Wenger Considers CB Signing, Plus the Return of King Henry

i say let wegner produce a miracle signing its about time he did. his last one for me was funny enough TV5. so if we get another CB like TV5 we can ship off Djourou
and squllowngoal.

Have you actually been watching Arsenal in the last month? Djourou has been our best defender; it'd be ridiculous to let him go!

Resereves losing 10 . 1 and AW taking players out, am I reading CB from Reserves and no new signings?

Off subject: Someone said how Flaps looked like Joey TRibbiani from Friends, well I picked up an old Spanish foot mag that said Fat Sam was exactly like an angry Meat Loaf :)

henry i mean

his freekick style is more better than CR7 lol

A 10-1 loss for the reserves. That's got to hurt the pride a bit.

I wonder what team Arsene will throw down for Ipswich - at first it seems like a match he would play "b" players but then again his carling teams thus far have been strong.
Chelsea was only really 2 or 3 players off of their first team (2 or 3 depending on how one would rate sturridge). Haha Ipswich, poor bastards... 7 goals ( no assists by the way)

Well, AW, what up buddy?
In played CB back in school and won a medal for defender of the year, I am cheap nd unknown, I speak french although I am not French.
Oh and I am over 35 so kind of like a Slo, french Slo.

YoungGunsBlog just posted the lineup for the Arsenal Reserves. No Miguel or Ramsey in the lineup at all.

Ah. And I suppose he could have trained with 1st team earlier in the day, since it's getting to be evening over there. So I'm an overreacting, and I'm an idiot, but regular readers probably already knew that.

Although obviously Afobe won't be playing, since he's on loan. They could just be going to watch, I suppose.

It's best not to jump to conclusions from twitter, particularly when we don't have the whole story

Interestingly, Benik Afobe tweeted that he was on his way to the Reserves game with Miquel and Handovic. I say interesting because I had expected Miquel would probably start to spell either Djourou or Koscielny against Ipswich on Wednesday. But I can't see any way that happens if he plays today. And if he wasn't going to play today, I have no idea why he would be traveling to Birmingham. So . . . I would think at this point he probably plays today and we have Koscielny and Djourou against Ipswich.

I wouldn't be surprised to see song alongside kos. Chances are he may have been rested anyway & certainly isn't a necessity to play midfield for this one. He's physically far less likely to break down than djourou.

Kool guess Squizz ent all that injured so he might start Saturday, i hope he puts out a strong starting Elven i want the League cup so bad, and since Wenger never won it i want it for him also

One thought I had - should the fact that Per is cup-tied matter at this point? Or perhaps Wenger looks at it and thinks, we drew Barca, odds pretty stacked against us advancing, maybe we focus on getting someone for the league and domestic cups and if we progress in Europe, all the better and we'll find a way to manage.

Of course, I completely agree that this signing won't be someone as high profile as Per.

Yeah, Arshavin was cup-tied when we signed him, and Wenger didn't seem put off by it. And as you said, realistically, the chances of us doing much in the CL this year are pretty low any way, so I don't think it should be that much of a deterrent.

The King is back!! :D

Instead of signing a CB how come he cant use the CB who plays for the Reserves, the one that was on the bench saturday

Well, he probably will at some point, at least in the domestic cups -- his name is Ignasi Miquel, and I expect to see him starting against Ipswich on Wednesday.

But now we're down to just Koscielny, who for all his faults seems to able to stay pretty healthy, and Djourou, who is coming off an entire missed season and is very injury-prone (Wenger himself has said that he does not like to play Djourou in back to back games where there hasn't been a week or close to it in between for fear of Djourou getting hurt).

That's it for first-team center backs. We have Miquel, who has played well for the Reserves this season. But beyond him, we really don't have anyone. And with all our fixture congestion coming up, 3 players isn't going to do the trick.

Practically, Wenger would move Song back to center back if it came to that, and play Wilshere alongside Denilson (or possibly Ramsey, or Diaby if he ever comes back). Failing that, he'd move Sagna over to center back and play Eboue on the right. But neither one of those are ideal b/c Song and Sagna contribute so much from their preferred positions.

Problem is, we don't have a like-for-like backup for Song (unless you count Frimpong, but he's injured anyway)

Guess we not getting TV5 back this year, is Squizz injury long Term i would find it a waste of money to buy someone and they would only play in January cause we only have 3 more games to win the league come, if TV5 doesn't come back i don't think we can win Champions league (Think we should threw in the towel for this one), guess they might be studying the money though

The Samba thing is moronic. 'look, good in the air and at set pieces! We suck at that! Sign him up!!!' Come on people, get real.
I usually don't like to get involved with transfer rumors, but what about David Wheater from Boro?

That's just it. People so used to complaining that they've lost sight of how we play and what our defenders are (or at least are supposed to be) good at, and just looking at someone who can address those deficiencies, ignoring the deficiencies that player will create.

Don't know much about Wheater, other than that he's really tall and has captained Middlesbrough. And he has some super-sweet dance moves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

That video sold me. He would look terrific alongside Eboue

Napoleon Dynamite, center back.

LOL

I actually have kind of a hard time seeing any of the names being bandied about signing for us. Subotic is definitely out -- I think he would be good, but Dortmund is on pace to win their first Bundesliga title in 8 years, no way they part with their best defender halfway through the season. At the other end of the spectrum, Bremen is just 2 points above the relegation zone with one of the worst goal differentials in the Bundesliga -- surely they wouldn't tempt fate by selling off one of their best players in Mertesacker in the midst of that?

I actually emailed Sairax to shoot down the Samba thing, because I think it's such a horrible idea. Fortunately, I think Wenger realizes this, and I think there's no chance of that happening. Cahill is decent, but I'm not actually convinced he's that great, and at the price Bolton is supposedly asking, he would be one of our most expensive-ever signing, and just on principle, I can't see Wenger knowingly spending twice what a player is worth just to get a warm body in.

Sol might be a possibility if Newcastle are willing to let him go for free, which they may very well be, b/c he's been crap this season when he's played. I have to say as much as I love Slo, I'm not wild about that. Last season he worked so hard to get himself back into shape and form, because he had something to prove. This season I'm not sure he does, and his work ethic worries me a bit -- showing up to Newcastle woefully out of shape because he scheduled his honeymoon during preseason training, etc. I have a feeling that bringing back Slo won't work as well as it did last year.

I think we will get someone, but I think it will be someone "off the list," one of Wenger's discoveries from somewhere. And I think it will more likely be of the Squillaci variety -- mediocre veteran that could be had on the cheap -- than a young, promising player. I think Wenger likes Vermaelen and Koscielny a lot, and with Djourou emerging, and Bartley and Miquel coming through the ranks, I don't think he wants to pay for another long-term solution type guy.

Another solution I haven't really heard mentioned very much is Bartley, actually. Now, Bartley is on a season-long loan, so he can't be recalled. But the loan can be cancelled by "mutual consent" -- if we gave Sheffield United 1 million or so, I have to think that would probably be enough to get their "consent," and we could plug Bartley in as a back-up and get him some playing time in domestic cup fixtures. Not sure how feasible this is, but it would seem to be a cost-effective way of getting another defender in without getting tied into a contract with a player we're not that keen on.

The bitter irony of it is that we just sold Nordtveit last week. And while I get the sense that he may have been so desperate to go that it wouldn't have mattered, one has to wonder whether we could have at least waited until the end of the window to sell him on, and let him play in some of the domestic cup fixtures in January. You also wonder whether he's kicking himself -- if he had stayed the season, he likely would have gotten to play in at least some domestic cup matches, and then could have shopped himself around for money and a better team come summer. As it is, he joined up with a team that is almost certainly getting relegated at season's end, and he'll be plying his trade in the glamorous Bundesliga.2 next season.

remember emir spahic from montpellier? http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news... . I think Wenger will either get him, or someone more or less alike ie. a typical Wenger signing (unknown, French, not bad but not outstanding)

You're talking a lot of sense. I don't think any club will want to sell their best defenders midway through the season. Thankfully, Wenger is smart enough to avoid a terrible defender such as Samba and go for someone more suited to how we play. This is where I get a bad feeling about who will eventually be brought in as a replacement though. I worry that we will end up with someone like Squizz, who has been decent, but really could cost us if we have to rely on them for any length of time this season. I would rather we be aggressive and buy someone like Cahill. I realize that he's overpriced, but he's a decent Premier League defender who's good in the air and is quick enough to play our high line. Maybe he will be unsettled in a year when all our CBs are fit (if that ever happens) and he drops down the pecking order, but we can't afford to not win anything this season. And I would rather we get rid of Squizz and keep a player like Cahill as a backup anyway. I'm not saying Cahill is the best option in the Prem League or the most likely, but from my viewpoint he seems to be one of the players who could help us the most.

But what do you think about potential CB signings?

julien escude..or another 30 something frenchie

Ha. Fair enough. I just get fired up by so many stupid people on Twitter and on other blogs (not you, obviously -- probably so obvious it doesn't need to be said, but just to be clear) just spouting crap without thinking it through. People just say things like "Subotic would be perfect, that's what we should do" without even thinking about whether Subotic would leave his current team in the middle of a title push (he wouldn't) or whether his team would sell him in the middle of the title push (they wouldn't). Same with Mertesacker -- really? a team 2 points above the drop is going to sell us their best defender now, when they wouldn't this summer? I just don't see it.

And the Samba thing is honestly baffling to me. Yes, he's a decent player. He's strong and he's a good defender, and he's great in the air and on set pieces. But he is tailor made for a Big Sam-type team that stays behind the ball and hoofs it up the pitch, and he would be a disaster for Arsenal. I know next to nothing about tactics, and it's clear as day to me, so I don't understand why so many people keep trying to sound smart saying things like "Samba wouldn't be a bad value -- may be exactly what we're looking for," etc.

Okay, I'm going to stop now, obviously I may not be emotionally capable of talking about this in a rational manner right now.

I love when you rant Martin :D

But if he is going to be a Backup does it matter since he would hardly ever play especially when TV5 is back