Many have speculated his time at Arsenal is coming to an end, what with the whole not scoring any goals thing and generally not being picked to play football very much, but Marouane Chamakh believes he’s still got what it takes to make it at Arsenal.
Casually throwing his Lacoste jumper across his shoulders, Chamakh leans back on the many cushions that lie behind him in this crack den Moroccan restaurant. He takes a deep inhalation from his shisha pipe, closes his eyes and exhales deeply before speaking.*
“Am I going back to Bordeaux? For now, no. I have spoken to Wenger and I will stay at Arsenal. I think he trusts my work and I will have opportunities in the first team.”
Arriving at Arsenal in a blaze of free transfer glory, Chamakh impressed during his first months at the club, but it seems that Wenger didn’t quite do his research before making the signing.
While the former Bordeaux man certainly added an aerial threat, allowing for a plan B, it’s clear that during the battery of medical tests something was overlooked: to Marouane Chamakh, Robin van Persie is kryptonite. His usefulness is directly proportional to the skipper’s injury status.
When van Persie was out injured, Chamakh was pretty decent. Now that van Persie is fit, Chamakh has become the haunted ghost of playing Chris Whyte as a striker crossed with the gracelessness of Andrei Voronin after a 2 litre tankard of Russian Standard.
Yet he’s not deterred, determined to show his worth. Chamakh said, “I left Bordeaux to improve as a player and I think I can continue for this club. My agents have been ordered to reject bids that come from other clubs because I want to prove I can be useful for the Gunners.”
However, with the imminent arrival of Lukas Podolski and the whole not scoring goals or getting picked thing, it seems that his future is out of his hands and it would be no surprise if he were moved on this summer.
—
* quotes from Onze magazine, not a Moroccan crack den restaurant.
Cheers, blogs.
Probably one of your better pieces of work!
He needs to go. Vela gets as much first team action as Chamakh and his Shisha incident surely will endear him to Wenger as much as NB52 and his Pizza and “Do you know who I am” rhetoric. Chamakh is the type of player who’s only gonna produce if he’s getting 60 minutes + week in and week out. That’s not gonna happen now and if Podolski comes in it’s never gonna happen.
Cut the boy loose and send him back France.
“Chamakh is the type of player who’s only gonna produce if he’s getting 60 minutes + week in and week out.” Absolutely agree. I think Chamakh gets more criticism than he deserves and, as fans, some of us have very short memories. When RvP was as robust as a glass, Chamakh was scoring goals. He has his playing time reduced and his goal scoring went down. That’s logical. If you’re not putting him out there, he’s not going to score goals. Should he leave? Like you said, if Podolski arrives, where does Chamakh fit in? If I were him, I… Read more »
Brilliant post.
Smoking a pipe with the scorer of a goal that threatens our CL status shows exactly the wrong attitude. For RvP I’d forgive. Not for someone who hasn’t shown any form for what? a year? While pocketing more in a month than most of us make in a year.
Fuck that. Arsenal Football Club is not a fucking country club Marouane.
That is to say Marouane: at least fucking try to look like you care as much as the rest of us do.
It’s Lukas not Lukasz, as far as I know.
Too used to Fabianski, it seems.
They can call him Susan, as long as bangs in the goals.
Great article Blogs
but was Chris Whyte wearing the green and blue away kit during his stint up front?
them’s were the days
Football’s very own Jar Jar Binks.
yep and Mert would make a decent Chewbacca
And Arshavin makes a decent R2D2
Stupid purchase. His real strength is aerial and Arsenal don’t play that way. Result? More money wasted and no back-up for Van Persie. Should have been sold last summer, instead we’ve spunked another £2.5m on wages because Wenger won’t admit a mistake.
You know he arrived on a free right?
He’s talking about wages, not a transfer fee. “Free” players still cost money every week like everyone else.
To sell a player: 1 – Selling club has a valuation in mind based on wages and/or transfer fee 2 – You need a buying club 3 – Buying club need to agree with selling clubs valuation or come up with a reasonable offer 4 – Player needs to have a medical if transfer agreed 5 – Player needs to agree wages, add-ons If any of these don’t happen then a player is not sold. This is why when people say players A,B and C should be sold, they are told to sit back down and lay off FIFA for… Read more »
Possibly THE best post I’ve seen on this site.Thank you!
Do yourself a favour and don’t ever look at the comments on Sky Sports’ articles on their site; they’ll rot your brain.
But it just brings up the whole wage policy argument again.
Most clubs would quite like to sign guys who have been brought up at Arsenal, assuming they could afford them.
Most players would move for first team football, assuming it didn’t affect their pay packet.
Surely we can take advantage of our status as a feeder club supplying Citeh with overpaid, bench-warming cunts?
Mr. Bogarde Mk II
Least he was free i guess?
£5m in wages is not free.
He wasn’t a purchase though!
Yeah he could be andy carrol!
Or that Fernando Torres guy. 50 mil, youre ‘avin a laugh!
Plus the 5 million on hair gel and silk cushions.
Translation of Chamakh’s comments: “I want to stay Arsenal because they are paying me a bloody fortune I’d get nowhere near anywhere else and I want to ride that gravy train for as long as possible. I do not care if I don’t play.”
He didn’t complain when he was third choice behind RVP and TH14. What makes people believe he’s going to leave when the situation is repeated but with poldi? Plus he’s not as young as the likes of Bendtner so he could be thinking this is his last club and so he stays taking whatever game time the boss grants him.
I hope we keep him. There are not many strickers who will come and sit on the bench that long without complaining. If the worst comes to the worst(injury wise) he could come in instead of playing an arshavin there.
eh?
What bollocks! If you are pocketing 75k a week, you are hardly going to rock the boat!
You can add at least another four or five to that list of overpaid and not going list.
We need to keep him if only to support the booming hair gel industry in N5.
Arteta can’t support that business model all by himself for gods sake.
So… about that Park guy…
The Chamakh situation just sums up everything that’s wrong with the club right now. Because of Wenger’s hopeless mismanagement of the squad, we are stuck with an uninterested Moroccan lame duck and a hopeless Korean as back-up strikers to the only decent forward that we have. Every week, 80k of valuable wage money is wasted on these two sub-standard players. And all the while, we have two far better strikers out on loan! I was watching the Blackburn v Man United game yesterday and I couldn’t help but ask myself where we would be if we had Sir Alex as… Read more »
I would wager that Fergie would probably finish first or second with this Arsenal team. Just saying like, he may be a miserable prick but he’s a fucking great manager
Aye, the problem being that he wouldn’t be able to build this squad, now if we could get the granite will of Fergie instilled into a Wenger team we’d be unstoppable.
It needs to be pointed out that he has needed some rather favourable decisions to keep his team top but kudos anyway.
nonsense! while fergie is a decent manager, he’s not as good as wenger! when last did fergie manage a team that went unbeaten for a whole season? fergie’s at one of the worlds richest clubs with a massive transfer budget. anyone can buy a title. top class managers are those that punch above their spending power. fergie would drop arsenal to mid table if he was manager.
you have lost it @fatgooner.
Ferguson has never made a bad purchase, yep.
Spot on myles palmer. Djemba Djemba is better than messi. And fc bassel has twice the wage bill of that team you love.
Ya he did a great job holding on to that Ronaldo cunt. I usually agree with you fat, but in this case, not so much. fuck united.
Truth hurts but i agree with fatgooner on this, not with the part of Wenger being asinine though. I beleive there is more to players leaving and coming in than just the wishes of the manager. Great clubs do not let go of their best players every season for whatever reason. Great teams are built by a togetherness fostered by years of playing together. Arsenal should be able to do whatever it takes to hold on to their best players, SAF position when rooney’s head was turned by citeh’s money a few seasons ago come to mind, also, as much… Read more »
Fats, you’re just boring now. And it’s not working either is it? Someone’s wasting their retainer.
Slagging off AW because he’s not as successful as Fergie (SAF? WTF!) is like dissing RVP because he’s not scored as many as Messi.
Ask you to compare AW with anyone below us (eg Pardew, Coyle, Walrus and the rest of the mediocre mob), and you deflect saying we at Arsenal deserve more. Compare him with those above us (Fergie, Pep etc) and you moan and slag him off.
Move on now. Your story is told.
Those cunts are a fucking disgrace to the PL. Questionable calls 24/7 and flukes everywhere. I’d very much prefer the class of Arsenal than the glory-supporting shite of United.
Let’s go through this: “Wenger likes to moan about “financial doping”, but over the last 5 years, Man United have consistently out-performed both moneybags clubs, City and Chelsea, even though they – just like us – have had to work within strict budgets.” Wrong. Man Utd’s turnover blows every other EPL club’s turnover out of the water. It’s about £110 million higher than Arsenal’s. “Strict budget” my arsene. The constraints on Man Utd are far softer than for Arsenal, which is to do with the strength of its commercial operation, not its efficacy with respect to transfer spending or its… Read more »
Wow Peter, you’re amazing. It’s no wonder your name is synonymous with a dick.
Hi Frog. It’s so much easier to click the thumbs down button and hurl an inaccurate personal insult (Dick is a nickname for Richard, not Peter) than to respond to the content, isn’t it? I’m assuming you have no objection to the actual points I was making.
Hahahaha
I would imagine his entire future at the club hangs on Campbell’s work permit application or even Afobe’s performances at Reading and in pre-season rather than anything he can do (a stunning run of form aside), the way Chamkh has been playing either of them would contribute more anyway.
yeah ,they just need to score 2 goals a season
Bloody waste of a signing. Two decent months, followed by two crap years.
He looked ok when he first joined, but I never warmed to him even back when he was playing quite well. Just another player too scared out of his bollocks to shoot from outside the box (although given Chamakh’s terrible shot power, can’t hardly blame him…not that this justifies anything).
Offload him and buy Podolski. I’d rather see Bendtner played over Chamakh.
Chamack who now?
U have to have some sympathy for the guy tho, he did the job, in a fashion, while rvp was out and wasnt too bad, and as soon as rvp was fit got dropped straight to the bench. We all know rvp carries more ability in his fore finger than 12 chamackh’s but thats gotta do somethin to a guys confidence being dropped like a hot stone after carrying the mantle for a while
he is a target man. he needs crosses to be effective, he can also hold the ball well. we play short passing and chamack is a player capable of that but the problem is that his team mates don’t want to pass to him but Rvp instead becuz they know he can do alot more than Chamack can.
i like turtles
What grinds my gears was the fact that he was smoking that thingamadoodle with Taarabt just after he and his team had beaten him and his team. Like, couldn’t he have waited a couple of days or weeks at least… Couldn’t he arrange a playdate some time later?
I dont really see how he can fit into our team next season, with podolski seemingly on the way and young talents like campbell and afobe hes never going to get the game time he needs to recreate his previous form, its a shame but he has proven this season that he cannot cope with being second striker
what are people’s thoughts on bringing bendtner back into the squad next season? he finally seems to be finding some consistency at sunderland and is still a good prospect in my eyes. would make sense to me to offload chamakh and bring nic back in. we’d then have three quality options up front in RVP/podolski/bendtner and have youngsters like afobe and campbell hopefully knocking on the door too… let’s face it, he’d be LANS!
I don’t care what Bendtner starts to do he should never play for Arsenal again. He’s a headcase with an attitude problem, an ego bigger than Greece’s debt, and what he said about Arsenal as/after he left definitely didn’t leave anyone wanting more Bendtner
fair enough. i’ll take that as a no! 😉 i think he’s still under contract for another couple of years though so we are going to have to decide what to do with him in the summer. in fairness, he probably doesn’t suit our kind of game and not much point in keeping him around if we continue to play him out of position. the main thing i do like about him though is that he gets the scruffy kind of goals we don’t seem to like scoring. i can see him going somewhere like bayern munich and being a… Read more »
Do you honestly see anyone being willing to pay his wages?
Anyone who calls ferguson ‘SAF’ on here should be banned indefinitely.Or shot.
Goodbye fatgooner,go support the mancs you admire so much.
Didn’t Wenger get an OBE?
Trouble is these players that decide to stay and not get the game time, will sooner or later start to hinder our younger players. If they take up squad places just because they won’t go due to the the rediculas contracts we have given them, the younger players like Campbell, frimpong etc will not get squad places. And we won’t be able to bring in the odd quality player that we need for the same reason. Squillachi, park , chamakh and probably arshavin and now maybe even bentner may want to return. Even if and it’s a big if we… Read more »
While in principle you’re right, holding on to Chamack and/or Park will only take away a squad place that could have gone to a new signing. It will not block a youngster’s path to the team because the 25 player rule allows for an unlimited number of Under-21s. And if the youngsters are good enough such as Coquelin and The OX, possibly even Yennaris, they’ll make it through anyway. The thing about players like Chamakh and Djourou etc is that while they’re nowhere near world class they come in do their job and don’t complain happy to be 3rd/4th choice.… Read more »
Not really sure what fatgooner said (blackberry’s don’t show hidden posts) apart from saf and I’m guessing that he respected him. Whats wrong with that? He’s been knighted for services to football and he’s the most successful manager in British football history. I’m not saying I’m his biggest fan but still… Cue abuse and thumbs down.
I still think he’d do all right in a 4-4-2, he’s got decent touch and can hold up the ball alright.
It’s worth pointing out that for all his 17 appearances this season, his cumulative game time probably wouldn’t add up to even three 90 minute appearances, and a goal in 3 games isn’t altogether THAT bad for a striker who’s not getting any playing time.
The next time we’re 2-3 goals up with say 25 minutes to go, I hope Le Boss brings off RVP and gives Chamakh a slightly better run out.
The kryptonite bit was great!
Sensible points ar, didn’t realise that about the 25 man squad and the under 21 part.
This team and squad just needs tweaking and not a massive overhaul. 3 or 4 out the same number in but real quality and with the current players and youngsters coming through we could really do something.
Just hope the club don’t pass up the opportunity again as they have in the recent past.
You’re right, that is the one thing I worry about. Anyway let’s hope for the best mate, there will always be something/someone to bring us down.
How do you say to Mr Chamakh in a nice way, kind and gentle to the ear, soothingly,
JUST FUCK OFF YOUR NOT WANTED
Oh dear.. i like this guy and feel more than a bit sorry for him, but that was funny as hell!
Ps. Blogs you sure that’s actually Chamakh and not Donald Duck in the pic?
[…] there’s Marouane Chamakh’s assertion this week that he wants to stay at Arsenal. The last twelve months of his career have been a sporting humiliation. He’s appeared more for […]