all the best to those who have left us , I wouldn’t mind seeing Alexis scoring a hattrick on his league debut tonight !It’ll do him a world of good.
We should not appear to be all negative towards those who wish to try their luck elsewhere.
If there is something in it that benefits the Arsenal , that would be purely coincidental !
The way we loss the last game puts a kind of damper on Aubameyang finally arriving, but hey, we have to take it as it comes.
We need to concentrate on defence more. I always say, if we learn to defend in the opposition’s half, we’ve won the game and only long balls can threaten us. This means that everyone are “defending” by closing down, blocking the opposition players routes and being alert for the full game.
Sadly i cannot see Arsenal changing their style of play at this current moment. But maybe, just maybe, things are going to change (some more) sooner than later.
Arsenal were criticized for letting Girouds contract run down to the last 18 months.
Chelsea sign Giroud on a 18 month deal and it’s a brilliant bit of business.
The problem is that one expect a striker to score without the ball and if he does not he is blamed for that. Defense has always been our weakness.In our game against Crystal Palace there was high intensity showed right from the kick off.:The team was on the front foot. This time arsenal sdefenders spent long time in the their own half. There was no surgical counter ATTACK.They played as f in training. In short Arsenal played like a team with her handbrake off.No ball forward, no surprise our attack looked stale.Let s hope with our new signngs things will change for the better.
Well fellow Untolders; it seems that we had our best transfer windos in a long time and arguably the best of all the PL sides currently. Whats started out looking like a disaster (loosing Sancez and Ozil up in the air), turned out to be be an exciting potential of new comers!
On the game a couple nights ago, whilst there were inexcusable errors from several of our guys…I couldnt stop thinking that in 2018 with all the TV money pouring into these teams, an outfit such as Swansee dont invest in a proper draining turf!! The playing field was like a cow farm ffs!! Do they graze cows there? No wonder we couldnt get our game going – perhaps it suits those farmers up there to have the pitch in this way!
In other news: When you have a situation of getting the parked busses out of a tight spot, and dont know how because you like them parked…loosing to Spurs is the result 🙂
Intetesting that if Kante is a fan of winning and chose chelsea why did h epreviously join Leceister.. We can only surmise players intentions. Did you see Sanchez throwing his arms around in depsiar last night..
Mr I told you so……
Jigsol, cough up, Para, you are a dampener, we should have done the job against Swansea without our man, but we didn’t, but we know who will be dropped, which is the problem, we have had to rely on Xhaka and MNustarfi has been off it since he was taken out, baring in mind for some 14 games or so was it, in his debut season, we didn’t lose with the partnership of he and Kos. He’s a confidence player, and it’s all gone. He actually is vocal, but has lost his voice along with his confidence.
Sir HA, Akpom has gone on loan as well.
reaffirming my agreement with Sir HA and knobby on the Giroud deal, here is a link to extracts from the mouth of a bankrupt muppet, who will sing any old tune for his supper.
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/11230603/paul-mersons-transfer-window-grades-high-marks-for-liverpool-chelsea-man-utd
Apparently Bournemouth did grade F business, by not getting anyone in, I think for them, if they can stay up with what they have, which I think they can, then they have done some very solid work, waiting, just like Real and Arsenal.
Then Liverpool get A+ for losing a superworldy again, and paying £75m for VVD where Infigo Martinez was £32m and Laporte a mere £57m. I don’t think either of those are good business. And loaning out Sturridge is a5/10 because a sale is better at his age. Man United paid way over the odds and destabilise the dressing room and then get spanked at Wembley with Alexis exasperated. Yeovil, you should score, you provide 2, but nobody thinks. it’s his debut, make sure he scores? Sums up that move, come back Alexis, we will pay you parity with Mesut, United can foot the rest of that bill.
And pray, how is Chelsea releasing Michy when he’s finding form, evidently to move on, but bringing in Giroud for £1m a month sensible? It’s atrocious business, hence why I was happy for him to go there, yes Chelsea is perfect, because, once a gooner, you know the rest.
Who’s worried about 3.5 year deals, for youthful 29year olds? Err peak age for most footballers, is about 28-31. if you haven’t lost any athleticism, you are physically peaking and mentally efficient and experienced. We just signed 3 people who want to have immediate success. The fact they signed, is reflective of the fact that the strategy for the team is expected to come to fruition now, objective, make CL by any means necessary, a trophy is not important, but preferable. As with Real, this season, is about next season. Zizu, keep your job, take the premier leagues finest, from elsewhere, leave Poch with nothing.
Spurs did the best business they can, two outcasts from PSG who play on the same flank, wise stuff.
City, plugged a gap, and then price hiked Mahrez, not very nice, but affective. They are reaching a point of completion. Silva and Aguerro are likely to be jettisoned, but will take some replacing. Kompany just lost his place to Laporte, with Otamendi prefereed, no language barrier their, experience and youth, and class.
Everton did reasonably well, offloading Barkley and bringing in Theo, great and paid immediate dividends.
I can’t say that any of the others did good business, they managed to gamble, or get players out on loan, showcasing the fragility of the spend, spend, spend model.
Arsenal A in attack, we bought diamond, topped with platinum, over liquid gas, doused in 100% Columbian.
This is the media displaying the characteristics of an avoidant personality disorder.
They tried, but Wenger just played his first royal flush, and he bought up top, the harder place to fill. with Mahrez now resigned to being sold and both our rivals in these matters, flaking after approaches, namely Chelsea and City. Reus stay fit.
£50m liquidated before the World Cup is fully underway. gives us a transfer kitty of this, plus next, plus liquid, plus net income.
The new question is, who wants to enforce for number 14, plus Macey, can you have a Oliver Khan pre-season, or are you off to new pastures, or patient and waiting?
now we see, do we need a RB or LB? Cohen and Niles, I’m rooting for you, I think you can both progress fast enough, with this accelerated development program. Make Par and the cut.
If they can, if Mavrapanos, Chambers, and Holding can really, fight it out, even Belik, well you have to make the point before summer.
The simple reason, why we have done superb business, is that we sorted the areas that need sorting externally, excellently. and now we observe whether we have internal solutions.
Aubameyang, you are up, make us look good. Call Reus in his sleep, bring us the pride of North Africa, solve the DM, while we work ou if we can fix defence from the inside.
#COYG
#IWIT
#itoldyouso
#timetogosupernova
#untoldarsenal
Kante was sold because he came for 500k and Chelsea offered £32m, the choice was made for him.
Rooben, nailed it along with someone else, intentionally waterlogged pitch! standards, playing on a fixed battleground, never easy.
On the matter of Merson’s grade….
Why is it only Arsenal that had two kinds of grade – is it because “it’s Arsenal, it cannot be a good window”.
Quite funny reading the grades – other teams conveniently had just one.
This is taking the Arsenal media agenda to another level.
I just enjoy this team. Keeps giving the media an headache.