You get the feeling that things might kick off, in the realm of transfers, quite soon.
The Hleb deal appears to be coming to a head, and if the papers are on the mark, he could become our first big signing for 18 months, since Reyes arrived from Seville in fact. Hleb himself is not giving much away on his website. As a public service, I’ve ploughed it through Google translator, and the beautifully translated, grammatically pure results are below;
“Hello dear friends,” he begins warmly. “Meanwhile some people obviously come into sweating,” he opens, mysteriously, before clearing things up by adding, “Not only because of the heat wave. Because the interest of arsenal London me strikes ever higher heat waves to obligate in the media. ”
Ah, I see.
“My role is clear thereby: I am employee with Stuttgart and have a contract until 2008. Therefore I always held back myself with any statements. If at all, then had themselves the VfB Stuttgart and arsenal London over a release united to be. Only then I come into the play!”
Only then indeed!
“Therefore I cannot be made moved. Besides I am with my friends and advisors, Uli Ferber and Nicki Chpilevski, in the best hands. If the clubs should agree, then we will make the correct decision together. But I have self-assurance enough, over with everyone of the two clubs a service provider to be. As a soccer player on the island and in London to play, would be a new challenge.”
Yes, playing “on the island” and in London would indeed be a decent challenge.
And then he repeats himself. “However I can only repeat myself,” he says. “With Giovanni Trapattoni committed to Stuttgart a coach recognized world-wide, who always aims at maximum success. And I am likewise always hungry after sporty success. Greeting, your Aleks”.
Well Aleks, with any luck, you might find some “sporty” success with us. So come on, take the plunge…
Google Translator – brilliant, eh? Needs a bit of work that one.
Elsewhere, there’s a juicy rumour in the Mirror that we’ve lodged a bid of £14m for Robinho – wishful thinking, I think. After all, the same paper also reports that we are top of the English debt league, a trifling £141m in the red. It’s also been reported that young benchwarmer Jerry Aliadiere has signed a new deal – a sensible piece of business if you ask me – though he may now go out on loan for a season. I’m not so sure about the latter: He’s always had lots of potential, and I think, if he stays, we could be surprised by him this year.
In the News of the Screws, Wenger is reported to have promised to keep Pires, as well as swatting off any rumours of depatures for Vieira or Henry. “He isn’t going anywhere,” says the boss of Tel, before adding, “The same goes for Patrick. He will also stay with us next season – as will Robert”.
And finally, where would a roundup be without something on Ash? The ever-sensible Amy Lawrence notices that, with Chelski out the picture, nobody else is prepared to pay £15m for a left back this summer. So he’ll be back for pre-season training, and he needs to have some sort of a firefighting plan up his sleeve, doesn’t he.
I certainly think its sensible to keep Pires for the remainder of his contract. After all if you can only get 2-3 million for him its not worth selling as with the goals he scores he could win you more than that in prize money alone. Also we need a bigger squad not smaller so you have to keep quality players like pires even if he is coming to the end.
I think Henry will hold out on signing a new deal with arsenal aswell until he is sure they are going to improve the team. Yes we have very good youngsters but at 28 he is at the stage where he could leave & still go to a top club or stay for the remainder of his career at arsenal. He quite obviously wants to stay for the rest of his career as he has made perfectly clear over & over again, but he also wants arsenal to improve as a team as he also said when we lost to Bayern.
I also look forward to thursday/friday when two signings should be announced as I said the other day. Are these the two world class signings wenger was apparently referring to in the news of the world article.
Well one is clearly Hleb – no idea about the other, though.
Is one Hleb though??? everyone thinks he is but in that very same article wenger said you have to keep these things quiet as much as you can, so why would he have told a paper that we are close to signing him?? he would have stayed quiet until it was done.
Fair point – it’s just the most likely deal at the moment. You’re right though. Arsenal always keep things quiet and then surprise us all. Reyes being a prime example.
Personally I think arsenal are deliberately leaking things to the press to get chelsea off of who they really want. I feel chelsea will do their upmost to ruin any potential signings for arsenal after what occured with cole. They will do it by either signing our targets or going in with an offer way above ours so the other club will not sell to us (at least not at the price we offer), it may all sound childish but its certainly not beyond chelsea & their management team just to get back at us. Also they see arsenal as the only real threat in the premiership they beat man utd easily last year but they still could not beat us.
I have heard strong rumours that it is Baptista we are looking to sign and the Robinho rumour is a smokescreen.
Does anyone have any suggestions about who we are going to sell?? As reported wenger is saying there could be sales to fund the signings. I find that bit strange unless yet again he has not been given the money he was promised. Really though we need a bigger squad not smaller.
I think it will be a couple of fringe players going. Pascal maybe one of them. I don’t think he needs to sell to buy, we all know Wenger does not like excess. I think he will get a squad of 22-25 that he knows will perform.
While the suad size may seem like it could be a bit big, I think wenger is being overly cautios after last season. Imagine the possiblity of actually resting HENRY!!!! Well if we had that many players capable of going past defenders and banging in the goal, that could be a possiblility. If we have adjusted Hleb and robinho (or baptista), a really inform reyes (i predict this is gonna be his season), an emerging quincy with a bigger role, an innocent van persie and same old Henry, the quadruple looks like a given 🙂 , or at least a possiblity
If Cole appears at Highbury in the Red & White (and redcurrant) next season, what reception will you give him?
if cole appears i will treat him like i always do there is no point in getting on his back if we cause him to make mistakes and concede goals down the left none of us will have helped,i personally have no respect left for cole but i will not goad him because we want the team to win,and their are not many clubs banging on his door to sign him so i think what ever we feel as fans just put up with it.Ihope the star signing will be a big surprise and blow our socks off.
Hleb is in for sure! Could Robinho be the other signing? And do we have the £14m reported? And that’s probably after the Hleb signing as well (£4-6m?). That means a fine total of around £20m, and that’s much more than I actually think we are capaple of spending.
So although I would love to welcome Robinho to Highbury, I just don’t think we have the money!
nobody knows how much money the Arse have if we dont get these two world class signingswho ever they are AW will look a bit silly the newspapers are full of crap the only truth in them is the date is Hleb world class as anybody seen this bloke play i have never bloody heard of him until now.
I could be wrong on this but I dont it will be Hleb, I think it will be Essien!! Hleb is an excellent player but certainly not what you would call world class at present (although he will be in time). Either way I dont mind, whichever players wenger brings in he will have a plan for them.
I think robhinio is a smokescreen and our real target is BAPTISTE.
I would rather we signed BAPTISTE he is proven in one of the best legues and will not need so much time to acclimatise. BAPTISTE would gve us the ability to have a plan B as he is as deadly in the box as outside, plus he can play in midfield as well. Wenger will have been well informed of BAPTISTE as REYEYS used to play int he same team. Robhinio has already stated a desire to play for REAL, he also looks a bit lightweight for the PL
re cole we should not barrack any Arsenal player and if we do this to cole then chavski will have used US and cole to undermime ARSENAL.
on my situation “I DIDNT DO IT” LOL!!!
I’ve actually blogged on this and I’m not sure we don’t have the money for Robinho. Remember when they said we didn’t have any money to spend and then splashed the cash on Jose?
Robinho might be a smokescreen, but nonetheless, I can definitely see Wenger spending about 30 mill in total this summer. That’s a huge whack but you mustn’t forget that a lot of it might well be as part of structured deals, rather than up front, as we did with Jose Reyes. Also we had to keep cash reserves to keep the banks happy over Ashburton until we had a sponsor in place. And even then we spent over 16 million and counting on Reyes (there are apparently still more potential fee-triggering clauses) whilst that was going on.
The Emirates deal has not only alleviated some of the debt but also allayed fears of banks, allowing us to spend a little more freely. I don’t see us out-spending Chelsea, who look set to spend 26 million on just two players (Del Horno and SWP), and will probably end up spending 20 on Essien, but I seriously do see us buying in a couple of big names. I don’t see us getting Essien as Chelsea have offered 20 mill up front, the only way we’d offer 20 million would be structured, but you never know! He is French-speaking after all!
I leave you with my usual prayer; Trust in Wenger. On a shoestring budget he’s kept us in the top two of the league since his arrival, and we all know he’ll go down in history as one of our greatest managers. He’s surprised us all before, and he’ll do it again. Trust Le Boss.
Oh, and Baptiste would do nicely. As Robin VP said, he’s more the sort of player we need, big, strong, and Reyes knows him well. Might help persuade Jose to stay.
jose is going no where and this year we will see the best of him.
I am hoping that Wenger makes mpore use of QUINCY what a talent we have on our hands.
re helb think we should sign him instaed as if some quaters ahve suggested that we rae waiting to see if we can get SWP instead. I think SWP is good for a team that ha sno other play makers. i our style no one player apart from HENRY holds the ball for a long period. SWP is good at run ning with the ball but we let the ball do the running and players shift positions.
imho.
Am I the only one who thinks it’s amusing that someone named Jesus wants us to sign a Baptiste? Surely you’re a bit biased, Jesus. lol
Baptista is not very good as far as I’m concerned. I saw him play three or four games for Sevilla last year and he had the finishing efficiency of a cross between Emile Heskey and Didier Drogba. Big strong guy but since when do big strong guys play for Arsenal? Try and find a single one on the squad who isn’t a central defender. Good luck. 🙂
Jean-Michel
BAPTISTE has scored 50 goals in 2 seasons in LA LIGA those stats begs to differ ur version.
I’m prob wrong ere but what about Govou? I think he’s a good player and according to Lyon he is the only player leaving them this summer.
We’ll all have to wait and see but can guarantee the boss has sumet up his sleeve.
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are two known unknowns:
the first is any knowledge of what really happens in transfers
the second is any knowledge of how a head coach manages the other coaches
It took me years (and a number of hints) to understand the no target man playing style. I really don’t think there’s any point in trying to understand transfers; perhaps a student of games theory could help.
Lets hope Baptiste is the signing not Robinho.
No one disputes the liitle Brazillian’s skill- He is obvously world class.
But we need a physical presence up front- not another midget. so we can at least vary our play.
Also If do we sign the little magician- One can see future potential problems!
I.e, spending half the time on a plane flying to Brazi lfor friendlys.
And next year being tapped up/kidnapped by agents trying to coerce him to go to the highest bidder!
He has to be exceptional- to go with all this guaranteed baggage.!
Bongo et al
Nobody knows anything and you all know nothing. You’re all just pissing in the wind. Have fun though.
take a hike arsene
One word Arsene: Stepanovs. Call yourself a good coach?