As we're unlikely to see terraces again at football, this is the virtual equivalent where you can chat to your hearts content about all football matters and, obviously, Arsenal in particular. This forum encourages all Gooners to visit and contribute so please keep it respectful, clean and topical.
David Ornstein (BBC) just said the following “Arsenal continue search Vermaelen replacement & also in market for DMF, but may sign 1 player who can perform both roles”
and Jeremy Wilson (Telegraph) “Arsenal transfer priority now is centre-back rather than midfielder. Prob only one more in unless Podolski sold or a good deal comes up”
Both journalists are reliable as they get so wouldnt suprise me if they are right.
rigsby wrote:Good luck to him, never had a problem with Vermalen but he never became the 'Vidic' type we thought he might be at the start. Never kicked up a fuss whilst out also. Good luck to him.
Absolutely agree with this ^
For a man of his international experience to sit quietly on the bench for as long as he did in a world cup year, deserves huge respect imo - I know some will argue that he was being well paid to do so but I don't believe that he is the type to prioritise wages over his career and if money was all important then he would have stayed with us for another season and walked away on a bosman
My huge, huge concern was the confirmation that we were seeking manure player(s) in the deal - I think that we need to be realistic about the status of any centre back we buy (no top quality player will join us to be back up) so in that regard smalling fits the bill, but I cant shake the nagging feeling that le cock rates cleverly and wanted him in the deal I believe that he is utter, utter dogshite but for some reason people in the game seem to rate him
You are indeed wrong and not for the first time or I am sure the last but SSN confirms it was Smalling, hope this helps
piresistible wrote:The reported 15mil is very good money.
People say we overpaid for Chambers… we’re selling a backup with one year left for nearly the same money.
Yep, add into the mix that he's pushing 29 and has a bit of a chequered record with injuries (unlikely to be aided by minimal gametime last year followed by a World Cup campaign in Brazil).
Nowadays you are looking at £10-15m for any old half-decent young-ish British player (or double/treble if you're Liverpool). So if Chambers turns out to be a quality player with a long career for us, £16m is an absolute snip. One of my main gripes with Wenger (although when it comes to the transfer market most of them overlap) is that in his mind there were two separate markets. I'm not talking about 'external' and 'internal', but we were selling players in the modern day market whilst expecting to buy quality players at unrealistic prices in this non-existent market. It annoyed me that we pilfered so much money for the likes of Adebayor, Toure etc but Wenger would baulk at far more reasonable fees being asked of us and complain about dizzying prices.
My only concern with the Chambers deal was that the position wasn't a priority and that it will mean we will be more reticent to sign players who will make necessary short-term improvements.. I've been pleasantly surprised so far this summer, but every transfer has made me more wary about the prospects of seeing a DM joining which in the opinion of most on here is still an absolute must. The keen-ness of the club to talk up Chambers' versatility worries me a bit because the kid is just not ready to be an option at CB/DM over any serious length of time.
We will have to see how quickly we act and who we sign but the writing has been on the wall with Vermaelen since long before the window opened - if we've not got an advanced contingency plan for him leaving it's shocking.
If Wenger is wanting to sign a player that can fill the CB and CDM roles it has to be Bayern's Javi Martinez for me. Big ask to prise him from Munich but you never know.
piresistible wrote:David Ornstein (BBC) just said the following “Arsenal continue search Vermaelen replacement & also in market for DMF, but may sign 1 player who can perform both roles”
and Jeremy Wilson (Telegraph) “Arsenal transfer priority now is centre-back rather than midfielder. Prob only one more in unless Podolski sold or a good deal comes up”
Both journalists are reliable as they get so wouldnt suprise me if they are right.
wow u actually quoted someone!
if wilson is true we are fucked.
going into the season without a quality dm and expecting to challenge is stupid.
15m for verm is good, but if thats the best quality of cb barca can hope for, what does that mean for us? we cant realistically expect anyone as good as verm.
if we do sign a player who can perform both roles of cb and dm i wont be averse to that, so long as they are top class as a dm.
an encouraging window is in danger of petering out and leaving us not much better off than last season with effectively sanchez the only addition (a v good one) but not addressing our obvious problems (ospina is a good signing and obvious upgrade on flappy but how often is he actually going to feature in the 1st xi?)
Fuck me, you couldn't make it up!!! Wonga has only mugged off Farcelona again, 15m for TV?? You would have thought they would have learnt their lesson by now, especially as they can't get rid of Alex Mong, but fuck it, if they want to throw money away!
I don't expect to see more than 5-7m of it spent on a replacement, so I think we'll see an unknown Frenchman from one of the smaller French clubs come in or maybe an up and coming young Frenchy. Stan will want some of that expenditure brought back in and Wonga's bonus will rely on reducing the transfer deficit!!
Possible targets....
Samuel Umtiti (great name) - Lyon
Loïck Landre - Lens
Aymeric Laporte - Ath. Bilbao
Guillem Balague @GuillemBalague
Khedira: Arsenal made no offer whatsover to Real. No wage agreement as he is far too expensive. He has no intention (as yet) to reduce wages
So that's another 15m taken in ,which basically covers the money spent on chambers ,we got apparently 5m on cesc to the chavs which covers the money we spent on ospina,so we spent 30m on Sanchez approx 10m on debuchy,40m from our rumoured 100m ,if I've left anything out feel free to mention it.