Morning all, a quick Sunday round-up for you.
Those looking for Higuain updates will have to be content with the news that Real Madrid look set to appoint Carlo Ancelotti as manager having agreed a €4.5m compensation package with PSG. However, there’s some suggestion he won’t take over until early July.
Whether this has any bearing on what we want to do with Higuain remains to be seen but we know that when it comes to buying and selling players, the managers at Madrid generally have little to do with it. I’m sure if there was a deal acceptable to both parties then it could be done regardless of whether they have a manager in place.
The Mirror links us with a Greek centre-half called Kyriakos Papadopoulos, but from what I hear a centre-half is not one of the priorities this summer. I think Mertesacker and Koscielny formed a great partnership, Thomas Vermaelen says he wants to stay and fight for his place and will, hopefully, be better after a poor season last time around.
The issue really is what we do when we go beyond that. Squillaci is gone, Johan Djourou looks like he’s going to stay in the Bundesliga (at least on loan) for another season, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if Ignasi Miquel is ready, or will ever be ready, to make the step up. We saw Bacary Sagna pressed into action as an emergency centre-half last season but as good as his performance was that day, I’m not convinced it’s an option we should consider on a regular basis.
So, the idea of us paying £13m for a defender who may well be fourth choice seems a bit ludicrous to me. I know there’s been talk of Ashley Williams from Swansea but I don’t know if there’s anything really in that. A £10m price-tag would suggest it’s more speculative than anything.
That said, if we could find a great centre-half to bring in then I have no objections whatsoever, but paying big for someone just to make up the numbers seems odd to me. Still, it is an interesting situation and the manager is going to have do something. Whether that’s keeping Djourou, promoting Miquel or something else we’ll have to just wait and see.
Elsewhere, there’s some really strange stuff from Tony Adams about how he wanted to be Chairman of the club after Peter Hill-Wood retired. He told Ian Ridley (the man who ghost wrote his biography) via the Sun:
Look, I would make the tea for Arsenal Football Club, but I thought I ticked all the right boxes for the board. I don’t need the money, I would put the good of the club first in every case and I could mediate well within the club.
I read an interview with Peter saying they wanted younger blood on the board but it was not easy finding people willing to take on second jobs who were not money-orientated. I thought I ticked boxes, so I wrote to Peter and said ‘I’ve got a statue outside and I know a bit about the club’s principles and values’.
I didn’t hear anything back, which was unusual for Peter, but I know he has been ill. But if they just wanted a figurehead, they should have gone for me.
I should make it clear that Tony Adams the footballer is a real legend. What he did on the pitch was beyond question, lifting the title in three separate decades and encapsulating what it meant to be ‘Arsenal’. But Adams the player and Adams the man are two very different beasts.
Quite why he thinks he ticked all the boxes to become Chairman of the club is beyond me. He has no boardroom experience, and let’s not forget it wasn’t long ago he was talking about how he so badly wanted to manage the club. Now he’s content to be a ‘figurehead’ in the boardroom?
The idea that he’d work for free or make the tea for Arsenal is a lovely, sentimental soundbite, but that’s all it is. We’d all do the same because we’re fans, we love the club, and I’m sure he does too. Yet love of the club is not a qualification for a job there. He strikes me as a man searching for his place in the game. His managerial/coaching career really hasn’t taken off, the old cliche about great players not making great managers rings true here, and this suggestion of giving that up to become a ‘suit’ comes across as a bit desperate but also quite sad.
All we can do is wish him well but it’s hard not to think he’s already had his time at Arsenal.
Till tomorrow.
