Vermaelen Signing Official

By: Martin | June 19th, 2009

Well, it’s official. Thomas Vermaelen is a Gunner.

Arsene Wenger said Vermaelen will be an asset because of his experience with the first team at Ajax and in the UEFA Cup and Champions League. The boss said:

Thomas is primarily a left-footed centre back, but he’s multi-functional and can also play at left back. He is strong technically with a positive winner’s attitude and I have no doubt his arrival will strengthen our team. Thomas Vermaelen will be a huge asset to Arsenal.

Vermaelen also seems excited about the move, saying:

I’m just so happy to be joining Arsenal. This is a great Club with a world class manager, high quality players and a fantastic stadium. Everything is set up for Arsenal to be very successful for years to come and I joined this Club because I know Arsenal will be challenging for trophies….Also, I just want to assure the Arsenal fans that I will give everything for this Club and I hope we can enjoy winning some trophies together next season.

I did a little (admittedly uninformed) profile of Thomas Vermaelen on this site previously, where I talked about why I thought he would be a good signing for the club. Nothing has changed my mind, and I think this was a good move by the club. He’s young enough that he’ll still improve, but has has enough experience and testing that he should be able to play right away. And he addresses what I think is our biggest need. Managers get criticized when they do things wrong, but they should also get credit for doing things right–Wenger saw the team’s biggest weakness, then went out, spent some money, and got a player to patch that hole. Only time will tell if this turns out to be a good move or not, but at the very least Wenger is going about things the way we all want him to, which is encouraging.

It’s also very nice that we got this done so early. I know that generally you can dicker back and forth with clubs and get the price of players to come down a bit in August and September, so maybe we could have got him a bit cheaper if we had waited. But then he would have reported to the team, had to find a place to live, had to get into a routine, had to familiarize himself with the club, the fans, the stadium, the coaches, his teammates, the style of play immediately as the season was starting. Whereas now we have him, and he will report to preseason training with the rest of the squad and will be a member of the team from day one.

Wenger may have also tipped his hand as to how he’s going to use Vermaelen, because he said that Vermaelen was predominantly a center back, but could also play at left back (Vermaelen is naturally left-footed). Now, he’s not going to displace Clichy as the first-choice left back, so I think if he starts, it will be at center back. But I think it’s very telling that Wenger did NOT say that he could also play as a defensive/holding midfielder. A lot of speculation has been that this is the role Wenger has in mind for Vermaelen. Maybe Arsene’s just being cagey, but I think that upon the completion of the transfer, Wenger would have at least mentioned that as a possibility if he had it in mind. So I think Vermaelen is a center back for us at the moment.

The other question, of course, is what his role is and how it will affect the roles of others. As of now, William Gallas and Kolo Toure are both with the club. Assuming they both stay with the club, would Vermaelen displace either of them as a first-choice center back? I obviously can’t really say, since I’ve never seen him play. Having said that, I’m going to completely contradict the previous sentence and say yes. Now, obviously I don’t mean this if he turns out to be crap, but he seems aggressive, and physical, and with an element of size (6′0) and aerial presence that Gallas and Toure lack. I think he’d be a decent partner for either of them. And based purely on performance last season, I think you’d have to say Gallas was better than Toure, so this could potentially mean that Toure is no longer a starter. Given that Toure turned in a transfer request last January, this development certainly wouldn’t endear the club to him any further, and this move may spur Kolo into agitating for a transfer to Manchester City or somewhere. Stay tuned.

The final wrinkle to this may be that this could help convince Robbie to sign a new contract with the club. Robbie has been constantly talking about how he wants the club to show ambition and spend some money. Well, if it’s not exactly Real Madrid, this is a substantial outlay of cash for a promising young player. In fact, a player that Robbie himself had urged the team to sign. Hopefully this will prove our ambition to Robbie’s satisfaction and he’ll re-up soon. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Rumors still abound regarding the club targets. Mahamadou Sakho has said he will not be moving to Arsenal and will stay at PSG next year. Turns out Sakho’s agent that was talking up the deal actually was just some guy pretending to be Sakho’s agent. Awkward. I’m a little happy, though, because if I had to spell “Mahamadou” over and over again on this site the spelling could get pretty ugly. We’re also potentially still in the hunt for Bassong, and have been linked with Bordeaux striker Marouane Chamakh. Who knows, but it would be nice to get our major transfer business wrapped up sooner rather than later.