we need a cb, a dm, a creative attacking player/support forward/number 10 and we are set with podlski coming my ins and outs now with my personal estimates out arshavin 5 mill bendtner 5 mill vela 7.5 mill chamakh 1 mill squillaci 1 mill in kagawa/ben arfa/sessengon/dembele (all of which would be around 10 - 15 mill) vertonghen 8 mill (if he doesn't go the yids) bender 10 - 15 mill (quality player at dortmund, his bro is good at leverkusen too) havn't seen much m'vila to comment
£5m for both Arshavin & Bendtner each is a bit wishful. I'd be happy with £4m and some extra balls for both of 'em combined. I personally think Nicky belongs on a Championship side. I'd also add Almunia, Fabianski, and Mannone to this list, although selling three keepers in one summer might be difficult. (With that in mind, I'd also try to bring in another keeper, someone older who's content with being the #2.) And while reports of £17m for M'Vila made me do a double take, I say we pay whatever it takes for the guy. (Hopefully in the £13-15m range.) He's just what Arsenal needs in a DM.
This probably is true, but every team struggles with injuries. No team is healthy all year long. I'm sure ManU's, Spurs' and Chelsea's fans are saying the same thing. This is a fantasy scenario that is not grounded in reality.
Exactly, Utd finished level on points with Citeh without their most influential defender for most of the season.
Anyone discuss Benayoun yet? I liked him for the last month or so, I know he wants to play regularly but I wouldn't mind him staying.
I wouldn't mind him staying either, I like what he brings to the team but the reality is most likely that he's too old at this point for arsene to splash on him unless Chelsea's willing to let him go for really, really cheap (unlikely)
He is the consummate professional. If Arsene can get rid of the dead wood, he should try to keep Yossi. He can be a good option coming from the bench, he seems to be a great teammate and a good influence for the youngsters. He works his socks off every time he steps up on the field.
Unfortunately, we are still paying for the policy of signing all those mediocre youth team products to relatively lucrative long-term contracts. Reason I bring it up is I'm starting to see some worrying signs about the trajectory of our transfer dealings again - Wenger's comments last week, rumor on onlinegooner that Vertonghen was done, but we tried to nickle-and-dime him and he cut off negotiations after having already agreed to a basic contract framework. The question then becomes: why are we nickel-and-diming Vertonghen? Champions league qualification and our activity last summer should leave us more than enough to spend on two or three relatively big signings. So what gives? The only thing I can think is that our wage bill is still quite high (4th in the league according to Tim Payton at AST). And this comes back, again, to having 10-12 essentially worthless players on the squad making 40 to 70 pounds a week.
This said, I do think we can shift at least Vela and Arshavin and probably Bendtner. Bendtner and Arshavin are both on fairly high wages. Vela isn't so much. Almunia I think is on approximately 50-60 and his contract expires next month. This still leaves us with Denilson, Chamakh, Squillaci, and Park, who I just don't see anyone buying at any price. We might be able to give away Denilson and Chamakh, but I don't know who in their right mind would take on the other two. Whatever the case, I do have some hope we will see activity in dumping deadwood this summer.
We can sell Squilacci and Park in France, albeit not for much though, Squid may even go back to Monaco. Chamakh can be sold for easily 4 to 5 M (Bordeaux, Fiorentina among others were interested). However, I will mot be surprised if AW keeps him as a third CF option. Denilson may be the most difficult to move.
Depends as Denilson might be close enough to being able to apply for a UK passport which would make him easier to shift since La Liga has a 3 non EU policy and Serie A allows for 1(or is it 2 now?) non EU transfers.
isn't his contract up? the real question would be whether he would be willing to take a pay cut to come over and whether he would be willing to accept a short contract.
Park is an unknown commodity. But Chamakh and Squillaci, while they didn't work for us were good enough to get noticed by us so it doesn't mean they can't make a return to Ligue 1 and be successful.
It'll be interesting to see how he plays it. If he wants to play regularly in the twilight of his career, I can see him going to another country or playing for a mid-table side. Like Ben said, he's a luxury to have such a professional on the bench. To echo what someone said earlier, we need to also have a goalkeeper to back up Woj.
I'd love for his to stay but he will not play regularly for us. I have always admired his work ethic and to be fair, he has been a gooner since 2006 .
Some of that being caught up field may have been the absence of a player like Jack Wilshere. Song had to pick up the slack a bit. With that said, I would really like to see Arsenal's outside backs picking their moments better and/or making sure they come back and cover when the ball is opposite side of the park. You can criticize the centerbacks but when there are acres of space to either side of them because the outside backs are surging forward it is not that easy to shut people down.
Is there a correlation between our good run in March/April with Arteta being healthy and Song being able to focus on defensive duties? Once Arteta went down we really struggled to generate and really needed that extra midfielder pushing up to create?
Big time correlation, Arsenal only won 1 game (the last game) without Arteta since he joined. Every other game without him has been either a loss or draw.
almost Arteta was the steady head and the guy who helped us keep possession. He also dropped back to cover the fullbacks and centerbacks. When he went out, we had no player with that mentality.
Kagawa asked about his future and seconds later you hear a teammate say "Arsene Wenger" (at 17:55): Today he was in Manchester with his agent, but his agent wants to check other offers first (Arsenal?): http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/...rtikel_kagawa_gespraech-ja-ergebnis-nein.html
I agree. I know I'm a wee bit bias being excited by having an Israeli at our club being (M.O.T.), but he worked his socks off and seems to be the consummate team player.
Amen, we seem to be lacking in "high-motor" guys who are just running, running, running. Which is not always a good thing, but he makes it work for his game.
kagawa would be a don here imagine ....................rvp/lucas chambo...kagawa....theo/gervinho that shit is scary