Thursday, July 10, 2008

Hleb On The Way Out...Finally

Morning all, or afternoon depending where you are. Amazingly, I have been struck by illness yet again and so decided to sleep for a very long time indeed. So when I awoke, I was surprised to see that Alexander Hleb appears to have been sold. Now this has not been confirmed on Arsenal.com but Barcelona seem to feel like the deal is done and dusted.

Apparently the offer is 12.5 million pounds plus an additional 2.5 million in add ons if he meets the incentives. Setanta Sports says that Hleb will likely take a medical this weekend and sign during next week to make it official.

Honestly if/when he does go I'll be quite happy. That'll give us more money than we spent on him originally and we're getting a player in Samir Nasri that can score more goals and hopefully will do all the things that Hleb hasn't done, like pass and shoot. It's a good bit of business by Arsenal here, because the player clearly wanted to go, so getting back all that we paid for him is great work by the club. Is anyone really too sad to see Hleb go for 12 million? I don't know how you could be. 10 goals in 3 years is not good enough. We need wingers that can score at Arsenal a la Pires, Ljungburg, etc. Nasri can hopefully be that man.

As for Adebayor, we'll throw out one interesting bit if true...Arsenal News Review says the club have stopped printing Adebayor shirts. I have no information that will tell me if that's true or not but take it for what you will.

Kerrea Gilbert has joined Leicester City on loan for the whole upcoming season. I remember him playing in the first team a couple of years ago when we had loads of injuries but not much has been heard of him since. I guess the club still regards him as a good upcoming player though or I don't think they'd bother loaning him out, they would just release him.

Arsenal Analysis keeps us up to date on the Gilberto Silva transfer situation, and it looks like he may indeed leave the club this summer. The question is, where will he go? It looked like he may head to Greece but now Ajax appear to have entered the picture. I think it would be a big loss for us if we sold Gilberto this summer. I think this must mean that we have a holding midfielder lined up to come in or else Wenger is really convinced that Diaby or Denilson can do the job. Guess we'll wait and see.

Alright that's all I've got. Cesc Fabregas was named the Arsenal.com player of the season, not surprisingly. And if you didn't see the post yesterday we're having a Premier League Fantasy League competition. The winner will probably receive a home Arsenal shirt or something similar, so join now!

1: Go to http://premierfantasy.soccernet.com/

2: Click on Register and go through the registration and team selection process - it's totally free to play

3: Once you are on your team line-up page click on Mini League and type the following information in the Join A Mini League boxes:

League Name: ArseNole Premier League
Password: arsenal

Cheers folks!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm happy if we get a decent replacement like Nasri but will this actually improve the team? I know Hlebs scoring record is awful, 10 goals as u said is clearly not enough. We do need some goals from the midfield and we can't always rely on Adey to score but it looks like hes on his way too. I'm not the biggest fan of him but at least his injury free! We would need a replacement for him too , who knows what Eddy will be like when he comes back, it could take him a while to get settled again and as for RVP will he ever sustain a full PL season without the long term injuries and the same goes for Rosicky for f**k sake !? I'm worried as a fan that we are again not gonna win anything and that next season departures of bigger names could happen, i hope not! At the moment i feel like we are becoming a declining force in Europe and that does need to be resolved! We clearly have money as we are one of the richest clubs in the world and our profits last yr indicated that! Even if Wenger came out and told us what is happening on arsenal.com not some crap news paper like the Sun , if he plans to reinforce the team or not and why hasn't he so far. We always seem to hear off every other club what is happening with our club ,why is this ?