Well, what do you know? For the second week in a row, my efforts to widen my audience by dedicating a post to non-Arsenal fans are ruined, as I am forced to abandon this once more as my club have stolen the headlines yet again.
The Gunners seem to be see-sawing from crisis mode to we-are-doing-okay mode with every passing week. Hopefully now we can get some momentum behind our season now with the confidence sky-high thanks to our extremely promising signings. I do have to say, I am a little surprised with the amount of signings we made in the last few days, even though they were all completely necessary. Well done to Arsene for finally listening to us during the transfer window. My only regret is him not doing it earlier – what I would do to prevent the mauling at the weekend…
The Gunners’ best signing in the last week, has to be Per Mertesacker. Well, on paper anyway. He is exactly what we need. Mertesacker plus Vermaelen is a match made in heaven. He’ll go straight into the Swansea game, no doubt. Also, he’s another absolute bargain at £8m (well done once again to Mr Wenger). A real superstar coming to the Emirates will surely cheer the fans up – that is if they haven’t already got over/forgotten about Sunday like me.
And the great thing is he’s not the only one. Mikel Arteta is another star buy. Okay, he hasn’t really announced himself on the world stage but that’s only because he’s Spanish. I’m sure he would’ve been in the England team if he was born here. Park Chu-Young, or Chu Young Park, or Ju Young Park (take your pick), looks like another encouraging prospect. After studying several impressive YouTube videos of his performances, and learning of his hat-trick for his country this afternoon, he is definitely one to watch. He may have to work to get ahead of RVP, Walcott and Gervinho, though.
Then we come to the other signings. Andre Santos is a player that, although he has a lot of potential, has not had great international success unlike the others and is widely unknown over here. What is positive is that he knows how to win a league title – albeit with a match fixing team. As for Benayoun, I’m not entirely certain his transfer was really necessary, I personally would have been happy to stop at Arteta, and had the Arteta deal not gone dead initially he’d probably be back at Liverpool. I think Wenger panicked a little when Everton pulled the plug on the transfer and went for a cheap loan deal, but hey, I’m not complaining. If he recreates the form he had at Liverpool we have much reason to be excited. What a turning point this could be for The Arsenal.
That wasn’t even our best piece of business. We got rid of Bendtner. Hallelujah.
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| Signings, signings, signings! |
Of course, Arsenal weren’t the only ones to be active on transfer deadline day. On what was a hectic day on Sky Sports News, there wasn’t a spare moment without another twist during a dramatic 24 hours. My favourite transfer of the day has to be Raul Meireles to Chelsea – purely for comical reasons; the audacity to hand in a transfer request with half an hour to go and still pull off a switch to a big club like Chelsea deserves nothing but applause. I do not know why he left Liverpool, though; he was doing brilliant there. If only they had signed Modric instead… Ah well, I suppose it’s karma for Liverpool. I hope they suffer from his departure (they probably won’t, though).
Another team who did well in the window was QPR. I mean, the amount of players, and the calibre of players that Neil Warnock has persuaded to join the R’s is just mind-boggling. I’m not happy he’s signed Joey Barton, simply because we have to play him again this season. On the other hand, Ferdinand and Wright-Phillips are great captures. What a team they have now – they could be this year’s West Brom. I see them dodging relegation quite comfortably. Well done QPR. Good job.
The most bizarre transfer of the day is the hapless Owen Hargreaves risking hatred across Manchester by doing a Carlos Tevez and joining City from United. And he thinks he’s good enough for them (rolls eyes). Firstly, he won’t get into the team, and secondly, West Brom would be much more beneficial for him, no matter how fit he is. He’ll never be as good as he was for United (if you have trouble remembering that far back, he was superb).
So after a record-breaking amount of spending, there is a case for each team to have some sort of success this year (unless you’re a Spurs fan, and I’m not even being biased).
And oh, I almost forgot, United will still win the league. Sorry, Gooners.
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