Morning all from summery Dublin. By that I mean it’s a typical Dublin summers day, damp and grey.
Some rather strange quotes from Arsene Wenger have emerged this morning. In a News of the World article linking us with an £18m move for Klaas Jan Huntelaar, the boss is reported to have said:
The strategy of the club is to sell every year and to buy less expensive players. We manage at Arsenal to maintain all our football ambitions — national and European —while having to free up – for 17 more years – an annual surplus of £24m to pay for our stadium. The club’s strategy is to favour the policy of youngsters ahead of stars and to count on the collective quality of our game.
Now, bar the first line of that it makes sense. Yes, we have a debt which we are managing well. The club’s policy for the last few seasons has been to develop youth. It’s something Arsene admitted a long time ago – that with the new stadium he felt he would have to take a different approach. There was no Chelsea on the scene at that time though, inflating the transfer market, and throwing around money like someone had just landed on their purple with 4 houses and a hotel in Monopoly. So he chose very deliberately to build his squad in a different way.
However, I am very, very dubious about the first line where he says the strategy of the club is to sell each summer and buy less expensive players. To make something like that public is almost suicidal as other clubs would come after our players and our negotiating position would be seriously weakened because of this admission. I don’t think Arsene Wenger would say something like that. I really don’t.
It’s interesting that the quotes don’t come from any particular interview, or ‘Wenger said at a meeting on Tuesday’. To have said something like this would be the football equivalent of Gerald Ratner. Ratner was the Chairman of large chain of jewellery stores who famously admitted most of their merchandise was ‘crap’, comments which very nearly destroyed the company. So I’m a little bit doubtful that Arsene said that. A by a little bit, I mean a lot. We know that Wenger is a shrewd negotiator, we’ve seen him do fantastic deals in the past so for him to instantly weaken his hand in any transfer move just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me.
So before you feel like the world is caving in this morning, which is quite clearly isn’t, try and imagine Arsene saying that. I just can’t. Especially as we’re in negotiations with another club for at least one of our first team. Who would it suit for a quote like that to emerge? Not Arsenal, that’s for sure. It’s definitely stinks.
As for Huntelaar, if Adebayor goes then he’s one of the leading candidates, but you just wonder if he’d be another Kezman if he came the Premier League.
The Telegraph says we’re in pole position to sign Andrei Arshavin after Chelsea pulled out of the race. They say the player wants to come to London so his children can learn English but Chelsea, having signed Deco, don’t need him. The reported £20m price tag would be an issue though. He’s a good player but he’s not worth anything close to £20m. His agent says:
Arshavin’s future may be dependent on conversations about Hleb, Adebayor, Cristiano Ronaldo and others.
So there’s a bit of a merry-go-round going …erm… round here. The Spanish press are reporting those quotes as well this morning. Beyond that there’s nothing new to report from those bastions of truth and diligent reporting.
And that’s really about it. Watch the Wenger quotes explode over the papers and blogs this morning but again I’m really doubtful he said that.
Have a good Sunday folks.
