Gunnerblog

Henry Sold – Now we must take action

427 comments June 22nd, 2007

So it looks like the inevitable has happened and Thierry Henry has been sold to Barcelona £16m – less than Charlton are demanding for Darren Bent.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Arsene’s reign is that neither Vieira not Henry will ever excell in the Emirates Stadium – in fact, I can barely recall Henry’s performances there last season.  That’s the prime reason he’s been sold, though I expect his general disillusionment over being dropped at Christmas and David Dein’s departure have also contributed.

They key now is to get the next phase right.  I have it on good authority that Cesc will still be here next season, which is vital.  But we must act quickly to replace Henry with a top class striker to supplement Adebayor and Van Persie.  I’d quite like to see Newcastle’s Nigerian forward Obafemi Martins, but my suspicion is that Arsene may look to include Jose Reyes in a swap deal for Fernando Torres.  Samuel Eto’o would’ve been ideal, but if he was coming it surely would’ve been part of the Henry transfer.

We must not cock it up this time.  When Vieira left we planned to bring in Baptista to replace him, but ended up being gazumped by Madrid – OK, perhaps we dodged a bullet that time, but our season never really recovered.  If we don’t make the right signing now then we will have been in steady decline since 2004.

However, the problem might be convincing a top striker that it’s a good idea to join a club which has just sold its captain (ps. Gilberto for skipper?) and best player and whose manager’s future is equally uncertain.

Hold on for the ride.

Ryan Babel latest

456 comments June 22nd, 2007

Ryan Babel has confirmed that he has had no contact with anyone from Arsenal – as yet. It’s worth remembering that Arsenal do conduct their dealings with supreme secrecy – even if we were speaking to Babel, a condition of the deal would be his absolute discretion.

I have a contact who is scouting for another Premiership side at the U21 European Championships. He has confirmed to me that several Premiership teams, Arsenal included, are watching Babel. However, the pervading feeling is that he is not yet ready to sieze a first-team place: his final pass/shot is often inaccurate, and his decision making erratic. If he does arrive, it seems it will be as a youthful prospect rather than an immediate solution.

The same could be said of Wookash Fabyanski, who has been linked with a loan move to Racing Santander. I would say this was a good idea, but I dreamt last night that Manuel Almunia left to play for his cousin’s team in the Spanish lower leagues (?), so we’d better hold on to Wookash for now.

Finally, thanks to arseblog for bringing us this fabulous news:

Marca ran a story yesterday, by the mole faced little gimp Balague, saying that Arsenal have stopped producing ‘Henry’ merchandise like shirts etc. Funnily enough I got an email from somebody who works in the publishing industry last week and they said that they have been told not to include Henry on the cover of any of the official Arsenal books they produce. Of course this is all speculation so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Huzzah.  Don’t you just love the summer?