Morning All…
In the last few days, we’ve had a influx of players who have declared intent to leave. First Denilson stated his desire to leave, then Niklas followed suit and then Carlos Vela jumped in with a little announcement of his own on twitter. 3 players from the youth project, all ready to jump ship. Loyalty in the game? Virtually none if you consider how many games and how many chances all of the above three players have had in their Arsenal careers. In reality, none of the three players gets into our first team, so perhaps a blessing in disguise that they wish to move on and perhaps a blessing in disguise that some clubs are interesting in them.
Our wage bill is £120m a year and Bendtner (£2.5m/year), Denilson (£2m/year) and Carlos Vela (£1.6m/year) would shave about £6m per annum of the wage bill, so not a bad start to the summer. At minimum they’d bring in at least £5m each, and at maximum, you can look at maybe £20m for the three. We’ll see what happens. If Bayern Munich are really interested and the £12m quoted is true, then it will surely be a good bit of business. I don’t actually think Arsene wants to lose Bendtner, as he has shown incredible faith in the player – but what can you do when players aren’t happy?
Bendtner’s agent and father said this:
“He has made his decision and he has told it to Arsenal. Nicklas needs to be playing from the start so, sadly, he must leave. He wanted to finish the season first, so no-one could say he didn’t fight for a first-team place right until the end. There is real interest from both English and German clubs, and Bayern Munich
were after him, earlier. It’s very exciting. But talk about Aston Villa is rubbish. He has not met anyone from there.”
So, it looks like it’s going to happen, and perhaps it’s the start of a mini-exodus…
Arsene has repeatedly said that he is going to be active in the transfer market, and we’re all eager to see what that actually means…
“We will try to do the right thing this summer and we will try to buy the right players. The amount of money is not always linked with the quality of the player but if we find the right players we will spend the money. But we should not go overboard. Even if people say we have to spend money, we have to be realistic. We cannot buy players for £50 million and, even if we try to strengthen our team and spend money if needed, that is a fact. The market will be hyperactive because everyone believes financial fair play will happen soon. So we are quickly doing the last buying before the stores will be closed. And for the very first time for a while, I will be very active too.”
For all the fans, that statement does have quite an interesting ring to it… Arsene says he’s going to be active – but to be honest, I’ve seen many a summer go past where I’ve been disappointed, so I’m not going to hold my breath. I do hope we try and may one marquee signing… after all the years of selling our best players, it may be just the tonic the remaining players, like Cesc and Van Persie need to give them a spark!
And if the rumours are to be believed then we may have already signed a little talent in Argentian midfielder Ricky Alvarez (although at 6′ 3″, I should refer to him as little)… The video does get better as it continues…
And finally, some great news…
“Andy Carroll and Jack Wilshere will not be part of the under-21 squad which travels to Denmark. Andy has been ruled out through injury. I spoke to Jack last week and he explained that while he told me in March that he wanted to be part of the squad, he now feels he is not in the best condition to take part in the finals. That is based on the number of games he has played for Arsenal this season, sports science data which Jack was presented with last week and concerns he has for his fitness looking ahead to next season.”
Jack isn’t going to the Under 21 tournament this summer… finally, sense has prevailed and the FA have decided that it’s too risky to play a broken and tired Jack through the summer as well as through the season as well as through next season and next summer… hopefully he will get a chance to rest now and prepare himself for his second season at the Emirates as a first teamer…
Hopefully with some new additions by his side.
