Players Report, Contracts Renewed, Cesc & Melo Speculation

By: Martin | July 6th, 2009

Hope everyone had a happy and safe Independence Day weekend.

Some of these are a bit old, but we’ve had three players re-up with the club over the last week or so. And they’re all very promising young players. Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, and Kieran Gibbs all signed new long-term deals with the club. All 3 are very promising young players, and this sends a clear message that Wenger views them as building blocks for Arsenal’s next generation. Gibbs is 19, Ramsey is 18, and Wilshere is just 17, yet all are already legitimate Premiership-quality players, and Gibbs and Ramsey are already battle-tested (Gibbs in the Champions League last year, Ramsey in Cardiff’s FA Cup run in 2007-2008). There are also a number of reports that van Persie has agreed in substance to a new deal with the club, but there hasn’t been official confirmation of this yet.

In other news, a lot of media outlets are reporting that Arsenal have set a price tag of £40 million on El Capitan, and that if Barca or Real Madrid were to make such a bid Cesc would be on his way. As with every other Cesc transfer story, I’m 99% sure this is completely made up to sell papers/get website hits. Wenger has come out and said that he has been building this team for several years and that he expects this team to win trophies over the next couple of seasons. Why would he sell his captain and best player just as the club is hopefully on the brink of a return to glory? I expect some sort of official refutation of these “reports” from the club soon. I believe in the First Amendment, and freedom of the press, and I understand the need to protect the identities of your sources. But it really is a sad state of affairs that so many in sports media have become so manipulative and cynical that they are willing to make up rumors and attribute them to an “insider” or “a source close to the club/player.” You’d like to think that “journalists” would be more responsible than that, but you would be wrong.

Finally, as travis posted over the weekend, there were a lot of reports that Felipe Melo was back on Arsenal’s radar screen. Apparently the buy-out in Melo’s new contract was £25 million, which was a pretty steep price, and the club reported that Arsenal was the only club who had come close to that figure. But Fiorentina was supposedly willing to lower that price somewhat if Eboue was thrown in. To £24.99 million, presumably. In all seriousness, I think Eboue has become a useful player, and £20 million or so plus Eboue would be a pretty steep price. As I’ve said, I’m not that familiar with Melo, so I won’t even pretend to offer an opinion on whether that would be a good deal for the club or not. But Melo did come out today and say that:

I have a contract with Fiorentina in which it was written that should I have a good first season, the club would have the possibility to extend my contract automatically from five to six years. They utilised this clause and I am really happy. I owe Fiorentina a lot. I arrived and I immediately became a regular. I have never been on the bench.

There’s nothing in there which says “I’m not leaving the club,” but it does seem like he’s not exactly pushing for a move away from the club. He’s a young man, playing first-team football, living in Florence, and he would get to play in the Champions League with Fiorentina next year. It’s not a bad life, so maybe he’s thinking he’ll stay there at least another year, get to showcase himself with Brazil in the 2010 World Cup, and then see what sorts of options are available to him. I’d love to be able to sign him, but I think it’s looking less and less likely.

In completely unrelated to anything news, I just wanted to say that, as someone who has an intense dislike for all things Chelsea, it is a gift from God that they just signed someone named Yuri Zhirkov. Saying it out always makes me giggle a little bit.

Finally, Arsenal players reported to training camp today, with the exception of a couple of people (Walcott, Gibbs, Fabregas, Vela) who spent a lot of time on international duty this summer. After all this summer transfer nonsense, it’ll be a relief to actually just watch some football being played and talking about that–our first friendly is just 12 days away…