Just A Question Of When…

Ashley Cole will not be wearing an Arsenal shirt this season. That is clear.

He has publically slagged off the club that raised him, he illegally met with Chelsea representatives and he wasn’t in this years official team photograph.

So why isn’t Cashley at Chelsea yet?

It’s because Chelsea are making Arsenal sweat. Flexing their proverbial muscle if you will.

Don’t be fooled – they’re going to go ahead with the Cole signing, and they’re going to stump up the £25 million Arsenal want.

They’re just taking their time.

Why? Because they can.

When you spend as much money as Chelsea do on transfers you can do what you want. You control how things are done.

Why give Arsenal £25 million in July when they can hand it over in late August?

You don’t want to give a team like Arsenal a substantial amount of money early on in the summer – with Wenger’s eye for a bargain he could buy 3 or 4 brilliant players for that cash.

And William Gallas?

When you have the financial needs of Chelsea you can easily afford to let the guy rot in the reserves if he doesn’t play by the rules.

At any other club in the world, any player can engineer a move away from his club.

But not at Chelsea.

Here you are just another name on the list. You don’t want to play for us? Then you can see out the rest of your contract in the reserves. It doesn’t matter how big a player or how good you are – Chelsea can bring in 3 or 4 players of equal ability and reputation.

Don’t like it? That’s tough!