Rumours are still RED hot that Arsenal is moving in on Sampdoria pairing, Praet and Andersen. Hard to work out whether this is stoking the flames so they’ll land a buyer this summer, or there’s a RAGING fire of reality to accompany the smoke.
Either way, who cares, I’m into the gossip, it keeps the summer acceptable.
Remember, never trust a person that says they don’t enjoy the transfer window. It’s like saying you don’t like Jurassic Park. It’s the sort of comment that comes from a person you’re forced to meet on a double date that goes, ‘I don’t really support a club, but I do support England and I have a season ticket at Harlequins.’ It’s the half and half scarf of internet hot takes.
I fucking LOVE a rumour. Keep my pint glass topped up with cold foamy gossip all summer long. It’s all I need.
Talking of CLASSIC fine pairing rumours. One of the first major stories that had me firming up at the back pages was SO long ago, Youtube didn’t even exist, yep, we all had measles vaccinations back then… it was when Ronald and Frank De Boer were the De Ligt and Frenkie De Jong of Europe.
This from the Indie in 1997 (I must have been 2 years old or something)!
Arsenal have failed with an audacious offer to Ajax for the Dutch international De Boer twins, Frank and Ronald, but hope to resurrect an pounds 18m double deal in the summer.
The Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein has spent two days in Amsterdam in an attempt to secure the services of the De Boers. The brothers, 26, are contracted to the former European champions until 2000, but each has a clause in his contract allowing him to leave at a certain price.
Arsenal’s chances of signing the brothers are enhanced by the salaries at Highbury. Bergkamp is reportedly on pounds 1m a year, plus bonuses, while the De Boers earn pounds 300,000, despite being Ajax’s best players. However, there is the possibility that the Ajax coach, Louis Van Gaal, will replace Bobby Robson at Barcelona in the summer. In that event, the brothers may follow him to the Nou Camp.
The swift dismantling of the Ajax side in the wake of the Bosman ruling, will also see the 20-year-old striker Patrick Kluivert and the utility player Winston Bogarde, 26, leave for Italy on free transfers when their contracts expire in May.
OH MAN THAT WAS EXCITING.
BIG DAVID DEIN BRINGING HOME THE DUTCH BACON (at least trying)! 🥓🇳🇱
I think we eventually missed out because Arsene Wenger had some major issue with the brothers trying to void their contract agreement with Ajax. Wenger always had a moral compass a touch over-tuned for football. I think he thought if he was nice to other clubs, they’d be nice back, which was rarely the case. Bit like my life with women.
Wish he’d been a bit meaner about winning and bit more ambitious with money. Our ‘nearly 11’ would have won us a few more major silver pots… reckon at least half of that was down to dithering or fannying around over pennies… or making Zlatan have a trial!
The following transfer window post the De Boer fail was pretty bad for me, I was SUPER excited that Arsenal were in for Patrick Kluivert… I was bragging hard at school that we were about to pull off the deal of the century, but it fell through and he eventually ended up at Barcelona. I was totally ripped to pieces by all the nasty West Ham and Spurs fans at school. Don’t worry though, I filed a very strong complaint with those in authority that went nowhere, and was likely blood wedgied for being a grass.
I think we ended up with Kanu, which was exciting because fat Ronaldo said he was the greatest player he’d ever seen in training… and my oh my, did Kanu score some UNREAL goals. Best thing about players back then was there was no Youtube, so you had no fucking clue what was coming to your club until they played.
We also signed Kaba Diawara later in the season, a Champ Man LEGEND. I vividly remember him playing against Leeds and doing everything bar score… he was shipped out pretty quickly after that.
Anyway, what I’m saying is this… transfer windows are the dreams before the reality. Don’t trust the guy at work bemoaning it. He probably keeps foxes genitals in pickle jars, or has a really wicked Instagram handle where he paints toy boats on a timelapse… and let me tell you, this guy is definitely gluten-free and quite happy to pollute the airwaves with chat about how he found this little woke IPA brewery in Bermondsey that you can access on Saturdays as part of a tour.
Get fucked Steven, you can walk out in the sun and drink your pony tasteless beer, while me and my fellow brethren are sitting at home crushing F5, scouring AS.com with translate on, and following Twitter accounts like @FOOTBALLSECRETINSIDER in the hope of some REAL Saturday good times.
That’s a summer my friends, that’s a fucking summer.
Right, see you in the comments. x
WengerEagle “Mustafi (7.05) is rated higher than Skriniar is for Inter (6.89) (2nd best defence in Serie A) and marginally less than Gimenez for Atletico Madrid (7.13) is for example.” He’s rated higher in those particular set of stats tackling, headed clearances etc but as we know with Mustafi it doesn’t matter how many tackles he puts in and headers because he is impetuous and has brainstorms. In other stats on that website it relates to Mustafi being indisciplined. Skriniar on the other hand even though he may put in marginally less tackles, headers etc than Mustafi is not tagged… Read more »
CG There are not too many other posters on here who respond to your daily Emery rants. The same could be said of me with my persistent Wenger jibes. Nevertheless, one thing I do know is that not one Arsenal fan would, under any circumstances,want Mourinho to take over the reins at our club. What don’t you understand? or is this all a game? One tends to think so. Even the other Emery haters on here understand the implications of having Mourinho at our club. You are either stupid(which clearly you are not), ignorant( Don’t think so)) or are just… Read more »
Gnabry had two loans offers. One for a Championship (I can’t remember if it was Charlton or Reading) where he was more or less guarantee first team start. The other one was with West Bromwich with Tony Pulis. Instead of putting their foot down and tell Gnabry that he could not join the force of Mordor, the Arsenal academy left him choose WestBrom. They compounded the mistake by not correctly drafting the contract. Usually team gave financial incentives for playing loanees. The more loanee play, the lower the loan fee. There was none of that in the contract. Arsenal in… Read more »
“You are either stupid(which clearly you are not”
Well, let’s agree that we disagree!! lol
Valentin,
As far as you know, is the same loan contract structure still in place at Arsenal?
Or has Huss Fahmy (who is supposedly a contracts whizz) restructured the contracts?
As far as I am aware recent loanees seem to have been getting reasonable playing time, excluding injured playersof course.
Burgess was sacked apparently and Forsyth has now been elevated to the position of head of performance/fitness solely.
Gazidis was trying to get Forysth, but he’s basically been promoted at Arsenal now.
Cesc
Hopefully that’s a sign of Sanllehi streamlining the management team into what we actually need. You get a vibe that Gazidis got a bit of a kid in a sweet shop thing going on.
It’ll be interesting to see what Pedro has to say on it.
WOAB, I don’t know about the new contract. But I do know that was part of the review conducted by Per Mertesecker. He wanted to completely revamp our loan system and how we follow (or in the past did not follow) our loanees. I have been told new guideline were put in place with regard to the choice of clubs where our loanees go. Instead of having clubs calling us about our players, he wants to have a list of approved clubs/managers per position. That list would incorporate more German/French top tier clubs and less English League 1 club. That… Read more »
Cesc
I think the entire management is too convulated with 2-3 people doing the same job.
I wondered why we needed Burgess in the first place since Shad Forsyth was still there.
“I’m not sure how good Mislintat was to be honest. Not saying he was bad, but I don’t know if he was as good as people thought.He wanted to be a DoF or equivalent and the only club that would give him that are now Division 2 Stuttgart.
Hmmmm … sigh…holds back and walks away.
Ornstein painting the picture of Gazidis attempting to prize Shad, who wins the battle with Burgess taking sole ownership of all things fitness.
Gazidis, coming back to the well. Somebody should tell him Mustafi is ready and willing for the Rossoneri.
So Darren Burgess being sacked would tie up with the rumours of discontent within the conditioning team.
One of them being that Forsythe and Burgess being at loggerhead, because their role were overlapping.
The other one is that the conditioning team was not happy being overruled by Emery and his new conditioning guy.
Marc Dissenter I agree. Do you remember when we had Forsyth, Burgess and Colbert? Apparently this was because of the end of season review where player fitness was flagged as a central issue. I can already hear the usually lot ‘but that’s Emery’s fault’ listen Klopp is renowned for his intense training and matches to the point that him crippling Liverpool players was a running joke in his first season. Pochettino also demands high intensity. Likely, I’m speculating of course, Emery relied on Burgess to be a fitness regime together with him and relied on his advice and feedback as… Read more »
The Kroenkes are such wimps
They ought to have fired Gazidis the moment he started flirting with the owners of AC Milan. You don’t hire people and then take off before you can’t make sure a just-budding system actually works
Now he has the gall to come back and plunder Arsenal?
At least we will get money for a player being transferred unlike losing a key staff.
Valentin
Could you elaborate on the issue btwn Emery’s conditioning team and Forsyth?
I’m not familiar with it
I also suspect that there was contradictory advice from the back room as to how to prepare for Baku.
It seems we may have over-prepare and it cost us in the second half of the EL final
Valentin,
Thanks for the information on Mertesacker and the revamp of the approach to loans
The Burgess appointment was strange to begin with. I’m surprised Shad Foryth stayed when they brought him in. Why bring a guy from Australia who could not even start immediately?
@Cesc,
I mentioned in December that there was rambling in the conditioning team about the fact that Emery had brought his own guy who was overruling some of the advice given to Emery.
Training was allegedly too intense in November and December taking into account that the EPL does not have a winter mid-season break, that is is also the most demanding league in Europe with its 100 miles per hour style of play. On top of that because of the world cup some players did not have a proper break, not a proper pre-season training.
People are lambasting the US female national team for the way they celebrated every goal they scored when they bashed Thailand 31-0.
I think the criticism is well deserved and goes to show the lack of proper football [soccer] etiquette in the American game.
It was needless celebration. You get to a point where you do what you have to do…but you hold back from rubbing it in your opponent face. They didn’t so shame on them.
WOAB
The biggest change is Ben Knapper who is Loan Manager, works with Sanllehi and Mertesacker to decide which players should go out on loan, where, why and then monitor their loans.
Valentin
That sounds very wishy-washy to me, he said, she said.
So Burgess was sacked because he was a thorn in the side? That sounds risky for Arsenal.
More likely someone asked the perfectly logical question of ‘why do we have 2 heads of fitness?’
Dissenter
The USA will never fully grasp many things football, literally just now becoming a main stream thing here.
Its embarrassing.
Darren Burgess is the fella being sacked for the conditioning mistakes not Emery’s physio. It’s obvious that some of the errors were traced back to him upon review. You have to wonder is there’s a conspiracy to protect Emery’s staff member lol There’s nothing to suggest that Emery has defied the advice of Burgess and the Arsenal staff, for all we know those errors may have come from the resident staff not the manager not his physio. Emery this…Emery that…as if he just dictates his way to getting everything he wants. He was hired because he has worked under DoF… Read more »
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Dissenter – I wonder if Kroenkes told Gazidis to look for another job instead of firing him directly? Presumably, Josh did his three month review and suggested Wenger be fired, and I wonder if he told Gazidis to look for employment elsewhere as well.
Dissenter, I am not saying that Emery is a bulldog, I am saying that he surrounded himself with people he was familiar with. Most of those people had no experience of the premiership and it showed. Now it seems that after a review conducted by Emery, none of his staff is responsible for any mistake, however Arsenal’s legacy staff are either pushed aside (Bould) or sacked (Burgess) or threaten to quit (Forsythe). To me that looks like white wash. I made those points regarding the fitness regime and the change of defensive system. At the time you dismissed my concern.… Read more »