With the Copa America reaching its latter stages, it was expected that there was going to be a break and with the paucity of news coming out from the world of Arsenal, it’s back to another dose of transfer madness yet again. The tales of Petr Cech joining the club are getting tiring and all we can do as Arsenal fans is to wait patiently till we see the news on the official site. However, there has been a bit of information making the rounds is that former Arsenal target, Geoffrey Kondogbia, has joined Internazionale on a long-term deal.
It’s evident that the Gunners need to bring in a defensive midfielder this summer because it would be crazy to think that Francis Coquelin can play every game. Mathieu Flamini is past his peak and all we see him do nowadays is the holding midfielder ‘man-marking’ Mesut Ozil in the dressing room and everywhere else. Mikel Arteta, on the other hand, is aging and I feel he needs to get an elixir of Tomas Rosicky blood if he wants to keep competing at the highest level.
Morgan Schnerderlin has been touted to be the dream target for the Gunners but with Arsene Wenger and co. not even showing any measure of interest this summer, it seems as if the midfielder would probably go to the highest bidder with Manchester United and Tottenham also interested in securing his services.
Inter’s official Twitter account tweeted a picture of Kondogbia signing his contract with some bald chump next to him smiling like he had won a lottery. Inter’s CEO, Adriano Galliani, was very confident of securing the deal for Kondogbia and even went as far of disclosing the full extent of what the move entailed,
“Monaco had given us the all-clear for the sale at €40 million with payment spread over two years, €20 million and €20 million. The agreement with Geoffrey had already been sorted out the night before and was confirmed that same morning by him and his father.”
Last season, Kondogbia had won more tackles (61) than all of Inter’s midfielders put together. However, I wrote an article earlier in the month where I compared Coquelin, Kondogbia with another Arsenal target, Schneiderlin, and from a statistical perspective, Coquelin and Schneiderlin aced Kondogbia.
| League Only | Coquelin | Schneiderlin | Kondogbia |
| Appearances (subs) | 19 (3) | 24 (2) | 22 (1) |
| Tackles made per game | 3.2 | 3.7 | 3.1 |
| Interceptions made per game | 3.7 | 2.6 | 2.5 |
| Fouls committed per game | 1.4 | 1.8 | 1.3 |
| Clearances per game | 3.1 | 1.7 | 0.7 |
| Blocked shots per game | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.1 |
| Aerial Duels Won per game | 2.5 | 1.8 | 1.3 |
| Pass Completion percentage | 85.9% | 89.3% | 86.2% |
| Bookings (Yellow/Red) | (5/0) | (5/1) | (3/1) |
Stats via WhoScored.
At 22, Kondogbia is a very good prospect that could develop under the right guidance, but with Inter snapping the lad up, the Gunners would have to monitor the Schneiderlin situation closely, unless Wenger has something else up his sleeves. A part of me feels that Wenger’s loyalty to his players would see him use Flamini and Arteta in the upcoming season, and while many people don’t appreciate the work Arteta does, his ball-retention skills and the way he controls the tempo of a game are second to none. He also has a very cool composed head and his passing stats are up there with the very best.
Kondogbia is now out of our grasp.
Let’s just see how things pan out in the near future.
Sayonara.
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