Arsene won’t pay £21.5m for Melo
3 comments July 6th, 2009
So this weekend we learned that Arsenal are at least trying to buy a central midfielder, which is some comfort. Fiorentina confirmed that we’re the club who’ve come closest to matching the €25m (£21.5m) buyout clause in Felipe Melo’s contract. The latest news in the negotiations is that the Italian club have agreed to lower the price if Arsenal include Emmanuel Eboue in any deal.
An optimistic valuation of Eboue would see us still needing to find around £15m to make any sort of deal possible, and I can’t see Arsene forking out that kind of money plus a player that (rightly or wrongly) he considers a valuable squad member.
There’s no doubt Melo would be a good addition. These clips of his performance against Juventus (our supposed rivals for his signature) show his strength and range of passing. But is he a player worth breaking our club records to secure? I have my doubts, especially if there are cheaper alternatives available. With the player looking unlikely to force a move through, it seems Arsene will soon be perusing his list of potential targets for an alternative.Â
Martin Keown has given an interesting interview to Sport.co.uk, in which he talks about the potential of Swiss pair Johan Djourou and Philippe Senderos. Of Djourou he says:
“Johan is at the crossroads now. He has to start becoming a first team player. He’ll want that, he’s a big strong lad and more than capable with the attributes to make it. He just has to put a game together. Arsene has lots of confidence in him, but injuries have taken their toll recently. If he can iron out the niggly injuries, he’ll turn from a teenager into a man. His career is in his hands and he’ll be desperate to get in that side for pre-season.”
In one spell around Christmas, Djourou looked our most accomplished centre-back. This was in part due to the poor form of both Toure and Gallas, but it’s clear that the youngster has both the physique and the technical ability to be a top player.
There was a time when Philippe Senderos was spoken of in equally glowing terms, but now the inheritor of Tony Adams’s squad number finds himself unwanted by both Arsenal and the club where he spent last season on loan: AC Milan. Keown worked closely with Senderos during our Champions League run of 2005, and had this to say:
“If he has been able to learn from his loan move and if he is given another chance, he’s only going to be better. The thing with Philippe is he needs to learn the game. He’s a highly intelligent individual but at times he’s made elementary mistakes on the pitch. Football intelligence is a different experience to that off-field. What will be fascinating to see is whether he has improved those elements that he needed to.
The frustrating thing with him is that he has the raw materials to be an outstanding player. Too often though he was involved in bad mistakes. As a defender you don’t want to be around goals being conceded – he was. He may have got that out of his game, but if he’s not given the chance at Arsenal I still think he has a big career ahead of him.”
I think it may take Senderos a few more years to fully nail his role as a dominant centre-back, and I’m not convinced it’ll be at Arsenal, but I do think he has a good chance of making it big eventually. It might be worth inserting a buy-back clause into any deal that takes him out of North London this summer.
Right, I think that’s your lot for now. The majority of the players returned to pre-season training this morning, so I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some photos etc of that later today or tomorrow morning. When they’re available they’ll be posted here, alongside in-depth analysis of the squad’s training tops, body language and hair-styles. Till then.
