Up For Grabs Now

Exciting news. Up For Grabs Now is now on twitter. Twitter is well suited to us, since it permits us to offer up our snippets of moronic brilliance all the time, in tiny doses, even when we’re on the move. 

Follow us at www.twitter.com/upforgrabsblog

You will notice that it is ‘upforgrabsblog’ rather than ‘upforgrabsnow’. Upforgrabsnow appears to have been taken by somebody who doesn’t like us very much. I advise you to go on there and abuse him for stealing our name to make a twittish tweet calling us gay. Which, ironically, seems to make him seem a bit of a twat.

Or not. Not if you’d rather not.

In any team, but especially one as raw as Arsenal’s current crop, the sale of two of your most experienced players represents a risk. Selling them to the team tipped by many as your closest challenger is a gamble so big and fat you could put lend it some goalie gloves and call it Paddy Kenny. 

At first glance, Manchester City’s strategy would seem to be a winner. If you’re going to spend big, better still to weaken your key rivals by signing their stronger players. It makes sense.  They got our vice-captain and longest serving player, and our main striker. Which sounds pretty devastating.

But Mr Wenger is definitely up to something

Famed for his ability to sell off damaged goods at the right time, some are suggesting that Arsenal are getting more money for Toure and Adebayor than they’re worth; that like many others to leave N5 they will soon discover that Arsenal made them look like rather better players than they actually are; and that both players are in decline in any case.

Let’s hope so. Our massive financial disadvantage is only going to get bigger if we lose out on Champions League football next spring, an eventuality which would in all probability prove pivotal to the modern history of the football club.

My instinct is that Mr Wenger has got this right.

Toure was a stop-gap who grew into a lynch-pin, treasured by all at the club, but rarely considered a truly top-class defender. The last of the Invincibles, he will be missed by many, but more for his character and heart than his ability.

He was always one of those players whose eventual market value was difficult to predict, and the £16 million figure mentioned seems like good money for a player who was unhappy enough to request a move in January.

Which leaves Gallas, Vermaelen, Djourou, Senderos, Song and Silvestre, and, to be honest, a lot of Gooners praying for another centre half.

At the arse-end of last season, Mr Wenger regularly lamented our lack of height in defence, which points towards a certain 6′5” Norwegian Cottager.

Hangeland for Toure? Sounds like the right kind of roulette to me.

Much in the tradition of my contributions, this week I refuse to degrade myself to the level of other commentators by seeing how long I can make hilarious leaving puns about Emmanuel Adebayor: ‘AdeBYEBYEor’, ‘Adebay-OFF’. ADEBAYOFF HAHA YEAH SEE! I shall instead ask you more intelligent readers a different question:

Why are Manchester City assembling the laziest team in the history of football?

It must be difficult having unlimited money. Forced to labour under the impression that winning things will somehow now be very easy, and happen irrespective of having an aggressive Welsh wanker managing your club, as an owner or chairman you are forced to set yourself little games to amuse yourself. Different people do different things. Roman Abramovich got around this problem by firing one of the world’s best managers, hugely respected by his team, and replacing him with an unqualified Uncle Festa lookalike, and then a succession of other unsuitable foreigners after he proved to be surprisingly good. Manchester City’s chairman is approaching the issue differently, instead choosing to purchase a wide and exciting range of the world’s laziest footballers. Clearly he was inspired by the sight of Craig Bellamy and Robinho sitting in a chair for training (or something), and decided that if he bought a whole team like that it would make the Premiership a bit more interesting.

This is the only way to explain the otherwise ludicrous amount of money he has spent luring the gangly, bone-idle Togolese cash hole up to Eastlands. As an Arsenal fan I cheer, but as a fan of football I weep tears of hysterical laughter mingled with great sadness. Never in the field of human football has so much been paid by so few for so little. Oh well. Hopefully he can continue to score against Spurs, and we can continue to laugh at them. Other than that there is little hope, given that his previous record suggests he operates a system whereby the number of goals he scores per season is inversely proportional to his salary.  £40,000 – 30 goals. £80,000 – 15 goals. £150,000 – seven goals if they’re lucky.

More fool them I say. 

Ade’s signing has been confirmed by Manchester City, having finally settled his hideous loyalty bonus dispute in whatever fashion.

A suitable reminder of the reasoning behind the whole sorry affair appears at the bottom of the linked article, where his new club are kind enough to remind their fans that the club shop is open tomorrow.

A market in the flesh, that’s what this is.

Ade looks sad to have left in that picture, I think, and sadder still to have to pretend to be excited about the 300 lonely souls who turned up to welcome him. That’s not very many, is it Ade?

Wenger’s cards very close to his chest post-Barnet, and it looks like the fee will be ‘undisclosed’.

Thoughts?

You can’t help feeling that Arsenal’s summer is going to turn on the next few days.

The possible sale of Emmanuel Adebayor, approached by Manchester City and apparently on his way north, will very likely dictate the order of Mr Wenger’s business at least until pre-season kicks off. The figures quoted are likely to be unreliable, and I’d certainly like to see Ade pulling in a hefty fee, hopefully pushing £30million. £20million is Robbie Keane money, and though Ade certainly isn’t on anyone’s list of beloved Arsenal players right now, his European pedigree alone ought to guarantee a serious figure, especially if they’re going to be paying him anything like the numbers quoted.

People may also start to get a bit jittery about his sale. It’s easy to get carried away over how much you dislike a player when they end the season in poor form and give a series of foolish interviews. Some people have taken this too far, turning him into the solitary scapegoat for another frustrating climax to a season that stuttered, sparked, promised, then collapsed.

But with his exit now looking more and more likely, thoughts turn to what we’d be missing.

His crossbar-busting volley against Tottenham. His ridiculous overhead kick against Villarreal. The marvellous chest-and-smash finish at St James’ Park. These are not the goals of an ordinary footballer.

There’s also the sulking, the shrugging, the offsides and the non-commital strolling – of course. He has seemed to change visibly since Milan’s interest last summer. From the eager, enthusiastic big kid wowed by the Premiership playground, he has turned into a scowling, brooding presence, all heavy knees, trudging feet and hands on hips.

It happens to too many of the players who owe their stardom to Mr Wenger and Arsenal, far too many. Mr Wenger may have a wonderful eye for potential and an astute sense of how to turn it into top class footballers, but even he, it seems, can’t teach loyalty.

Still, he’s not gone yet, and an Ade-Rebirth may be round the corner, awkward as this would be.

And if he goes? We’d need a striker, and a serious goal-grabbing striker at that. The word is Chamakh, which feels for me like a sensible, like-for-like option. But it also feels like we’d probably be weakened overall by gaining the Moroccan at the Togolese’s expense. Less experience of top class football (though the same age at 25) and an inferior goals record. And still a hefty chunk of every second season away in Africa.

Chamakh has a famous work-rate and is a generous team-player. The goals he does score are very often with headers from crosses. Now, you might argue that that would add a much needed dimension to our team, but then is the midfield set up to provide the kind of service he’d need? I’m not so sure.

For me, the big question would have to be how much of a premium Mr Wenger sets on aerial ability. If this is what he’s after, he’ll need another Ade, and Chamakh would do. But then we already have a promising (that’s right), aerially imposing centre forward – Bendtner – who has a better goals ratio and is settled in the squad. Surely it wouldn’t be very Wengerish to bring in an older player of similar profile – or am I conflating the two players’ styles too simplistically?

Personally, I hope Mr Wenger thinks seriously about Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Ludicrously sidelined by the marquee signing jamboree and seemingly available for around £18m, I can’t think of a more natural goalscorer in Europe, and as the teams with the big wallets seem to follow the headlines and the fashion it looks like he’s without a major suitor. He’s not big, but he’s brilliant in the air and his style of play would complement any of RVP, Eduardo or Bendtner. We couldn’t use him as a target man, but then you could argue that Ade isn’t great in that role either.

I think he’d score a tonne.

I’m going to put my balls on the block on this one.

Melo hasn’t signed for Juve, as everyone seems to think.

SkyItalia have been stubbornly ‘breaking’ this story pretty much every day this week, and they have shown to be talking complete bollies every time.

It appears that Melo is now in negotiations with both Arsenal and Juventus, and will essentially have to choose between them.

A no-brainer, you might think, but you’ve got to remember that not all footballers have quite the same Anglo-centric perspective on which league is the place to be right now.

I’ve personally never understood the appeal of playing for a club like Juventus, representing confirmed cheats and swindlers in a half-empty and entirely soulless stadium miles outside Turin, but then Trezeguet and Nedved never seemed to mind.

We’re back. And we didn’t miss much, did we?

Vermaelen signed, youngster after nipper signed up on ever longer contracts, and Mr Wenger made a brief appearance  on French radio. You didn’t really need your daily splash of UpForGrabsNow to get you through that, did you?

The truth is, it’s been no time for blogging. No, now is the time of year for basking in the hot sun, and the warm afterglow of Arshavin’s quadruple at Anfield.

There’ll be no football for ages and it’s no use torturing yourself by wistfully flitting through Arsenal.com’s exhaustive serialisation of the Player of the Year poll results – “Revealed Today! 34th in our poll was… Amaury Bischoff!”

That way lies insanity. Better to tough it out with a spot of Wimbledon and occasional chortles at GuardianFootball’s superlative Rumour Mill.

One rumour to burst from its cold chrysalis and emerge blinking into the glorious flash-bulbs of a shirt-holding-up-ceremony with all the trimmings, was our interest in former Ajax skipper Thomas Vermaelen. He looks a shrewd signing. Great experience gained as captain of a major European club at just 23, and Tommy will surely be pressing for a starting spot in what’s been a problem position ever since Sol. He looks a bit like Vidic, I think, which means he possesses the eyes of an especially calculating cougar about to clamp it’s jaws around the neck of a hapless snow-hare, and appears to have had a sizeable steel plate embedded deep within his forehead. Let’s hope he plays like Vidic, too.

I expect to see a couple more brought in within the next few weeks, but Mr Wenger will be patient and try to pick his moment. Unless a lot of agents are telling a lot of porkies (not altogether unlikely really) we’re keeping an eye on a range of central defenders, from Werder Bremen’s Brazilian man-giant Naldo to Stuttgart’s promising Serdar Tasci.

What’s that? No midfielders?

The Arsenal Midfield Transfer Target Mystery grows deeper by the day, with every hack and his swarthy hound scrapping for a place within the very broad consensus of opinion That Arsenal Need A Tough-Tackling Midfield Enforcer If They Are To Challenge For Major Honours Next Season (the concluding phrase of every report on Arsenal’s transfer policy for the last, um, 3 years – with a brief interlude during Flamini’s good form).

Everyone is agreed. Mr Wenger has to buy a big hairy troll-man to guard Fabregas.

But who? Nobody seems to have a scoobie, frankly. The papers have largely (and mercifully) stopped bothering with the customary nods towards Inler, Cana, M’bia and Matuidi. They’ve been nodding towards that lot, and a few others, for bloody ages. They’ve probably got really sore necks by now. You’ve got to stop somewhere.