Each week begins with optimism in the world of Arsenal and this week will be no different. With crucial ties coming up against Udinese and Manchester United, Arsenal’s season could have a very funny twist if things go wrongly.
With barely two weeks left in the transfer window, Wenger has to delve into the market to search for a player or two because Arsenal is in dire need of manpower that can replace the starting XI when the chips are down. In my opinion, Arsenal needs a centre back, a defensive midfielder and a striker.
The media Vultures picked up where they left off with their endless links and speculations involving Arsenal Football Club. They claim that Olympique Marseille’s boss, Didier Deschamps says that Arsenal is about to bid for Lucho Gonzalez. Lucho is a 30-year old central midfielder that could do a decent job in the middle of the park for Arsenal and I’m pretty sure that Wenger can get him on the cheap. He has a good passing range and he’s a threat from outside the box.
They’ve also reported that Arsenal is gearing up a £12m bid for Stade Rennais’ Yann M’ Vila. The 21-year old chap is a constant name in Laurent Blanc’s Les Bleus side and he has large reserves of stamina and strength as well as great anticipation skills. Bringing on such a player to pair up with Song in the middle will liberate the likes of Wilshere, Ramsey, TR7 and Nasri to harness their full attacking potential.
Stick sticking with Nasri, his potential oil-rich suitor, Manchester City has has threatened to pull the plug on his potential transfer if Arsenal plays him against Udinese next tomorrow. Wenger could use that game to send a vivid message to Manchester City, Arsenal fans and the Board that he’ll rather use Nasri for an entire season and let him go for free at the end of the campaign.
Moving over to one of my headlines, there are reports surfacing that Arsene Wenger is at loggerheads with the Board over transfer dealings as well as other pending issues in the club. For starters, Wenger and the Board are having a conflict of interests over the contract situation of certain players at the club. Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri have a year left on their deals but Clichy opted for the riches of Manchester City while a cloud of uncertainty surrounds Nasri’s situation and the Board wouldn’t want it to happen again with the players whose contracts are expiring in 2013.
Notable players like Robin van Persie, Thomas Vermaelen and Sebastien Squillaci (thank Heavens 🙂 ) have contracts that will expire in 2013 so new deals are on the cards for the first two (I don’t know about the 3rd). Wenger is willing to give contracts as high as £150,000 per week to these players to bring them at par with the likes of players in rival clubs like Manchester clubs but the Board believes that increasing an £80k per week contract to £100k per week is more than enough. We live in a world where the Yaya’s earn £220k and the Wayne’s earn £250k so its painful to know that the Robin’s are still light years behind them when it comes to pay yet they both play on the same pitch for 90 minutes. 🙁
There’s also an issue involving signing players for exorbitant transfer fees but not willing to pay them the wages to match such fees. The Board has told Wenger that he can purchase a player worth £30m (BioHazard of Eden, Karim Karim) but they are not willing to break bank to pay such players huge wages. My question is:
“Is there any player in world football that will be bought for £30m and won’t be paid up to £150,000 every week?”
If you do your research on the likes of Shevchenko in Chelsea as well as those Manchester City boys that came in for such an amount, you’ll find out that they earn good money so I don’t understand why the Board want to become an Uncle Scrooge on such an issue.
It’s clear that Wenger would rather not sign a player at all, than sign someone for a big fee who he considers no better than what Arsenal has. It’s also evident that Wenger has plans for Laurent Koscielny but he has to consider at least one player from Chris Samba, Gary Cahill, Phil Jagielka, Per Mertesacker and Scott Dann because they’ll add to the current depth of his squad.
Koscielny is Vermaelen’s partner in crime at the heart of the defense but he developed a back strain on Saturday and a replacement was needed. Djourou is an injury specialist while Squillaci is a right footed Silvestre so Arsenal had to settle for a 19-year old inexperienced defender that had a hand in Liverpool’s first goal with a poor clearance. This should be the primary reason Wenger should consider signing a center back so I’ll really hope that he’ll get his act right and do what he has to.
Finally, Wenger and the Board as also in a dispute of Samir Nasri’s present situation. The Board wants Wenger to sell Nasri if he doesn’t want to sign a new deal. Wenger has already said that he’ll rather play Nasri throughout this season and let him go for free next summer but the board is more concerned about making that 10m profit not caring if the buyer is a provisional league rival like Man City.
If Alisher Usmanov and Stan Kroenke are still concerned about making all these little greens to add to their shiny greens in their fat accounts at the expense of Wenger, fans shouldn’t point their fingers when things go wrong and when everything spirals out of control.
Not withstanding, Arsenal is in need of 3 players; a center back, a holding midfielder and a striker and I still believe that Wenger would pull the rabbit out of the hat pretty soon.
In other transfer news, Valencia has agreed a £26m move with Chelsea over the services of Arsenal’s transfer target, Juan Mata. This is a very typical Arsenal story so I’m not going to write about it. Names like Ribery, Babel, Smalling and Phil Jones are stuck somewhere in my head, I guess that I’m going to add Mata into the archives. 🙁
In your spare time, you can check out my article about 10 football attributes Mata possesses.. It’s worth a read.
The media Vultures have also reported that Arsenal wants to make a £12m move for Mikel Arteta and a £15m move for Mauro Zarate.
Twitter is a social networking application that connects people with common interests together and it also gives them a chance to interact with each other. Just like Facebook, people follow other people for reasons best known to them. You can find any and everybody on Twitter but I’m going to write about a Twitter row that two tweeps got themselves involved in.
CNN’s Piers Morgan is a bloke that owns a show that has been likened to the great Larry King live but he’s also an Arsenal fan. From time to time, he tweets about the Gunners and he has a lot of people that follow him for reasons best known to them.
When Arsenal lost to Liverpool on Saturday, it was expected that the gooners on Twitter would tweet a thing or two about their disappointment with the loss so Piers Morgan was no different.
Emmanuel Frimpong apologized to the gooners with this tweet:
@EmmanuelF4: “Sorry bout sending off just wanted to give everything to win it was stupid of me nd promise to learn from it.”
Piers Morgan has 1,167,540 followers on Twitter but it seems as if Emmanuel Frimpong ( @EmmanuelF4) is among the 314 †ωεεþs that Mr. Morgan follows so he probably saw Frimpong’s tweet on his time line.
Piers Morgan replied on the tweet:
@piersmorgan: “@EmmanuelF4 I don’t care if you want to look like Mr T’s kid brother. I do care that you got sent off on debut and cost us the match.”
This didn’t go down well with the last Ghanaian Mohican so he replied back at Piers:
@EmmanuelF4: “@piersmorgan if u don’t like my hair its kool but don’t start chatting on twitter like that ur a big man show it”.
When I saw Frimpong’s reply, I got my popcorn and my 3-D glasses ready, because I wasn’t ready to miss a twitfight between two celebrities.
Piers replied:
@piersmorgan: “@EmmanuelF4 You’re a good player, you just need to calm down. On the pitch, and on Twitter. Kind regards, ‘Big Guy’. #Arsenal”
It seemed as if Mr. Morgan was trying to calm things down with this tweet but Frimpong added excess fuel to the fire he was already burning:
@EmmanuelF4: “@piersmorgan U should be ashamed to call urself an arsenal fan all u do is moan about ur team y don’t u do ur job and i will do mine waste”
Piers decided to divert some attention by bringing Jack Wilshere ( @JackWilshere) into the mix:
@piersmorgan: “@JackWilshere I like Frimpong’s aggression and spirit. But I predicted he’d be sent off half an hour before he was. Needs to wise up a bit.”
He still had the time to reply Frimpong:
@piersmorgan: “@EmmanuelF4 Easy, Tiger. Try winning some games (when you’re allowed to play again) and trust me, my mood will soon improve. #Arsenal”
Frimpong wasn’t pleased with his reply so he lashed out at him again:
@EmmanuelF4: “@piersmorgan Come Off twitter and tone that Big Belly.”
Piers tweeted at Wilshere again:
@piersmorgan: “@JackWilshere I rather like @EmmanuelF4 sticking it to me on Twitter. Shows some fire in the belly. And boy, do we we need that. #Arsenal”
He ended it all with:
@piersmorgan: “@EmmanuelF4 I’ll tone down my belly if you tone down your mad tackles. Deal?”
@piersmorgan: “Tell you what @EmmanuelF4 – take all this commendable bravado into Wenger’s office and get him to sign five experienced players, could you?”
From the tweets you’ve read above, you’ll definitely know who the 19-year old is here. When Nasri tweeted about the fans not having respect for him, the gooners on my TL tweeted at him with many tweets that had high contents of profanity but Nasri didn’t reply anyone because there was no need to.
There are some Gunners on Twitter and if you want to get a full list, click here.
I’ve also taken out some time to provide links to the official accounts of some Gunners on Twitter so when you click on the handle, it directs you straight to the Gunner’s Twitter page.
You can follow Wojciech Szczesny @13Szczesny13, Sebastien Squillaci @SEBSQUILLACI, Johan Djourou @JohanDjourou, Bacary Sagna @sagnaofficial, Jack Wilshere @JackWilshere, Samir Nasri @Nanas08, Abou Diaby @ABOUVDIABY, Aaron Ramsey @aaronjramsey, Henri Lansbury @henri_lansbury, Emmanuel Frimpong @EmmanuelF4 and club captain, Robin van Persie @Persie_Official.
The quote of the day goes to Syed Zeeshan Haider Gardezi ( @XEIESHAN_GUNNER)
@XEIESHAN_GUNNER: “Man City’s bench cost more than 70m Meanwhile, at the Emirates, Arsenal’s bench costs more than the Arsenal players on it. Wenger Will u Plz Spend 🙁 “
I want Wenger to spend, the gooners want Wenger to spend, Piers Morgan wants Wenger to spend…
Even Fabio Capello says that Wenger has to spend
Legend has it that the Pharaoh of Egypt was adamant not to let the people of Isreal go despite various pleas from Moses.
It took the death of his first born son to finally let them go.
Arsene Wenger’s first born son in this case might be his job.
Sayonara.
You can follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back 🙂
You can also visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page and click on the like button.
Finally, you can subscribe to the blog to get notifications of new posts by email
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Leave a Reply