Henry Leaving, Everyone Else Coming
So Henry has left. I think there are plenty of places that have already commented on it, so I won’t go into it too much, suffice to say I think the way Henry is leaving has not done him any credit and the fact that a lot of people are angry at him, even when he has done so much for Arsenal, backs up this point. The letter to The Sun, in particularly, was not a great piece of PR.
I’ve previously commented on Dein before, and from what I’ve heard, Dein had a hand in the Henry transfer as well, and if you ever wonder why the transfer fee was so low, well … Even Stan Kroenke may no longer interested in working with Dein having seen what he is capable of, and looks to be forging a working relationship with the existing board instead of trying to go behind their backs. Don’t know if the takeover is still on, but I doubt the board would budge (and rightly so), so perhaps Stan will have to rethink his plans.
So what to do now? If we didn’t need to buy before, we definitely need to now. We’ve since been linked with pretty much every strikers out there: Tevez, Martins, Owen, Anelka, Huntelaar (first every scorer at our new stadium!), Babel and still Eto’o (although seems unlikely to me). Anelka is the one that is most likely (too much smoke for there not to be a fire), but I feel we still need one more from that list, or elsewhere. I don’t like Owen and his injury record, and Babel seems more potential than finished product for now (maybe one to buy for the future, the potential link-up with Van Persie is tasty). Tevez and Eto’o may be out of our price range, one linked with a 30m move to Real Madrid, the other 25m (if Eto’o were to come, surely it would have been discussed during the Henry transfer). Martins has a buy out clause, and financially, that’s the most likely.
But we would have too many forwards in the team if we were to buy two more strikers – don’t forget about Van Persie, Bendtner and Walcott, all of whom will be eager to prove themselves now that Henry is gone. Adebayor gives us something different, and we would always need a player like that. Eto’o makes the most sense, if we only buy him, I think we will be okay up front (especially if we buy Babel too, for the future).
And we still need wingers.
June 28th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Damn, £16 million, that’s a bargain… I would have thought that he’s worth around £30 million, in which case we should have no hesitation in splashing on Eto’o. But I think the crucial thing is that Wenger stays… for it’s over if he’s gone.