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?
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.
When Ian Wright left Arsenal, it was obvious it would take a remarkable character to fill the number eight shirt. But from the moment Freddie made history by lobbing Peter Schmeichel just four minutes into his Arsenal debut, it was clear the punky young Swede had the personality to fill Wright’s shirt. What’s more, he had the goalscoring instinct to match.
When Robert Pires’ 2001-02 season was tragically curtailed by his cruciate ligament injury, Arsenal’s double pursuit was suddenly in doubt. But Ljungberg had other ideas – a stunning end to the season saw the flame-haired midfielder finish the year with 17 goals. For a player who had been signed just a couple of years earlier on the back of a Man of the Match display in an internatinal against England, it was a remarkable achievement.
Arsenal.com have compiled a few of Ljungberg’s greatest moments. For me, my favourite Freddie goal will always be his double clinching strike in the 2002 FA Cup Final in Cardiff. It was the first cup final I’d attended, and Freddie’s gutsy strike made the journey home with my Chelsea supporting brother so very sweet.
In the years since then, Freddie has suffered with a string of injuries, from reocurring hamstring problems to, in typically unusual style, tattoo infection. However, this committment to the cause has never been in doubt. Even in the past two years, when his decline has been most evident, you could never say Freddie didn’t care.
But it’s undoubtedly the right time for him to go. These stats from Sky Sports show that in the past two seasons, he’s managed just one league goal. In eighteen appearances last term, there were no goals and no assists. In the light of those facts, the £3m fee doesn’t look too bad at all.
At his West Ham press conference, Freddie painted a picture of a disillusioned Arsenal dressing room who were struggling to cope with the break-up of The Invincibles. I understand Fred’s perspective, but I think the truth is simply that the current Arsenal squad is not the one he remembers. His friends, his team-mates, have all moved on, and now it is his turn. I personally have no doubts that Ljungberg will do a great job for West Ham. Their fans love a character like him, and I expect that Ljungberg’s huge character will remind them of their former talisman, Paolo Di Canio.
I spoke yesterday about wanting to hold on to Ljungberg’s experience. Now he is gone, he needs to be replaced. We need a wide midfielder who can play on either flank and score goals. And if they have half of Ljungberg’s determination and spirit, we’ll be OK.
The other major news is that Danny Fiszman has delivered a crushing blow to anyone potential buyers of Arsenal with this statement. I think the most heart-warming extract is this:
“I have been a member of the Board for 15 years now. The Club has experienced many successes both on and off the pitch in that time and being part of the Arsenal family is something that is not only in my mind but also in my heart.”
Fiszman is a businessman in his head, but Arsenal is in his heart. Let’s hope this puts all the speculation to bed for now.
Absolutely no chance of that, eh.
I’ll leave you with a few more Freddie moments. Enjoy. It’s not a crappy compilation of fancy flicks, just goals goals goals. Goodbye Fred: as a friend of mine would probably say, you were fuckin’ excellent.
Freddie Ljungberg has reportedly left Arsenal’s Austrian training camp to tie up a move to West Ham. Whilst reports differ over the exact the details (the Swedish press suggest the medical will be this afternoon, whilst The Sun insist it took place last night), it does seem there is more to this than your run-of-the-mill Rodrigo Palacio rumour.
Ljungberg had been set to stay after a move to Fiorentina collapsed. But the injury to West Ham’s £6m winger Julien Faubert has prompted the Hammers to offer Freddie the chance to stay in London, as well as a massive £60,000 a week. That’ll put him on a par with Lucas Neill: the ultimate compliment.
I have to say, it’s sad to see him go. It reminds me a little of the Lauren sale last year. You could see his first-team opportunities would be limited, but even so he definitely had something to offer. Above all, both Lauren and Freddie are winners – they know what it takes to go the season unbeaten. That kind of experience can be invaluable. It goes without saying that Ljungberg needs to be replaced, but I would add that there’s no point replacing him with an unproven 19-year-old.
In a summer in which we’ve seen Franck Ribery, Florent Malouda, Ryan Babel, and Nani all move elsewhere, Arsene’s going to have to pull something fairly special out the bag to find the winger we need. Still, if anyone can…
FREDDIE UPDATE: He’s gone, for a fee rising to £3m. Bit cheaper than we’d like, but there you go.
There’s plenty of takeovery banter to report on, but arseblogger and KeithEdelman between them can explain it to you far better than I ever could.
Congratulations to Jasmeet Singh, who has won the prize that children were literally slaying each other to get: The Frank McLintock t-shirt. I’ll be in Hyde Park, 12pm, wearing a dark suit. If you walk up to me and say the secret codephrase (“Spurs are gay”) before performing a small tapdance, I will hand you the briefcase containing the precious t-shirt. Either that or I can just email you?
If Freddie does go today, I’ll probably speak to you later.
Last night I went down to Wembley Arena to watch the London Masters. I was there with a Chelsea fan, and two Spurs fans. The writing was on the wall from the start. Our team featured Nigel Winterburn, Andy Linnighan, Martin Hayes, Matthew Joseph, Paul Davis, Mark Flatts, Danny O’Shea, and the now legendary Gus Caesar. It was hardly a “whose who” of the Arsenal history books, but it was good to see Wineterburn in red-and-white again.
Well, any side featuring Gus was always likely so struggle, and we were no different, losing all three of our games.
Oh well. It was a good craic and I did enjoy seeing Spurs go 3-0 up in the final against Chelsea only to end up losing on penalties. There are some things that only a Tottenham team can manage.
Here’s one in the eye for all those who’ve suggested that Arsenal don’t give English talent a chance. Whether or not that English talent will be good enough to break into the first team is an entirely different matter.
Is anyone else entirely unamused by this? It’s all very well to get one over on the British press, but at the same time you are pissing away your credibility somewhat. I can assure you that everything I publish on Gunnerblog, April Fool’s aside, is in good faith. I just wish I had something exciting to tell you at the moment.
Sammy Lee wants spending money, and if that means selling Nicolas Anelka, he doesn’t mind. That much is obvious – having moved to bring in strikers Zoltan Harsanyi and Heidar Helguson ths Summer, Lee has now unofficially made Anelka available for transfer with the following comments:
“I have to be fair to him, he is 29 and told me he wants Champions League football. So do I, with Bolton. But if one of the top four in England or a Champions League club in Europe showed an interest, it would be wrong of me to stand in his way.”
I can’t help but feel that we’re missing an opportunity here. Of our four first-choice strikers (Adebayor, Van Persie, Eduardo and Bendtner), Adebayor is probably the quickest, and he’s no Thierry Henry. Theo Walcott has genuine (as opposed to fake) pace, but is more likely to be used on the wing. Signing Anelka would give us a much-needed triple-dose of experience, speed, and proven goalscoring ability.
There’s an awful lot of speculation about a takeover at the moment, as the Kroenke PR machine Kranks into action. The most perplexing story today links Chelsea fan Bernie Ecclestone with a bid. The connecting factor between Kroenke and Ecclestone? Their respective relationships with a Mr. David Dein.
Whatever happens, it’s almost certain that Dein will be the driving force behind it.
IN
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.
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.
Last night I went down to Wembley Arena to watch the London Masters. I was there with a Chelsea fan, and two Spurs fans. The writing was on the wall from the start. Our team featured Nigel Winterburn, Andy Linnighan, Martin Hayes, Matthew Joseph, Paul Davis, Mark Flatts, Danny O’Shea, and the now legendary Gus Caesar. It was hardly a “whose who” of the Arsenal history books, but it was good to see Wineterburn in red-and-white again.
