So we know Arsenal have put in a second bid for Luis Suarez. £40 million and £1 to be exact. The whole point of this bid was to trigger a release clause in Suarez’s contract, which apparently allows him to speak to us – and reportedly, he wants to talk to us.
But Liverpool are saying that our bid is nowhere near their valuation of the player. Rogers, is comparing Suarez’s value to the price Napoli got for Edinson Cavani, which was £55 million.
The big question is Suarez worth anywhere near that?
And more importantly, can we afford to spend that much on a single player? If we have this war chest everyone’s talking about (which is reportedly in the region of £70 million) then that doesn’t leave us with much left to strengthen other areas of the pitch where we need more numbers, such as in central defence and midfield.
If (and that’s a big if) we get Suarez that will cost us about £50 million. Clearly he’s our main (and possibly only) target so will we put all our eggs in one basket? Is Arsene Wenger that confident he’s the only missing piece we need to compete at the very top?
Still, even now, the Suarez affair leaves more questions than answers.
Arsenal fans, myself included, have become frustrated with our lack of activity in the transfer market. Despite having a “war chest” which is widely reported to be around £70 million, Arsenal have struggled to get close to making a deal happen.
It was strange that Ivan Gazidis publicly announced that we had £70 million to spend on players and we could afford the top wages, suggesting that affording £250,000 salaries would not be a problem. This has instantly weakened our position in the transfer market – that’s if we intended to spend anything at all.
On top of this, it has given the media a field day, and we’ve been linked with Stevan Jovetic, Gonzalo Higuain, Wayne Rooney, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez, Gareth Barry, Cesc Fabregas, Lars Bender, Marouane Fellaini and Ashley Williams. That’s 10 players (and I’m sure I’ve missed some other names) and out of those, we’ve made 2 concrete bids. One for Lars Bender which was instantly denied, and £30 million for Luis Suarez, which we know is well below his market value, which is roughly around the £40-£45 million range.
And according to reports, Real Madrid value Gonzalo Higuain at £37 million while we want to get him for closer to £22 million.
So have Arsenal given up in the transfer market?
The problem is, we haven’t haven’t paid the top top money for players since we signed Dennis Bergkamp in June 1995. He joined for £7.5 million which back then was massive money. In terms of record transfer fees in that year involving British football clubs, Andy Cole moved from Newcastle United to Manchester United for £7 million and Stan Collymore from Nottingham Forrest to Liverpool for £8.5 million. In 1995, Arsenal paid top dollar for a world class player.
But now, however ambitious Arsene Wenger and Arsenal may have been, and while there may be good intentions, it seems that we have bitten off more than we can chew.
For the first time in about 20 years, we’re going for proven, world class talents. We’ve spent decent sums on Thierry Henry, Andrei Arshavin, Sylvain Wiltord and Jose Antonio Reyes but apart from Arshavin, they still have something to prove and weren’t commanding the top prices because they still had some potential to fulfil. For example, when we bought Thierry Henry in 1999, a certain Nicolas Anelka was sold for £22.5 million.
So now we’re after players like Luis Suarez and Gonzalo Higuain (who are reportedly valued at £45 million and £37 million respectively) we’re struggling to compete. We have our war chest but we simply don’t know how to spend it. We’ve tried screwing down transfer fees and getting bargains for so long that if we did pay the top money for these players Arsene Wenger might keel over. We simply have no idea how to negotiate effectively at the top end of the market. We don’t have a David Dein type figure to seal these deals.
According to the Daily Mail, and other newspapers, Real Madrid want £37 million for their Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain.
Which would explain why talks seem to have stalled, and why it seems that we’re going after Luis Suarez. There’s also rumours that we’re “in the chase” for Wayne Rooney, although it looks like he is Chelsea-bound.
Back to Higuain, there’s no doubt he is a top quality striker but £37 million for him is well out of Arsenal’s comfort zone. The problem is, the transfer market is hugely inflated – Edinson Cavani went to PSG for £55 million and Radamel Falcao to Monaco to £50 million. They are top strikers and if you compare Higuain to those two players, around £37 million is probably about right.
But Arsenal have never spent anywhere that amount before. Our transfer fee record is at £15 million while other top European teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Monaco, Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City have spent massive amounts before and are much more comfortable paying that amount of money for a player.
So that is why we would never pay £37 million for Higuain.
So our attention turns to Luis Suarez. He has his (well reported) problems but is Premier League ready. While I am still pretty uneasy at the prospect of him joining, the £40 million mark makes more sense for his services.
Will we get to the start of the 2013/2014 season having signed no-one?
Many Arsenal fans believe that we won’t land any big players this summer and then Arsene Wenger can “claim” we were after top quality players but the selling clubs were being unreasonable.
With the possibility of Marouane Fellaini and Cesc Fabregas joining Arsenal non-existent, it looks like all the “transfer rumours” surrounding our club are about to dry up.
Arsene Wenger famously said yesterday:
“We work hard but we are not close to signing anybody.”
Arsenal fans know more than most about the “transfer rumours” going around and how the vast majority of them are basically made up. We’ve had links to Fernando Torres, Gareth Barry, Lars Bender, Marouane Fellaini, Gonzalo Higuain, Luis Suarez, Ashley Williams and Wayne Rooney. From all of those names on the list, we’ve only actually made 2 official bids.
Transfer Targets & Deals Reviewed:
So the reports of Athletico Madrid having “wrapped up” a deal for Santi Cazorla aren’t hugely surprising. He’s had a decent season at Arsenal and there’s been so many players linked to transfers it’s just par for the course. Also, reports are saying that Athletico Madrid president Enrique Cerezo calling the Cazorla news “inventions”.
Not impossible but hugely unlikely.
Likelihood Rating: 1/10
Then we have Wayne Rooney. He has been trying to wangle his way out of Old Trafford for a couple of months now and news has come out of Chelsea’s bid for the striker, which was understood to be £10 million plus either Juan Mata or David Luiz. The offer is surprising in the sense that both Mata and Luiz in my eyes are top drawer players – but obviously they aren’t in Jose Mourinho’s long term plans.
Edit: The latest suggests that Chelsea actually offered a £20 million straight cash offer.
The most likely suitors would have been Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Monaco, Bayern, Chelsea and Arsenal but Real and Barca have already spent big money, PSG and Monaco have also spent big on Cavani and Falcao, and Bayern don’t seem to the interested. So Chelsea looks the most likely destination.
No doubt that Chelsea will step up their offer for Rooney in the next few days but will Arsenal throw their hat into the ring? I highly doubt it.
Likelihood Rating: 2/10
Now to the man of the moment, the player that divides opinion more than anyone else could, Luis Suarez.
We might as well call him Marmite because people are either strongly against him coming to Arsenal or would welcome him with open arms. We know his problems, and we know what he brings to the team. A very talented player who has Joey Barton tendencies.
It looks like we’re going to follow up our initial £30 million bid to either £35 million or £40 million, depending on which newspapers you believe. It’s even possible we don’t follow up our interest and look somewhere else. Any additional bid at the moment is just hearsay and we won’t know until we hear something concrete from either club.
Do I think we’ll get Suarez? Stranger things have happened.
Likelihood Rating: 6/10
And finally to the forgotten man, Gonzalo Higuain.
Who knows what happened to bringing the Argentine to Arsenal – some reports suggest we had the deal in the bag, while others suggest we merely made enquiries but didn’t want to pay Real Madrid’s valuation.
Of late, things have got extremely quiet and the deal looks to be completely dead. So unless a major turn around happens I can’t see this happening. Which is a shame really as I really thought he would fit in really well at Arsenal and give us that extra leap in quality we badly need.
Ever since the news that Arsenal tabled a £30 million bid for Suarez I’ve been confused. Why would Arsene and Arsenal bid for a player with so many problems? Why smash our record transfer fee on a player that will be banned for the first month of the season? It doesn’t make any sense.
So then I thought we might be playing games with Real Madrid and somehow we were trying to force through the Gonzalo Higuain deal (seriously, what has happened with that?).
But now it seems, if you believe what the papers say, that we’re willing to increase our bid to £35 million or £40 million and test Liverpool’s resolve.
So what is going on?
Regular readers will know that from the beginning, I have been hugely against Suarez joining Arsenal. I’ve said it a million times but he’s been banned for racism, banned for biting other players and if you watch this video, he is a vicious human being:
Then you see a video like this and you think he could change:
I honestly don’t know if the silly season has gone to my head, or the current heatwave has frazzled my brain, but from being massively against Suarez coming to Arsenal, I am starting to come around to the idea that the Uruguayan could come to The Emirates.
Aside from his obvious attitude problems, my argument was that if we were going to spend £40 million plus on a player, then surely there is someone else out there who is a better fit for Arsenal. But then, maybe Arsene knows what he’s after and thinks Suarez is the man, and maybe that’s why we’ve cooled off getting Higuain.
Arsene’s transfer dealings of late have been hit and miss, and ironically, it is the more defensive positions where he has got things more right than wrong. You cannot deny that Mertesacker, Koscielny and Arteta have been excellent for us, while Podolski, Giroud and Gervinho have failed to set the world alight. We’ve also had Santos come in who has been nothing short of embarrassing.
But maybe with Champions League football and a “more likely” chance of winning the Premier League as opposed to Liverpool (don’t laugh) then he might be more focused and concentrate on scoring goals. Could some of the disturbing actions he’s been guilty of be down to playing in a side where they’re destined to finish 7th in the league? Could it be because he’s frustrated at losing too many games? At Arsenal, you would expect a side like us to create a decent number of clear opportunities per game for him.
A concern I’ve had is his shots to goals ratio. He was only the 23rd “most clinical striker” in the league last season and despite being second in the goal-scoring charts, his conversion rate is poor. Maybe that’s because he shoots from ridiculous angles, maybe it’s because he’s greedy, or maybe it’s because he doesn’t believe in his team mates. I’ve always felt that his finishing wasn’t the best, and we’ll all remember the number of chances he missed against us last season at Anfield when Arsenal took all 3 points thanks for Podolski and Cazorla.
If we’re serious in getting him, Arsene must truly believe that he can settle Suarez down and get the best out of him, and more importantly that he fits into the Arsenal style of play.
