Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

Time was when we knew nothing about transfers until they randomly appeared. Then we just followed them through the the transfer window. Now the rumour mill spins on whether the window is open or not.

So what are the Arsenal stories out there?

Van Persie
Well Arsene Wenger gave the mill a nit of a spin himself this week, pointing out that the likes of Van Persie need their contract renewing this season.

The Mail on Sunday duly follows up with a story that Manchester ‘Top Trumps’ City will toss in a £30million bid if Van Persie shows any reluctance to sign a new Arsenal deal before January. They don’t actually have any Man City sources to back this up, trotting out the ‘sources close to Van Persie’ as the only hint of verification. Which is to say, no verification at all.

Others are running the same story with Juventus or Inter-Milan as the interested parties. This is easy copy and we’re going to see it time and again this season.

Dani Parejo & Raffael
Various media sites are linking Arsenal with these two midfielders and with doubts over Wilshere’s fitness and Benayoun obviously a short-term option, this sort of story obviously has plausibility even if the players named are not the right ones.

Paco Alcacer & Ibrahim Afellay
Also touted are efforts to sign another forward such as Valencia’s Paco Alcacer or Barcelona’s seemingly out of favour winger Ibrahim Afellay. That last one seems pretty tenuous to me. It’s just the Metro picking up on the fact that Afellay has got injured and re-running and old story.

We’re a long way from the next window so this is all pretty speculative. The grain of truth lurking beneath though is the number of key players whose contracts need renewing.

In the Bill Murray film Goundhog Day, the hero is fated to repeat the same day endlessly until he finally works out the right answers to the really important questions in life.

About a year ago I wrote a blogpost called ‘What price Fabregas?‘, the gist of which being that if Fabregas wants to go wouldn’t it be better to get a whopping great price for him and buy a goalkeeper who wasn’t the second worst in the Premier League, a central defender and a defensive midfielder more effective than Denilson to back up Song.  And that was before I heard Gallas was going!

Well hear we go again!

Xavi and Villa are speaking up, on Fabregas’ behalf they say, Wenger is cutting short his holiday, the media tell us, for the Fabregas battle and the man himself is saying little.

The goalkeeping situation doesn’t seem as dire now we’ve had a good look at Szczesny, but despite bringing in two central defenders last summer we are still in the market for another.  And we still need someone better than Denilson!

Various media outlets tell us that both Inter and Chelsea are are in the hunt as well.  But surely after all that has been said by Fabregas in the past he would only go to Barcelona?  So do Barcelona want him right now and do they have the right amount of cash?

But most importantly, Cesc Fabregas needs to decide what he wants and for Arsenal’s sake he needs to do it quickly.  Until he does, Arsene Wenger doesn’t know who to buy or how cash to splash on each purchase.  The choice between the likes of Phil Jones and of Mamadou Sakho is down to cash.