Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

So, Pep Guardiola promises to battle for a Fabregas deal up until 31st August and says that Barcelona has enough money stuffed down the back of the sofa to do it.

Except of course that their idea of enough money has so far been way short of what Cesc is worth and Sports Director Andoni Zubizarreta says that their number one priority is signing Alexis Sanchez.

All of this they describe as approaching Arsenal and Fabregas with ‘complete respect’.  What complete rubbish.  They won’t respect Fabregas or Arsenal by paying what Fabregas is worth and they will leave Arsene Wenger worrying about needing a last minute transfer deal to replace him, so screwing up the club’s transfer strategy.  Barcelona are just trying to get the pressure Arsenal into giving up Fabregas for less than he is worth.  Well fair enough, they’ve got their job to do, but please don’t call it respect!

Fabregas doesn’t say anything decisive publicly because he doesn’t want to offend either manager.  It’s a mess and it makes it very difficult for Arsenal to know what they need in midfield.

Meanwhile, we still don’t have the signing we need at the back.  The Mirror has reheated the Cahill story today, although only as a throw away line at the end of their Fabregas piece, and elsewhere suggestions are that Arsenal have baulked at the idea of paying £20 million for Phil Jagielka.

Jagielka surely can’t be worth £20million and yet this summer we’ve already seen Phil Jones move to Manchester United for something over £17million and Jordan Henderson go to Liverpool for £20million.  So maybe in this crazy football world he is!

Kyle Bartley has been quoted as wanting first team football at Arsenal and you can’t blame him for that.  He wasn’t one of four central defenders to go on the far east jaunt and it isn’t clear where he stands relative to Miquel.

Given that Arsenal did put in a big bid for Jones, I assume that Wenger is in the market for a central defender.  That would make Bartley sixth or seventh choice, so hardly surprising that he’s making some noise.

After last season’s performance I suspect most Arsenal fans would move him above Squillaci in the pecking order and some are beginning to wonder about Djourou.

Oh for goodness sake, now I’m debating who our seventh choice central defender is!  Bring on some real hard news and some football.

Well Arsene started it I suppose, promising a busy summer!  Did I miss anyone out of the Sunday paper rumour fest?

The stuff in all this that is most likely for real is that a deal is there soon for Gervinho and a deal for Samba is being contemplated by Arsenal and Blackburn.  Blackburn’s Chairman reveals that Samba ‘has an ambition to play for Arsenal’ and that they might reluctantly have to go a long with it.

You can understand that reluctance when they’ve already lost Jones.  I mean, it would be like us losing Fabregas and Nasri in the same window wouldn’t it?

If these two deals (or a different central defender) do come through soon it will settle nerves around the place as a firm signal from Arsene Wenger that he really does intend more change than normal this summer.

I’m not going to write a deep analysis of how Eto’o and Barton could work well in the same team, though I suppose stranger things have happened.  Inside I’m torn between the prospect of having to think positively about Joey Barton and the images of Arsenal heads dropping against bottom-half opposition!  I’m going to lock that all away in a dark corner for now as 90% of this transfer stuff is rubbish anyway.

Perhaps the sane thing to do is ignore all the Sunday papers in June and follow the example of of Arsenal blog ‘A Cultured Left Foot’ – which today spurns transfer speculation for an appreciation of Anders Limpar.  For more recent fans, he was sort of Andrey Arshavin in an earlier life.  Anyway it’s well worth a look.

Great memories, that dreadful ‘rag-doll’ away strip.  That game against Coventry with Limpar’s hat-trick – even Perry Groves scored, but mind you the Coventry captain got Arsenal’s first with a bullet header past his own keeper!  Brian Moore (?) described it as one of Arsenal’s most spectacular goals of the season!

At last some real transfer action after a couple of weeks worth of rumour. The Arsenal deal is the smallest, with confirmation that 19 year-old Carl Jenkinson is joining from Charlton. At least he’s a tall defender even if it wasn’t the most exciting of announcements. It will be interesting to see where he comes in the pecking order relative to Squillaci, Ignasi or Eboue. He looks a decent buy and we may not see any big Arsenal deals until the futures of Fabregas and Nasri are sorted.

Meanwhile Manchester United look like they have won the signature of defender Phil Jones, despite a big bid from Arsenal apparently. Jones will have to fight his way past Evans and Smalling to break the partnership of Vidic and Ferdinand. Not that Ferdinand looked that special for England the other day!

Liverpool have taken Jordan Henderson from Sunderland for £20million. That’s about two thirds of what Barcelona reputedly want to pay for Fabregas!

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.

Denilson is widely quoted as wanting to leave Arsenal in search of regular first-team football that will, apparently, propel him into the Brazil team.  I don’t want to do the guy down, but I suspect it isn’t as simple as that!  But he won’t be greatly missed.  He showed early promise but his development seemed to stall and now Wilshere and Ramsey make him a distant choice.  At the moment he is only really getting in as less than ideal cover for Song. The Mirror suggests that Sevilla, Roma and Wolfsberg would be interested.

The Mirror rounds off its piece by tossing in the Sagna to Real Madrid story plus Chris Samba or Phil Jones coming in from Blackburn to shore up the defence.  Neither are bad players, but I’m not sure either would be the step forward we need.

According to The Sun, Arsenal have contacted Real Madrid about attacking midfielder Sergio Canales, but supply any real detail.

The Nicklas Bendtner exit story is in the Guardian today but it doesn’t seem to add any new information from yesterday.

The Mirror’s main Arsenal story is that Arshavin is going back to Zenit St Petersberg, or possibly Udinese.  I guess we’re going to see a lot of Arshavin stories, but will he actually go?  Wenger still makes positive statements about him and Arsenal won’t want to drop too much of the £12million he cost to bring in.  Plus he won’t want much of a wage cut.  I think he’s more likely to stay than go, despite his rather lacklustre season.

Over at The Mail they think that Arsenal are having a good look at Stewart Downing!  Really?  I agree with Arseblog on that one:  ‘if he were right footed, would be scratching around the Championship somewhere’.  Exactly so!

Day 2 – Tuesday 24th May 2011

In – (mentions)

Sergio Canales (1) from Real Madrid – Sun
Stewart Downing (1) from Aston Villa – Mail
Phil Jones (1) from Blackburn Rovers - Mirror
Chris Samba (1) from Blackburn Rovers - Mirror

Out - (mentions)

Andrey Arshavin (1) to Zenit or Udinese – Mirror
Bacary Sagna (1) to Real Madrid – Mirror
Denilson (3) to Sevilla, Roma or Wolfsburg – Various

In - (daily mentions since end of season)

Ricardo Alvarez -  1
Sergio Canales -  1
Stewart Downing -  1
Phil Jones -  1
Chris Samba -  1

Out - (daily mentions since end of season)

Andrey Arshavin -  1
Niklas Bendtner -  1
Denilson -  1
Bacary Sagna -  1