Up For Grabs Now

Good morning and welcome to yet another instalment of tedious speculation about Andrei Arshavin. Nope, scrap that. As far as I’m concerned the last word on the matter has come from the Arseblogger with his astute owl comparison. We will not be mentioning the Arsh-word until something actually happens apart from his agent sitting in London hotels claiming that “ten, fifteen, twenty-five” top clubs all want to buy his boy. Now, there’s quite a big difference between having 10 clubs interested and twenty-five, isn’t there. It’s also curious in that case that they only ever mention Arsenal as even vaguely interested (and Sp*rs, but let’s be realistic here). Anyway, I’ll draw  a line under the whole sorry affair until Arsene says otherwise:

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That feels better, doesn’t it? In place of the Arsh-word I’d like to suggest a player who I would love to see Arsene bring in this January. I’ve hinted at it before, but I really do think that Juan Sebastian Veron would be worth a shot.

In his favour is that he’s experienced at the very highest level of European football, can still pass like no-one else in the world apart from possibly Cesc, is being seriously considered for captaincy of the Argentinian national team and was last week awarded the South American Footballer of the Year award for his superb performances for Estudiantes, suggesting there is a lot of skill and influence in the old dog yet.

I also think he’d be very cheap and could be interested in a loan deal. I’ve seen him making noises about going to Lazio, but Lazio don’t seem to keen, probably still annoyed at his departure in 2001. Still, the fact that he’s interested show’s he’s got the appetite to get back in the big time.

 He’d bring us exactly the kind of guile and experience that we need so badlyfor our midfield in the short term. He’s obviously eligible for the Champions’ League, where he was never short of superb for United and I certainly don’t see how he could do any harm to our season.

Clearly, people will point to his failure at United and Chelsea. Of course he never produced as everyone expected him to, but I always felt the extent of his “failure” was overblown by the then unheard of transfer fee shelled out for him and the media’s desire to pillory Fergie as we stormed to the title in 2002. Arsenal play their football in a very different way to Chelsea and United and his sheer passing ability might see him fit into our style surprisingly well.

He is a player of rare class and natural ability. Might it not be worth having a Bischoffian “gamble” on him?

Very interested to hear your thoughts on the idea of Veron coming to Arsenal.

On to other stuff, and I always enjoy reading TribalFootball if only to laugh at their always bizarre angle on footballing developments. Yesterday they ran the headline: “FABIANSKI REVEALS ARSENAL KEEPER DREAM!” What a revelation. Who could ever have guessed that all this time he was hoping to get a game. Someone better tell Arsene, pronto.

The crowning glory, though, was this little jewel of an analysis of Sp*rs purchasing of Jermaine Defoe:

Tottenham have got the 26-year-old England star on the cheap. They will only pay around £6million for him as Portsmouth still owe them £7m from the original deal and on their other Spurs signings Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes.

It is an incredible piece of business by Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy.

They’re right to use the word “incredible”. As in, incredibly foolish, incredibly profligate, incredibly expensive. However much you try and make the deal look “on the cheap”, it quite simply wasn’t. That £7 million which Tottenham “saved” was money they were owed, y’know, like it was going to belong to them pretty soon. You can’t just pretend it never existed.

 Apparently Jermaine was charming enough to request £700,000 from Portsmouth as a “loyalty bonus”, which Tottenham kindly paid for them. Snivelling. Little. Gits.

As the hour’s tick down towards the January transfer window (the start of which is celebrated around the world with fireworks and dancing, though I may have misunderstood this) and with no matches until Plymouth on Saturday, I thought I’d take a broad look at the transfer market and Arsenal’s position going into it.

I can’t remember a stranger market, nor one where a player’s value was so randomly ascribed. In a good deal, both parties should feel slightly uncomfortable – the buyer that he might have overpaid, and the seller that he might have undersold. What we’ve got right now is a seller’s market where nobody’s quite sure where all that money is coming from. And with Arsenal very much a buying club this January, that’s not good news. It means we’ll have to be pretty cunning to come out in February with a significantly improved squad.

Some good games for Portsmouth won Lassana Diarra a whopping £22million move to Real Madrid. Now, if you believe the Independent, Portsmouth are talking about £24 million for Jermaine Defoe, who moved in the opposite direction for £9 million not that long ago. Somehow if you throw in a goals record at Pompey which was essentially a continuation of his Spurs form when he was getting a game and add in the financial crisis, the player is valued nearly 3 times higher!

If that’s the going rate, what on earth would we need to pay for someone in the class of Ribery, or Aguero? This is only a few months after City bought Robinho for £30 million. How does Defoe plus £6million sound as a fair deal for him?

Klaas Jan-Huntelaar, a top class international striker covetted by all the major clubs in Europe and with Champions’ League experience, moves to Madrid in an initial £17m deal which could rise as high as £23million depending on performance. This seems like a fair price for such a talented player. What’s odd is that the second tier of Premiership clubs are expecting each other to outspend Real Madrid in exchange for inferior quality.

These are the sort of fees Arsene has never spent. In the past only players with international pedigree and good records at top clubs have been able to command these kinds of numbers. Now everyone’s doing it. Defoe’s a good player, but at best you’re probably signing 20 goals a season, for which you must now pay top dollar.

In one sense, I suspect the financial crisis is perversely responsible for this. You might have expected to see good players available for bargain bucks, but that simply hasn’t happened. Taking Defoe as an example, Portsmouth could flog one of their assets and they’d have a bit more money. In the past you’d just bring in a cheaper replacement and trouser the rest. The thing is that once they’ve flogged Defoe they’ve probably increased the risk of relegation quite considerably, and this is where the rub really comes. Mediocre Premiership clubs are now less interested in good deals than they are in avoiding the ruin of relegation at all costs. They are asking for such high prices exactly because they are so risk-averse right now.

This has a curious effect on the valuation of players from clubs like Everton or Villa. Say we tried to sign Arteta. You’d think about £10-£12 million would do the job, but Everton will naturally look for a replacement from a lower club, say Morten Gamst Pedersen. But when they enquire they’ll find Blackburn are charging a much higher premium than they are. So they won’t sell for anything less than a grossly inflated fee.

So where does this leave Arsenal, so evidently in need of ready-made reinforcements?

Exactly where we’ve always been with Arsene, that’s where. The best solution to such a market is simply to scout far and wide and well and early. If we get involved in rat races over average Premiership players we’re just going to end up throwing away money we don’t have, especially if we’re up against Man City (and who aren’t they interested in exactly?)

Sagna, Eduardo, Adebayor, Van Persie. All well-below £10 million and all right out of the top drawer. In the first 3 cases they came with enough experience to make a pretty immediate impact. It’s these sort of off-the-radar players that we need to be bringing in if we are to outperform the market this January and have a realistic tilt at the Champions’ League. What do I want Arsene to find up his magic sleeve? Ideally, another Vidic or Skrtel, relative unknowns bought cheaply who were ready to perform at the highest level at the heart of the defence. What price Vidic now?

Arsene’s said he wants experience and he also said he would look at loan moves. If he follows his established transfer strategy he might need to combine the two and loan in the experience. We may have to settle for someone like Olivier Dacourt. Yesterday I suggested we give Juan Sebastian Veron a six month loan contract, just in case he’s still got it in him (with apologies for all the United stuff on that clip, it made me feel sick too). I know he disappointed at United and Chelsea but they’re very different teams and he could be due a Larsson-esque swansong. Just an idea.

Intrigued, as ever, to know your thoughts on all this.

While trawling the net tirelessly in search of the sharpest Arsenal-related news, rumours and analysis, we occasionally come across other stuff that we want to share with our readers.

Here’s a selection of stuff that caught our eye:

Manu Chao sings about Diego Maradona in his new song ‘La Vida Tombola’.

You know when you suddenly remember how much you enjoyed watching an old football star? Well that just happened to me with Juan Sebastian Veron. It’s a shame he played for United, but by gum the lad could play. Wouldn’t mind us making a cheeky loan move for him in January. Just in case he’s still got it.

Tiny Malawi’s national team, The Flames, sensationally beat African Champions Egypt and DR Congo on their way to reaching the next phase of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup and African Cup of Nations (it’s a combined qualification system). Here are some grainy highlights of their crunch winner-takes-all game against DRC (Malawi are in Red). That’s the biggest attendance in Malawian football history right there and the place goes absolutely berserk as Chiukepo Msowoya (no. 4) bags the winner right at the death after Malawi had replied to Lomana Lua-Lua’s stunning strike early on. For me Msowoya’s cheeky victory dance is the joy of football in its purest form.