 |
| Rosicky: New Deal? Oh Yes Please!! |
The first noise is about Tomas Rosicky signing a contract extension at the club. Now, I must say, in his current form, and at such a key stage in of the season, I think this is very good news indeed. Even though I think Rosicky is past his best form, I think he is still a very decent footballer to have in the squad.
At a time when we are all collectively crossing our fingers, toes, legs, arms and any other crossable part of our anatomies that Robin Van Persie stays, it's good to keep our senior squad members.
Thomas Vermaelen led the way first by committing his future to Arsenal a few months ago, and since then, we have been extending the contracts of several other players, mostly the young ones. Now we really need Robin Van Persie to sign a new deal. Nomatter how much money we throw at him, his decision will come down to our ability to challenge for trophies. And if we are really serious about winning trophies, it's time that we changed our transfer policy (or lack thereof) and actually started to strengthen our squad instead of always selling our top players...
The bit that worries me though about Van Persie is the statement made by the manager that we need to make a profit at the start of each season to pay for the stadium. And looking at our trend in past few seasons, and reading our financial statements over the same period, it would appear that selling our star players is necessary to achieve our business and financial objectives, contrary to most fans' and pundits' belief that Arsenal is sitting on a large pot of cash and not spending it. This peace by the Swiss Ramble does justice to our true state of affairs.
The noises coming out of Germany and FC Koln to be specific, suggesting that Lucas Podolski has been signed and will be unveiled as an Arsenal players at the end of the season or will be signed by Arsenal at the end of this season, depending on who you believe is both exciting and worrying to be honest.
Firstly, it could be that Arsenal is changing it's way of handling transfer business and wanting to sort out it's business early (strengthen the squad) to allow the team to be settled come the start of the next season- ala Manc-ies United. This would be a welcome change from the shambles of (especially) the start of this season. We went through the entire pre-season with speculation over Fabregas and Nasri and even started the season with that speculation still hanging over the club. What happened after is well documented.
Secondly, it could just be that there is internal acknowledgement that Van Persie will leave or needs to be sold to sustain our business model. In that case, Lucas Podolski, a left footed striker has been identified as his replacement.
This second scenario is most likely. Now, I do not for a second want Van Persie to go or to be sold, but the fact that he has not signed a deal yet tells me that he is unlikely to stay. Players who wind-down their contracts to one year do so because they want to leave or because they are not very good and their parent club has offered them a lower wage or not even offered them a deal at all. We know that Van Persie has long been offered a new deal, which, like other Arsenal captains before him, he hasn't signed, wanting to wait until the end of the season. What is he waiting for? Is he not convinced with the strength/quality of the team?
What will convince him, between now and the start of the next season, to sign a new deal? I have not looked at any statistics, but it would be interesting to see how many (star) players in their prime have renewed their contracts at their clubs after they had run them down to 1 year...? Anybody have any stats on that, please share. As long as Arsene Wenger is the boss, Arsenal will never sign 4 or 5 big name players in a single season. So if Van Persie isn't convinced with the current team which he is captaining, what are the odds he will be convinced in the summer? I'm sorry, but I doubt he'll stay.
Lucas Podolski, if he is signed, will be the main striker, with Joel Campbell (remember him?) playing second fiddle for the main striker role. That leaves Gervinho, Miyaichi, Theo and Oxlade-Chamberlain to battle for the wide berths... Enough of that for now.
What about the Newcastle game tonight? firstly, Spurs lost at Everton, leaving the door for third place slightly open for us. Chelsea won, and are level on points with us but we have a game in hand and a marginally better goal difference. If we beat Newcastle tonight, the gap between us and Spurs will be just 1 point. We also open up a 3-point gap between ourselves and Chelsea, who are yet to play Spurs... mmhhhhhh!!
Spurs are well and trully rocking at the moment and we must take firm and total advantage of their slump. If we cut the gap to 1 point tonight, suddenly, 'Arry will be very twitchy, Adebayor and Gallas will begin to do what they did so well at Arsenal- sulk, the entire Spurs team will start to have doubts about one another and that's our cue to overtake them.
 |
| Andre Santos: Who's the daddy? |
The thing with Diaby, I think is to play him as a luxury sub for now until the end of the season... i.e play him for the last 10-15 minutes of a game that you are comfortably winning so that he gets game time. Otherwise, I can see him continue to get hamstring injury after hamstring injury like the unfortunate Coquelin. Lets save Diaby for next season, hopefully, like Van Persie, he will be over his injury problems.
A fit Diaby is quite a remarkable midfielder. He can go past players with the ball, shoot, pass, is aggressive in the challenge, can dominate the midfield. In the last game against Liverpool, he showed the qualities we have been missing in midfield during his 28 minute cameo. Until he did his hamstring, we played better with him in the team. Now imagine if we had a fit Wilshere as well...
So, we go into the last 11 games of the season with a much fitter squad. Let's give Newcastle a real hiding tonight and after that, Tottenham will be shitting their collective pants. The players are talking the talk but I don't care for that anymore. Let the football do the talking gentlemen!
We have had enough of you talking about delivering and not delivering, only for you to talk again about delivering after failing to deliver the deliverables... No Thanks gentlemen!!
COYG!!!!!!
Onwards march the Arsenal!!!!
.............................................................
@the_afrogunner on twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment