The Emergency Transfer Window is open + Our future Number 1
1 comment February 9th, 2010
Email Arsene.Wenger@arsenal.com. Infiltrate and accost the manager at the London Colney training ground. Dial every possible combination of phone numbers until you are answered by a Frenchman who only seems to want to talk about “sharpness” and “enormous personality”: the emergency transfer window is open. And boy is this an emergency.
Quite whether the FA will agree or not is another matter. They ought to, mind: if you have no goalkeepers you’re allowed to break the boundaries of the transfer window to make a signing – why oughtn’t it be the same if you have no strikers?
We’re only in this position because of our failure to act in January – though Arsene insists it wasn’t for the lack of trying:
“We tried to sign players, but it didn’t work and we have to accept that.”
I suppose if we make a real effort and people turn us down there’s not much we can do. Take the case of David Villa at Valencia, for example: we offered them £2m + Season 7 of 24 on DVD + Mikael Silvestre in exchange, but it turns out that a) they’re West Wing fans, and b) they’ve seen Silvestre play.
It has become accepted wisdom that we made a deadline day bid for Thomas Sorenson, but although he was once a target during his Sunderland days he is not one of the names I heard last Monday. I was told of late loan bids for two strikers – both, unsurprisingly, Frenchmen.
Perhaps the reason we didn’t move for a striker is the possible arrival in the summer of Marouane Chamakh for a fee of zero pounds. Whilst that would doubtless be a bargain, it does leave us extremely light in the short-term – especially with the news this morning that we won’t catch sight of Eduardo until the Porto game.
Sorenson might be someone who, like Chamakh, we come back to in the Summer. In the meantime, it is very frustrating that the club’s best goalkeeper probably plays for Brentford. Check out our future number one:
A couple of other players have snuck out to join the young Pole on loan: Sanchez Watt is at Southend, whilst Kyle Bartley is toughening up at Sheffield United.
As I finish writing this up, I’m watching Arsene in his pre-Liverpool press conference. He is absolutely fuming – perhaps because he knows Michael Ballack is right – but more on that tomorrow.
