Money Talks

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For Arsene Wenger, the extra revenues our stadium will bring cannot come soon enough, I suspect. The Times this morning reports that Chelski are ready to offer £18m to sign Shaun Wright-Phillips, a sum City may find hard to turn down, despite Ian Wright’s son being integral to their plans, not surprisingly. It reports that the Russian side would offer him something in the region of £50k a week. Neither the fee (just about) nor the salary (no problem) would be insurmountable hurdles for Arsenal, but you do suspect that if it came down to a straight fight, A) City would take the highest bid and B) That highest bid would be unlikely to come from us.

The same piece also ends with the news that the Chelski boss “will also step up his attempts to lure Ashley Cole, the Arsenal full back, to Stamford Bridge in the summer. The infamous “tapping-up” scandal has done little to quell Mourinho’s desire to sign Cole, although Wenger will fight tooth and nail to keep the player”.

We do have a good record of retaining players we really want to keep, who are still under contract, so you can be sure that if Cole does want to leave, but Arsenal want to keep him, Wenger would not make it an easy move. I also wonder whether we’d be prepared to sell him to the Russians at all, as it would serve a double whammy of strengthening them and simultaneously weakening us. Who was the last top-notch player we sold to a direct rival? Michael Thomas? Viv Anderson?

And for what feels like the first time this season, we have got almost our full squad available for Saturday, Edu and Clichy excepted. I’m for playing Campbell with Senderos at the back, Toure at right-back, and a midfield axis of Gilberto and Vieira.

Up at 5.45am on Saturday. Remind me whose idea this Cardiff business was?

Jim

Arsenal since about 1979. Thick, thin and all that.

This Post Has 20 Comments

  1. Wivnail and Ian Ure

    Michael Thomas top notch? Now a place in our hearts forever yes but not likely to be mentioned as Fifa player of the year. It’s a bit early, did I miss some irony?
    Stapleton to United I would suggest.

  2. vivb

    If they do sell Cole wouldn’t Barcelona be a preferential destination.

    Like Ferdinand Chelsea are being used as a lever to get better deals, look at Ferdinand at Man Utd.

    With both PSV and Liverpool in the Champions League semi-finals it demonstrates that as in all cups the best footballing teams do not necessarily prosper. Hopefully a leason we don’t discover on Saturday and will learn from for next seasons European campaign.

  3. matt

    Eddie McGoldrick to Man City?

  4. ian

    When Stapleton went to Manure, they hadn’t won anything for 15 years. Hardly rivals!

  5. RotorGoat

    OK, so I was getting carried away with Michael Thomas. But he did score a quite important goal.

  6. Dave

    Has anyone noticed that we qualified for the Champions League last weekend?

    Also, other English clubs’ progression may be painful to watch, but it has enhanced our chances of remaining as one of the top eight seeds next season, as they earn English teams ranking points, so we’ve just eked above Porto. We’re 10th at the moment, but will be in the top 8 seeds if teams above us in the ranking fail to qualify – at the moment Liverpool, Valencia and Deportivo are struggling.

    http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/trank2005.html

  7. Tom

    We havent done anything of the sort im afraid mate. With games against Chelski, Everton, Liverpool and The Scum still to come, its going to be a hard task too…

  8. Dave

    I think you’ll find Arsenal are 20 points clear of Liverpool with only six games to go. That means they have secured one of the four Champions League berths. If you want to be a pedant about not actually qualifying for the Champions League and possibly having to play the qualifying round, knock yourself out. That wasn’t the point I was making.

  9. icky

    RE SWP, I am afraid Chelsea can and will put in initial bids for most of Arsenal’s targets to push the price up, then pull out. It is only marginally risky that Chelsea will get ‘stuck’ with someone they don’t want cause they can always back out. This depletes arsenal’s and everyone else’s resources for team building that much quicker, leaving the Chavs that much stronger in the long run.

  10. kidK

    good point icky. how I hate them!

  11. Wivnail and Ian Ure

    Don’t worry. The mafia boos will get bored if they keep winning all the time and go to formula 1 or such like. At the end of it all the Chavs are just that. No amount of money can wash that away.
    Also selling Overmars and Petite to Barcelona could be construed as selling to our European rivals. Wenger new though. They were crap after they left us.

  12. Victoria C. Crescit

    It was me who “forced through” the decision to have the semi-finals in Cardiff (not at the crack of dawn, however) as I would have been one of the 15,000 or so unlucky ones, who wouldn’t have got a ticket if it had been held at Villa Park. OK So travelling to Cardiff is a drag but the only ones complaining are those high on the ticket priority ranking – pull the ladder up and sod everyone else !!

  13. vivb

    And the Spuds have the same European co-efficient as Andorra i.e. 0.

    Check the Stadium webcam the other half of the roof is going up now.

  14. Gerry Gooner

    I must say it frustrates me to see PSV and Liverpool in the alleged top 4 of Europe while we seem as far away as ever.
    Myles Palmer reckons we’ll sign 3 players over the summer one of whom will be a replacement fro Bergkamp. SWP is expensive at 18 million but I reckon it will take that calibre of player to improve our squad (except at centre half- 4-6 million will do to replace Cygan).

    Who are we shouting for in the CL Semi- The Scousers or Chelski??

  15. vivb

    Scousers, definately with four european cups already another one makes no difference and like Newcastle the more clubs doing well the better.

  16. halfNice

    I’ve hated the Scousers all my life, but yes, I’ll be supporting them against those damn chavs. And then I’ll go back to hating them.

  17. TonyG

    Scousers or Chavs? What a tuff one. Part of me wants the Chavs to win, so Gerrard can come to Arsenal, but the other part of me wants the Scousers to win just to keep the Chavs hands off the Trophy. Anyway, NO HENRY tomorrow!!! Slighty worried now.

  18. Farnborough Gunner

    Remember Chavs v Scousers is only the semi final, they still need to win the final. But the other semi looks weak, so there is a good chance either Chavs or Scousers will lift the trophy. I’d prefer it to be the scousers – they do deserve a better return on their efforts of recent seasons. Also, they will all be cock sure they are going to win the PL next season and it will be funny hearing all their excuses when they don’t.

    I just don’t want Chavski to win PL & CL.

  19. Koolski

    That Wright-Phillips thing is absolute nonsense. City need the money – fact. Wright-Phillips is an Arsenal fan – another fact. They would not be able to force him to join Chelsea, so would have no option but to accept our offer. I fail to see how Chelsea can possibly be favourites in a race to sign him. We have the one advantage they can never match. He loves us.

  20. dandan

    A lot will depend on swp’s agent and how greedy he is, dont suppose he will have much loyalty to anyone or anything other than his bank balance. Would be great to see another wrighty in the shirt alongside Henry, though it will be sad to see the ice man go , he deserves a testimonial i think.

    Good luck to us today

    Incidently can anyone remember three deflected goals in a two legged tie before or was it realy a case of lucky chelsea

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