Gilberto going, Hleb gone, Adebayor?
It’s not been a great summer, has it? Flamini left before the season was even over. Hleb looks set to leave soon. Gilberto may be allowed to leave, and Adebayor … who knows what’s going on there.
There has been some movement in as well, but the names coming in are not exactly household names that will get everybody excited (although that’s not important if these players gets people excited on the pitch): Carlos Vela, Aaron Ramsey, Samir Nasri (any day now), and a couple of others.
So Hleb is going to Barcelona. Reports suggests we will get anywhere between €15m and €20m. That’s a great bit of business to be honest for someone that has only scored 10 goals for us in 3 season, despite playing at a second striker in many of those games. Hleb is a skillful player, but a wimp in front of goal (he pretty much admits this), and I just don’t think he is good enough for us anymore. Why Barcelona think he is good enough for them, I don’t know, but perhaps Spanish football will suit Hleb, particularly now the pressure is off as he won’t be first choice there either. Nasri will be Hleb’s replacement, and I think not only does Nasri have more potential, he will provide more immediate end product for us than Hleb … he can’t really provide any less, can he?
Gilberto may be allowed to leave as well, with reports suggest he’s off to Greece. Good luck to him if he goes, because I think he’s another one that’s no longer good enough to warrant a starting place. And to be honest, he’s not a great sub either – he reminds me of Cygan coming on for Pires, nervous and an accident waiting to happen. We will miss his experience of course, and losing both Flamini and Gilberto in the same summer means we need to strengthen. If we spend our money well on a defensive minded central midfielder, then we would have done alright in this area. There is no way to know if Flamini would have performed as well had he stayed and gotten a new contract – how much of his excellent performances was down to him trying to earn a new contract? And we still have Diaby and Denilson, as well as the Song, who did excellently at the ACN. Oh, and Aaron Ramsey too.
Adebayor. What can you say about him that his agent, AC Milan, Barcelona, Peter Hill-Wood, Arsene Wenger and everyone else hasn’t already said? I still think we want to keep him, as you cannot sell so many players and challenge for silverware. We may sell and make a lot of money, and if we use the money wisely, we can build an even better squad with better individuals. But teams need time to gel, over a season or two at least, and so we go into transition again. However, if the money we can get for Adebayor is too good, then it may be hard to resist. And if we already have a replacement in mind, one that Arsene thinks can come straight into the team and get us goals, then perhaps we will sell. I’m bored by this so called saga already, so I don’t really cares what happens now.
As for the claim that we have no money and that’s why all these players are leaving, I think that’s a great exaggeration. Flamini left because we didn’t want to give him £30m over 4 years, which is what he is getting from AC Milan. He’s not worth that much, and no team in England, not even Chelsea, would give him this kind of money. Hleb is leaving because he’s not good enough for us anymore – Hleb knows it, we know it, but Barcelona don’t know it yet. It’s not about money at all. Despite what Wenger has been saying about wanting to keep Hleb, he very quickly started the transfer process for his replacement in Nasri. There is very little resistance for Hleb’s request to leave, let’s just leave it at that. And then there’s Adeabayor, who if the reports are correct, wants silly wages. So this one is related to money, but I don’t think anyone will pay the amount he wants from Arsenal (£120,000 p/w), not even Barcelona or AC Milan. And we shouldn’t pay him this much because he’s not worth that much … he’s neither a star player nor an essential one like Henry or Cesc, and he should not be on their level of salary. If we give Adebayor £120,000 per week (that’s more than most of the players at Chelsea), then there is a legitimate case for others like Van Persie or Clichy to demand more than £100,000, and then Arsenal’s wage bill will become the highest in the world. Even Eboue would be on £80,000!
So we have one player that left because he got the deal of the summer from AC Milan that’s way beyond his worth as a player. Another two that isn’t good enough for us anymore. And one that wants wages which no club in the world is willing to offer. It’s not about us having no money to pay these guys, it’s about us not wanting to pay crazy money for 3 players who were barely first team players a season ago. As for money, this paragraph from the Guardian describes our current situation pretty well:
The club borrowed £260m for the move at a fixed rate of 5.3%, which looks very good in the current financial climate, and their annual repayments of £13.78m are manageable. They have sold 91% of the units at the old Highbury and expect to make £300m upon completion of the development, and the new stadium has almost doubled match-day revenues.
Despite what other media outlets are saying, we are not strapped for cash at all. We are making more than we ever have at Highbury, even after debt repayments, and the Highbury Square development as suggsted above will almost make enough money to pay off all the stadium debts. What has changed though is that players and their agents are much more greedy these days, an effect of the “Chelsea Revolution”. It’s unfortunate, but I’d rather we have players that wanted to play for us, then players who just want money. Any day of the week.