Today we should see some official announcements as the better quality rumours of yesterday are turned into solid stories. We should see confirmation that Park Chu-Young and Andre Santos are now Arsenal players.
Both of these deals represent some rapid footwork on Arsenal’s part, in stark contrast to the rest of our dealings this summer.
Fenerbahce’s punishment for match-fixing was announced last week, creating the possibility that they would be open to deals on star players and that the players themselves would want a move. Now Santos is an Arsenal player and Traore is being offloaded to QPR. Nice work for a change.
Some quick work also allowed Arsenal to hijack Lille’s deal for Monaco’s Park Chu-Young and secure what looks like a very decent back-up striker to Robin Van Persie.
Of course, that still leaves the long drawn out saga of filling key vacancies in central defence and midfield.
So what are the quality rumours of today that will be the solid transfer deals of tomorrow?
Over the last twenty-four hours, Arsenal have been linked to loads of players as the media and players’ agents try to help spend the sizable transfer budget.
In the last twenty-four hours, Arsenal have been linked with:
Eden Hazard, Yossi Benayoun, Gary Cahill, Leighton Baines, Marouane Fellaini, Alex, Kaka, Eljero Elia, Park Chu-Young, Yann M’Vila, Mikel Arteta, Adam Johnson, Mateo Kovacic, Mario Goetze, Florent Malouda and Sol Campbell to name but a few.
Most intriguing perhaps are the three Chelsea players. What’s going on here? Presumably, someone has leaked some sort of contact with Chelsea but nobody really knows who it is about. Or is Arsene about to play some kind of Chelsea Supermarket Sweep and have them all!
Or is it just simply made up stuff from journalists who haven’t got any copy and so they’ve trawled the list of out of favour players. Of course there are plenty of out of favour players, just at Chelsea and Manchester City. The combination of huge budgets and rapid turnover of managers has left quite a few decent players warming the bench at both clubs.
As far as a central defender goes, I still think there is a good chance that we will see a deal for Gary Cahill. Despite the hostile rhetoric of the last few weeks the logic is there. Bolton need cash to bring in a striker, they are massively in debt. We have the cash and Cahill could leave on a free next year.
There is some talk that Spurs want him too, but nothing of substance and at the moment Arsenal could outbid them if we really want him.
Benayoun or Malouda? I can’t see that Malouda has anything that Gervinho or Park don’t already bring.
Benayoun as Fabregas replacement? Maybe. Not as good obviously, but the endless saga of Cesc’s departure has probably blown the chance of an equal replacement. There is also an argument that spreading the budget over more than one replacement could give Arsenal a more balanced side.
We shall see, and soon now – less than two days to go.
