Happy Sunday to you all.
Some interesting stuff going on, particularly in regard to Felipe Melo. As we all know he just signed a new contract extension with Fiorentina which seemed to rule him out of making any kind of move this summer. However, yesterday the Italian club countered rumours in the Italian press that the player was about to sign for Juventus and released a statement on their official website saying Arsenal were the only club to come close to making an offer close to the new buy-out clause.
And not only that, they’ve proposed we make up some of the difference by adding Emmanuel Eboue to the deal. I don’t know about you but that seems like a rather good deal to me. We get the defensive midfielder we’ve been looking for, and a player who divides opinion like no other (apart from maybe the other Emmanuel) moves on.
Of course we may find this deal floundering due to the fact that Fiorentina are not one of the biggest and greatest clubs in Italy and does not befit a talent such as Eboue, according to his agent, but this would be the deal of the summer if it happened.
Meanwhile Emmanuel Adebayor hasn’t exactly commited himself to Arsenal as some reports have suggested. The Observer rang up his agent, Stephane Courbis, and asked him if Adebayor wanted to leave. He said ‘No. No. It’s the same situation as last week’.
So really nothing’s changed. The agent can’t very well come and say ‘He wants to leave’ right at this moment. Arsene Wenger has been exactly effusive about him staying. ‘He can go if he wants’ is not quite the ringing endorsement of one’s services a player likes to hear and I think there’s plenty of this story to run yet. Even with his attempts to attract a buyer with his own Michael Owen style brochure (in case you missed it yesterday).
However, the Mirror has got to get this Sunday’s award for least believable rumour of the day. Milan are willing to take Adebayor, pay us £20m and give us Mathieu Flamini as part of the deal. Even though Flamini upset a few people with the way he left the club that deal, if it were even remotely true, is a no-brainer.
El Mundo are keeping up the Arshavin to Barcelona stuff by running another article this morning saying he’d be the fans favourite signing of the summer. Zzzzz. Here’s a question though – we know Arshavin got rid of his agent, if a club is interested in a player who acts as his own agent, is it double-tapping up if they ring up and ask him to ask himself if he’s interested in a move?
And that’s about all there is this morning. Pre-season training starts tomorrow for the majority of the players, no doubt we’ll get a picture special on the official site so we can point and laugh and say ‘God, look at all those Mickey Quinns waddling about the training pitch after a summer of fish and chips and pints of ale’.
Can’t wait.
