Schwarzer Wants to Join Arsenal; Wenger Still Looking for Center Back(s?); Puyol Keeps Talking

By: Martin | July 30th, 2010

A couple of stories today:

First, the Cesc quotes being circulated yesterday were old. I thought it was weird that Cesc would be giving an interview, since he’s on vacation and has been pretty quiet about this whole thing. Apparently the interview was given some time ago to a magazine for some gym or something. Arseblog has the details.

In better news, it’s being reported that Fulham keeper Mark Schwarzer wants to join Arsenal, and that Fulham are weighing up the notion of selling him on and replacing him with West Ham keeper Robert Green. It’s the Daily Mail, so who knows how reliable it is, but if Schwarzer is really our guy, hopefully we can get something done now that Fulham have a manager. Even if it is a stupid Manc manager with whom Wenger hasn’t always gotten along:

I still think we could do a lot better than Schwarzer, and wish we would splash out on someone with more quality, but Schwarzer would be an improvement over our current situation, and if we could bridge the gap to Szczesny for a couple of years, well, I guess that could possibly work. But for that matter, why don’t we pony up the extra few million to get Robert Green if he’s available? The World Cup howler seems to have damaged his reputation quite a bit, but he’s a goalkeeper I actually rate quite a bit, and would be a massive improvement over Almunia. But Wenger will do what Wenger will do, I suppose, and trying to bring common sense into it isn’t always the best idea.

In mixed news, Wenger has told the official site that Arsenal need “at least four” center backs, and that he is looking at “plenty of names” for people to bring in. This is good news in that it reaffirms that Wenger understands that this is a pressing need. A little discouraging that the season in 2 weeks away and it doesn’t seem like we’re in the advanced negotiation stages with anyone. To me, that means that when we finally get someone, it will likely be either right before the season starts or right after, which is not the ideal time to bring in someone new. But c’est la Arsenal.

In other news, Carlos “Lips” Puyol (pictured at right) has been talking about Cesc again. Here is what he said:

He is having to stay at a club where he no longer wants to be for another year. I wonder how intelligent it is keeping a player who doesn’t want to be there. After seven years of great service, I thought Arsenal could have granted him his dream move. Cesc has given everything to Arsenal to try to win a trophy but they haven’t matched his expectations. I won’t say he is in a prison, as we know how privileged we are as football players. But after how clear Cesc made it that he wanted to be in Barcelona, I thought they would have granted him that. We all thought a deal would be done this summer. But Arsenal have refused to talk and we are going to have to wait another year to get Cesc home.

He is far too classy a guy to say it but the truth is he doesn’t want to be at Arsenal this season. His heart is already in Barcelona, even though we must wait another year for his body to be here. We know he is arriving next season. Barcelona have a whole year to sort the deal out. He is professional enough still to have a great season and also because he has a lot of respect for the Arsenal fans. But anybody who tries to convince themselves he wanted to stay at Arsenal is wrong.”

Sigh. I have to say, this is really is extraordinarily annoying and classless. It provides even more evidence of my theory that this entire transfer saga can be summed up by the Veruca Salt scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, because the Barcelona players really do have the exact same attitude about things:

But you know what? I’m not going to waste time or energy blasting Puyol. He’s shown, definitively, over the past couple of months that he’s just a huge, huge asshole lacking any kind of class or respect. So this isn’t anything we don’t already know. Instead, I’m going to say what we may not want to hear, because I think at some point this starts to reflect really poorly on Cesc.

As Barca fans have pointed out many times, and we have had to concede, Cesc could have stopped this at any point by simply saying he’s returning to Arsenal this season. He hasn’t. And Cesc also could have probably stopped all this media talking by getting in touch with these guys, since they’re all apparently such good friends, and telling them, “Hey guys, I know you mean well, and I appreciate it, but it’s really just making everyone upset and not helping things at all, so would you mind just not talking about me in the media? Thanks.” Unless these guys are even more dick-ish than we thought, you’d have to think they’d respect him enough to follow his wishes there. But apparently he hasn’t done that.

And the bottom line is while Puyol shouldn’t be mouthing off like this, and it’s very, very disrespectful towards Arsenal (honestly, I can’t wait to see what kind of moral gymnastics Barca apologists bust out to explain how calling Arsenal everything short of prison isn’t disrespectful). And of course, Puyol is the worst kind of idiot for making this somehow Arsenal’s fault, when Barca are the ones who haven’t been willing to come anywhere close to Cesc’s true value. That having been said…I think everything he said in his second paragraph is probably true. I think Cesc doesn’t want to be at Arsenal any more. And while he is a professional and will play hard this season, I doubt we’ll see the same kind of passion that we saw him display last year, when he gamely soldiered on with a broken leg. We won’t see him kiss the badge again, we won’t get emotional to the point of tears over a goal like we did at the San Siro in 2007-2008 or last year against Stoke City. We need to make our peace with the fact that the Cesc we have now in all likelihood won’t be the talisman and fiery leader we’re used to.

And I also think that Rosell is enough of a man on a mission about getting Cesc that he’ll make it happen next season, when their transfer coffers a bit more full. Never mind the fact that it probably won’t make any more sense from a football standpoint than it does now, because they’ll still have Xavi and Iniesta, and promising youngsters Jonathan dos Santos and Thiago coming up in the playmaker role. But then, this whole thing has never been about football on their part. It’s depressing, but I think we should probably start preparing for Cesc’s exit after the season. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.

Fortunately, if there’s one thing we can take delight in these dark times, it’s the misery of others. In the schaudenfreude department…

Fat Sam Allardyce actually complained that Greek side AEK Athens were too physical for his delicate boys in a preseason friendly. Details here. Elsewhere, Tottenham lost a friendly 4-1 at White Hart Lane to Villareal. Heh. Don’t go spending all that Champions League cash just yet, Spuds.

It probably makes more sense to do the Emirates Cup preview tomorrow, so look for that.

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