Well it looks like our first transfer business of the summer isn’t getting rid of Sol Campbell to Turkey but the signing of Borrusia Dortmund’s Czech midfield Tomas Rosicky. He’s reportedly passed a medical and his signing could be announced today. He took time away from his country’s World Cup preparations to travel to London and his national manager said:
I am surprised it did not come to light earlier. We have tried to keep our promise to keep quiet but I must now admit that Tomas is undergoing medical tests.
A fee of around £6m or £7m is being bandied around but that has yet to be confirmed. What it would suggest though is that Robert Pires is more likely to move as Rosicky would be a candidate for that left hand position. There’s no question he’s a very talented player, he works hard on the pitch and we were seriously interested in him last summer as well. It looks like the boss has got his man at last. As well as that he is proven quality not raw potential. I’m very happy with this signing.
What is nice though is that we seem to have done some business early in the summer and we’re not waiting endlessly for the manager to make his forays into the transfer market. There’s no doubt that other areas of the team need strengthening as well but let’s be happy that we seem to have wrapped up this deal which gives Arsene plenty of time to sort out his other targets. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did all our transfer business before the World Cup began as our pre-season this time around isn’t just leisurely friendlies to get match fitness, there’s the small matter of the CL qualifying round to go through.
The Sol Campbell story turned out to be a premature. Or to put it another way, a load of bollocks, but considering the source it’s not unexpected. He hasn’t been sold to Fenerbache and the Turkish club said yesterday:
The reports that Campbell has reached a deal with our club on every subject and will come to Turkey to sign in the coming days do not reflect the realities.
What a shame. Hopefully he’ll get moved on sooner rather than later though. The Mirror suggests that Everton, Boro and Portsmouth are all sniffing around. Another player who could be on the way out is Swedish midfielder Seb Larsson and who could blame him? He’s performed pretty well whenever given a chance and looks a tidy player but is constantly overlooked for the hapless Alex Song which must be like your wife leaving you for John Prescott. Good luck to him if he goes.
Sven has backed Theo Walcott, who will make his England debut against Belarus this week, after Bobby Charlton said he was too young to perform. Freddie Ljungberg could miss the group stages of the World Cup with a foot injury. Robin van Persie is set to join up with the Dutch squad this week, having been given time off because of our extended season, while Jens Lehmann doesn’t like the World Cup ball saying it’s ‘plastic’.
Jose Mourinho states the obvious by saying Arsenal would never sell any of their top players to him. Maybe that’s because he went to meet one of our players in secret, got caught, denied it before it was proven that he met him and proven that he was lying like a big lying liar whose pants were actually on fire he was lying that much.
And that’s it for today. More tomorrow. Maybe we’ll sign someone else.
