July 25th, 2007
The team is in. Jens Lehmann returns in goal, with a back four of Eboue, Toure, Gallas, and Clichy. In midfield, Hleb and Rosicky flank Diaby and Denilson, with Eduardo making his first start upfront alongside Van Persie.
The real surprise is that William Gallas captains the side. The possible explanation is that Kolo Toure, who you’d expect to take the armband in the absence of Gilberto, was a late addition to the side after the withdrawal of Johan Djourou. Has he flown back to sign on loan for Birmingham? I doubt it, but we’ll see.
Salzburg’s season is already underway, so this could be a tough test.
Kick off is… oh, now.
July 25th, 2007
Let’s start with the basics. Let’s set out the facts:
IN
Lukaz Fabianski (Legia Warsaw, £2m)
Havard Nordveit (FK Haugesund, £2m)
Eduardo da Silva (Dinamo Zagreb, £7.8m)
Bacary Sagna (Auxerre, £7.5m)
OUT
Julio Baptista (Real Madrid, End of loan)
Fabrice Muamba (Birmingham, £2.5m)
Arturo Lupoli (Fiorentina, Free)
Mart Poom (Watford, Free)
Jeremie Aliadiere (Middlesbrough, £2m)
Thierry Henry (Barcelona, £16.4m)
Matthew Connolly (Colchester United, Loan)
Freddie Ljungberg (West Ham United, £3m)
Pending: Jose Reyes (Anyone, >£6m)
And now, the stuff that isn’t fact.
The signing of Lukasz Fabianksi was always going to happen this Summer. Arsene required a goalkeeper who could not only cover for the departure of Mart Poom, but who also had a chance of becoming the long-term successor to Jens Lehmann, who is surely entering his final season in English football. Expected by many pundits to eventually overtake the impressive Artur Boruc and Tomas Kuszcack as Poland’s number one, Fabianski fits the bill perfectly.
Havard Nordveit continues the club’s policy of attracting major talent from around Europe. Despite the hefty price tag on his head, he is not expected to play an active part in the first-team this season: if he were, it’s likely he would be in Austria at the moment. Although he may make the odd Carling Cup appearance, Nordveit remains simply a prospect, rather than a fearsome one.
The two major purchases have been those of Eduardo da Silva and Bacary Sagna. In order to understand those moves, you have to try and get inside the manager’s head. Before the end of the season, Wenger had talked about only bringing in players of extremely high calibre. Instead, he has bolstered the squad with solid and pragmatic purchases. He explains:
“Yes, I said at the end of the season I would not necessarily buy unless I found a super player. But at that time, in my mind, Thierry was staying. Then the Thierry situation was raised when I had him on the phone in the holidays.
I could not go into the new season without a striker. When he was staying I was buying one super class player. The problem became different when Thierry left. Then I had to buy a striker.
Also I came to the idea to buy a full back who can play right or left because we will lose Emmanuel Eboue and Kolo Toure during the African Nations Cup, as well as Emmanuel Adebayor.”
Eduardo and Sagna appear to have the potential to fill those positions ably. But has Arsene abandoned progression in favour of pragmatism? Are these signings simply plugging the gaps in a leaking squad, rather than advancing the team towards genuine contention for trophies?
There is a school of thought that spending over £7m on a right-back when we already had Emmanuel Eboue and Justin Hoyte was unwise. Although Arsene indicated yesterday that Eboue was also being considered for right-wing, the Swiss defender Johan Djourou has shown an ability to cover at right-back.
The only possible conclusion is that Sagna is seen as an improvement on what we have, and the reports we read of the player indicate that he will certainly add defensive solidarity to a back four which has lacked steel since the decline of Cole, Campbell, Lauren & Co. If Eboue and Hoyte suffer at Sagna’s expense, then so be it: there is no room for sentimentality when building a winning team.
Eduardo is not a “great” player. He is certainly not Thierry Henry. I sincerely doubt he’ll ever score the wonder goals that inspired an entire generation of Arsenal fans to make Henry their hero. With Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie enjoying strong pre-seasons, it’s even unlikely that the Croatian International will start the season as first choice.
Yet what Eduardo will bring is a predatory spark that we desperately lacked last season. Part of Cesc Fabregas’ frustration last year must’ve been having to pass the ball to a stationary (even when fit) Thierry Henry. Now he has a nippy striker who wants to get in behind the defence, who will run the channels, and will pull defences apart so the midfield can find the space to score the goals they didn’t last season. This is Arsene’s great gamble – he has replaced a talismanic powerhouse with humming-bird. Eduardo will need to float like a butterfly and bite like a rattlesnake if Arsenal are to escape a hangover from Henry’s departure.
It’s a huge ask. Arsenal have lost a lot of goalscoring power this Summer, even aside from regular record breaker Thierry Henry. The hapless pair of Julio Baptista and Jeremie Aliadiere somehow managed 14 goals between them, whilst in spite of his injuries Freddie Ljungberg remained a decent finisher, as his late effort at The Reebok Stadium showed. To expect Eduardo (alongside two teenagers: the returning Niklas Bendtner and improving Theo Walcott) to replace the attacking input of those four players is, to say the least, a bit much.
Furthermore: even if Henry and Ljungberg had stayed, and if there had been no African Cup of Nations, the squad still would’ve required improvement. This is where Arsene’s “super player” comes in: not a signing to cover for the departure of another player, but someone signed purely because they will improve our first eleven.
The area with the most obvious room for improvement is wide midfield. I refuse to give credence to the idea that Arsene genuinely believes that Rosicky, Hleb, Walcott and Eboue are a strong collection of wingers. Whilst I like Rosicky, Walcott is barely an adult and Eboue is a theatrical full-back. What’s more, watching Aleksandr Hleb in the second half of last season was a bit like watching Bambi on ice. A quadroplegic Bambi. That’s also blind.
But I have hope. “Why?”, you cry, yourself hoping that your this rather long and winding article is coming to a satisfactory close. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have hope because of Mark Randall.
Don’t stop reading. Let me explain myself. I don’t have hope because I think he is the answer to our problems – I have hope because I know he is not. And yet there he is, on tour in Austria, training with the first-team squad. Indeed, he’s even starting friendlies on the left-wing. Whilst youngsters such as Nordveit, Merida, Lansbury and Barazite are preparing to face Bishop Stortford, Randall is being implemented into tactical training drills.
Why? Because he is filling in. Randall is filling a hole in the squad that Arsene intends to fill with a new signing. It’s just a question of when.
And of course, of how much. But the money is there. Look at the list of transfers at the start of this article. Ok, so a few of those figures are gleamed from the foreign press rather than Arsenal, who prefer things to remain “undisclosed”, but the one thing you ought to know is that so far this Summer we’ve made a profit of around £5m. And that doesn’t factor in the possible sale of Reyes, or the huge relief on the wage bill thanks to the departures of Ljungberg and Henry. There is money to spend. Arsene promised us a “super, super class player”, and it seems clear that this signing will fill the space currently occupied by the teenage Randall. If we’re serious about challenging this season, we can’t afford to waste any time in bringing him in.
The time between now and August 31st could be very interesting.
—–
ps. Cesc has picked up a knee injury in training. No idea how bad it is, but we should know the full extent later today. Tonight we face Salzburg. It’s on Setanta Sports, kickoff at 6pm GMT.
CESC UPDATE: No major damage, but he’s unlikely to play a major part in the Emirates Cup. Good news.
