Vermaelen in; Eboue Waits; RvP to United?

By: Martin | June 18th, 2009

Well, it looks like Vermaelen is all but a done deal. He claims he has reported to London for his Arsenal medical. Frankly, once things get to that point, there is probably very little left to do in terms of finalizing the deal. Vermaelen seems genuinely pumped about the move, saying:

I feel so proud. Arsenal is a fantastic club, and as a child I watched them play. On Friday, if I go to Emirates Stadium I will be seriously impressed. This will be a big change in my life, next year I will suddenly be facing the best strikers in the world. This does not scare me, I will give everything my body has. This is one of the best days of my life.

Cheers, Tommy V. Hope he turns out to be a good player for us, because if he keeps talking like that, I can see myself coming to like the guy quite a bit.

Second, Eboue seems to have backed off his stance from a few days ago. He now says he’s happy to remain at the Emirates, and maybe even sign a contract extension, unless he gets an offer to be a key first-team member at a “big” team. And his agent has explicitly said that Fiorentina and Roma are not big enough for Eboue, and that the only three Italian clubs he would consider leaving Arsenal for are Juventus, AC Milan, and Inter. Well, then.

My first instinct is to poke fun at Eboue, but all in all, I feel like this is a sensible enough approach, if unusual in its frankness. He would rather be a member of the first-team at Juventus than sit on the bench at Arsenal, but would rather be at Arsenal competing for trophies than playing in the Europa League with Roma. As I’ve said, I think he played well for us down the stretch last spring, but I find it hard to see The Special One being so enamored with him that he makes an approach this summer. I’d put the odds of him staying at Arsenal at this point at around 2:1.

Finally, in “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” news, rumors have Manchester United making a move for Robin van Persie. As we know, Robbie is coming into the last year of his contract, and really either needs to re-sign a new deal with the club or be sold this summer. Even if this isn’t completely fabricated, I just don’t see this happening, though–if Robbie leaves, it would be hard for me to see Wenger selling him to United. And I’d like to think that Robbie would have enough loyalty to the club that if he wanted to leave he wouldn’t go to our rivals, but who knows. Despite how good he was for us last year, Robbie is inconsistent and is injured a lot. I think there’s a very good possibility he’s at his absolute peak value at the moment, and if we could get a decent amount of money for him that Wenger would put back into strengthening the squad, I can’t say I’d be averse to the idea. But I would be averse to him crossing over to the dark side and pairing up with Shrek Rooney next season.

But like I said, I just don’t see it. First, Wenger would have to come to an impasse with Robbie where he feels he needs to sell him, and then I think United would have to make a substantially better offer than anyone else. In the end, I still Robbie re-signs, stays at Arsenal another 3-4 years, then heads to PSV, Ajax, or Feyenoord to finish his career.