Up For Grabs Now

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.

So we’re in the thick of non-Champions’ League midweekery. Wednesday, and still no match for 4 whole days. This must be how it feels to be a Spud quite a lot of the time – the sense that there’s a party going on, but it’s somewhere else and you weren’t invited. What do Spuds do to pass the time? They moan a lot. So let’s give that a go…

Today the party’s being hosted by a former Arsenal party-goer, Lassana Diarra, who is on his way to Real Madrid. Ramos was obviously admiring him when he should really have been admiring the many many goals flying past Hero Gomes into the Cocks’ net. The fee looks like it’s going to be well north of £18m which is quite clearly insane (please say there was a sell-on clause? Please?) and demonstrates again the guile with which Wenger must navigate the current transfer market. Anybody with any quality is going to go for vast pots of cash so you need to get in there quick.

If you look at it one way, Wenger has almost pulled an Anelka here. Signing a moaney kid for peanuts who could then be sold for bucketloads a few good games down the line. Just a shame we flogged him to Portsmouth in between. Like most Gooners, I may never understand the decision to let Diarra go. He wanted first team football in the run-up to Euro 2008 and Flamini was having a stormer. So LOAN him out! Don’t sell him. We loan everyone else, why make an exception for Diarra?

I’m not saying that Diarra’s Madrid move in itself means he is a great player or that he has somehow “made it” as a top class footballer (though he will probably turn into one pretty soon) – I don’t think he’s played enough top-class games yet. It’s just that if we had had him from the start of the season, I’m pretty sure we’d be top of the pile right now.

That’s probably enough moaning and wistful if-onlying for one morning.

Some cracking quotes coming from Arsene:

“I come from a little village of farmers where I was educated that when you earn £100 you do not spend £100. For me when you earn £100 and you spend £110 it is like cheating. A club must live within its own resources, not artificially supported. The economic crisis will force many clubs to rethink the way they are run. It seems too many believe football exists in a bubble, away from the financial crisis! Football depends heavily on the financial markets, sponsorship and television rights, all of which are suffering right now. Clubs will be affected, wages will come down, transfer fees must come down and there will be a bit of calm with the exception of clubs like Manchester City.”

The image of the miserly little 9-year-old Arsene flogging a range of promising piglets for £100, trousering £94 and spending just £6 on a little-known Iberian breed of young rabbits while muttering about the imminent collapse of cattle prices is an amusing one. Hold on, that’s our transfer policy!

From a purely Arsenal perspective, you’ve got to hope that he’s right and that the financial crisis will bite football’s saggy bottom pretty soon. If he is, then the harsher financial climate would certainly work in our favour, especially as we’ve clearly prepared for it. If he’s not, then we’ll be a bit stuffed as we’ll have been working within rigid spending limits on wages and transfers without having needed to.

Transfer Rumours: To illustrate just how hard our tireless journalists work on their transfer rumours (which we avidly devour day after day) I give you the BBC’s instalment for today. They report that the journalistic totem that is the Daily Telegraph has claimed that Arsene may replace serial sour-puss William Gallas with Le Mans’ Ivory Coast defender Gervinho.

Hold on. Have you been reading your own columns, BBC? You always, always link us with a move for Le Mans’ Ivory Coast attacker Gervinho. Are you quite sure he is now a defender? Really?

Now, I know Arsene loves nothing more than a nice fan-goading out-of-position midfield (the Diaby-Song-Fabregas-Denilson one is his personal best – just one player in the right place!) and I know the best form of defence is said to be attack, but surely turning the free-scoring Gervinho into a defender before he’s even signed for us is a bit much?

Next thing you know we’ll be snapping up Jimmy Bullard as back-up to Almunia and bringing in Rafael van der Vaart to partner Gervinho at the heart of the defence. Speaking of van der Vaart – yes please, Arsene!

Update: the Daily Telegraph (which I don’t normally read, honestly) has just linked us with  a £3 million move for Vitesse Arnhem goalkeeper Piet Velthuizen. Apparently, the 22-year-old said he’d be up for a move to Arsenal, and also said: “I don’t just want to be a top ‘keeper, I want to be the world’s best.”  He also said he wants to be “that star up in the sky”, “that mountain peak up high” and ”that little bit of hope when your back’s against the ropes”. Don’t we all, Piet, don’t we all.