Last month, having sealed five youngsters on long-term deals, Arsene Wenger laid bare his hopes that his new British core will prove more loyal to the Arsenal cause than some of their foreign predecessors.
Eager not to be tarnished with the same diarrhoea dipped brush which has casually soiled the reputations of Robin van Persie and Samir Nasri, Wojciech Szczesny has stressed that despite his Polish roots he too is a true Gooner.
Speaking to Arsenal.com about how the club has come to mean so much to him, the Gunners keeper reflected:
“Ever since I signed for this club, I’ve become an Arsenal fan. It feels like it’s more than me just playing and doing my best on a Saturday afternoon. I feel like I have a much bigger part to play at this club. It means that little bit more to me.
“I think there’s a lot of players in this team that are genuine Gooners. You’ve got people like Carl Jenkinson, there’s Jack Wilshere, Emmanuel Frimpong – a lot of young players who really feel it’s the biggest honour they could have, to play for this club.
“I think that’s very important for the future.”
Which is all very nice to hear.
Of course, players have confessed loyalty to the cause before and still jumped ship because they’ve recognised a barrel load of cash is more appealing than a suitcase worth. Perhaps we can work out some kind of cashback deal to tempt players into staying until the end of their deals? Just brainstorming…
Meanwhile Aaron Ramsey, one of our loyal young British stallions (yeah we know a horse would have been put down if it had suffered the same injury), believes that the coming month could define the rest of the season.
Before you all scream, “No shit Sherlock” here’s what he told Arsenal Player:
“It is a big month for us. We play some teams who are above us and we have an FA Cup game as well, so it is important to take these opportunities.
“We have Man City at home and Chelsea away, games that we did well in last season, so hopefully we can do the same again this year and that will set us up nicely for the run in to the end of the season.”
The Welshman also revealed that ahead of the City clash this Sunday the Arsenal squad were taking heart from the absence of beastly midfielder Yaya Toure who is away with the Ivory Coast at the African Cup of Nations.
“We beat them last year at home and with Yaya Toure gone to the Africa Cup of Nations, it is a big loss for them.
“He is a big player for them and so influential, so hopefully we can take full advantage of that and get another good result.”
Arseblog News assumes Ramsey’s words lamenting the loss of Gervinho ended up on the cutting room floor.
(Insert some comment about loving SZCZ, whilst holding head in hands and weeping that we’re not going to sign anyone….)
[insert comment about how other players also said they loved Arsenal and left ,so SZCZ will leave it]
False logic, as some people who’ve said they love Arsenal only left because we wanted them too (age, performance etc.) instead of leaving on their own accord.
@bard
you think ashley cole, Viera, Henry, RVP all left because arsenal let them go?
lol…age or performance never was a problem for these players only arsenal being arsenal was the problem. they left because arsenal had nothing left to offer to these players. I hate to break your bubble but arsenal was too weak to hold on to these players. get out of the denial, son life becomes little easy esp. if you are following arsenal.
The ACON isn’t that bad after all? City lose Yaya toure and we lose Gervinho. It’s a win-win situation for us. More ACON I say.
How i wish Ramsey was off to the Nations cup too.
I really dont get the Ramsey hatred at all.
Good player in his position ‘IN THE MIDDLE , Arsene’. Has a good engine and is still so very young. A lot of short memories around that swat away his leg hanging off as some kind of mild cold.
Chez is a decent keeper, but not a great one. We should definitely sign another to give him a bit of competition. But since when did we actually spend money? Still no word of new signings – how predictable.
Diaby-LANS, now close the window “facepalm”
Played out joke/point.
I second the need for competition for Szcz, but at the same time, the things in Szczs’ game which one can argue arent up to scratch can easily be rectified with training and experience. I think he’ll be a beast Fats.
Didn’t most people think Mannone did OK early in the season? Some people even said he looked safer than Szczesny. While a few years ago, when we had a choice between Almunia and Fabianski, buying decent keeper would have made a big difference, but I really don’t think it’s the priority at the moment.
We suffered 3 years of Almunia as our first choice keeper and some people still believe arsene will sign players because we have a need for them. Scary stuff .
Yes. Please. Anything to rid us of Gervinho. Wonder how long before Ivory Coast drops him. And I still can’t wrap my head around why we are dallying on David Villa. Jesus. Sign him up already. He’s proven quality; a 1 goal in 2 chances striker. 2-3 years of top quality that Arsenal need. Why/ what is stopping us? Would be annoying if we didn’t sign him after he wanted to come to Arsenal. Does anyone have a proper reason as to why we haven’t just paid 16 million and brought him to the Emirates? Especially when we’re sitting on… Read more »
What’s stopping us is a flat refusal to sell him.
That being said, we need to get a bloody move on in bringing in some talent to a thin and struggling squad. LANS alone will see us fail.
We aren’t sitting on mountains of cash.. We’ve been operating at a loss the past few years but compensating for it by selling our best players. Now we have the new sponsorship deal which will give us some cash to spend but not mountains of it + David villa just had a long term injury and is coming past his sell by date. Bac hasn’t been great since he’s come back from his second injury and he was one of our best players before that, just shows that it’s hard to rediscover top from after a long term injury at… Read more »
Well said, John. Good points too.
seen his 2 goals for Barca yesterday? Absolute quality. And we could buy him becasue this “flat refusal” thing is bullshit. We nearly always flat refuse and it nearly always means that a month later the player has been sold.
We should sign Villa. PERIOD.
um, barcelona wont sell him?
exactly what id of said, but beat me to it
You could say we were dallying over signing him, or you could say that the man in charge has categorically stated they’re not selling him and that might have scuppered negotiations a little.
Although, you do have a point; if we plonked a stupid offer like 20/25m in front of them, they’d probably take it. That would be money that doesn’t get spent on a new midfielder but screw it, maybe Diaby would stay fit…
http://news.arseblog.com/2013/01/barcelona-rule-out-villa-sale/
You commented on the article. You didn’t even read the title, let alone the whole article, did you ?
i did read it. I just don’t believe it.
As mentioned in one of the comments. Clubs are almost duty bound to reject an idea of a transfer of a good player. Unless its Chamakh
Wasn’t van persie a gooner???
No, no he was not
Remember as a kid , he had that room of arsenal merchandise
Yeh, and then inside he had a load of ManUre so there you go. Fuck him.
“Eager not to be tarnished with the same diarrhoea dipped brush which has casually soiled the reputations of Robin van Persie and Samir Nasri, Wojciech Szczesny has stressed that despite his Polish roots he too is a true Gooner.”
Graphic. I never recovered after reading that.
I did enjoy the Gervinho joke though.
So, it’s been 40 mins and no-one has tried to bash Ramsey in the comment section…some sort of record?
Hopefully it stays that way. UTA.
I think he’s been ok recently when he came on as a sub
Gervinho stole his thunder.
But he’s been doing well on the wings. He reminds me of Pires
So has Walcott signed yet?
Kudos to this site for being alone in the universe in not reporting that he has, or that he nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly has.
I think most people are savvy enough these days to know that when Arsenal announce it, he’s signed, but not before.
I remember a guy confidently telling me that Hazard was already a City player, after it was announced on a few sites.
We put the ‘lazy’ in lazy journalism.
😉
(I apologise for the use of an emoticon)
Im getting annoyed we havent signed someone. Anyone. Please….
Bobbie Zamora? ..I know what you mean though….. i felt mildly optimistic that Zaha would sign and join Jenks and jack as fan/players…. Not much chance of that now.
Wierd that Utd have signed a Gooner. I don’t think we would put up with a Manc on the team!
We did put up with a Manc on our team, the cunny Dutch skunk. I remember laughing at his inner lil boy that wore the Arsenal top amd somehow apparently still wanted to play as a ManUre footballer.
Cue bad loss to Man City.
Do your talking on the pitch mate.
Have another box of pies mate, and relax.
No shit Sherlock!
I accept the transfer window is still open for a couple more weeks & anything can happen!
But is anyone confident that we’ll actually strengthen the squad?!?
I’m very sceptical to be honest, & it wouldn’t be a surprise if Arsene doesn’t sign anyone.
I think a strong, preferably goal scoring, midfielder would be nice. Arteta, Jack and Santi are all looking a bit knackered.
Michu would be good. Before you all give me the thumbs down, I’m only dreaming.
The thing is that if we had of signed Michu during the summer a lot of arsenal ‘supporters’ would have said ” oh no another unproven player nobody has heard of, wenger out spend more more MORE ” leaving the player feeling extra pressure to perform and not having the same effect he had at Swansea!
I think that was pretty much the situation that Giroud found himself in. Nobody had really heard or seen much of him (their loss), but he’s done fairly well so far.
i was half way through rationalising a yes respnse making the point that he loaned out chamakh but then well, i remembered the past
anyone interested in how transfers work could do a lot worse than blag themselves a copy of the secret footballer where it’s explained in simple enough terms but suffice to say the idea that arsenal are “doing nothing” or what have you is simply wrong. wigan haven’t bought anyone either but they’ll be just as busy attempting to land players they’re targeting. so are we. so is everyone (and that is a large part of why it’s so difficult to land targets in a short window, because agents are obliged to seek out the best deals for their clients etc… Read more »
“the idea that arsenal are “doing nothing” or what have you is simply wrong”
Talk about over simplification! Of course no one outside the club(and agents) knows for certain what is going on. But the contradictory statements put out by the manager, our increased transfer and wage budget and past experience tell us that these are not good signs.
Of course transfers can still happen, but then that would be the surprise…which is exactly what Arseblog was saying.
Arsenal, like all clubs, will have a list of targets – players desired for specific positions within the team. This list will of course change (as players move elsewhere, as they grow older, what have you) but it’s independent of transfer windows, it’s simply a list of who a club would ideally like to have. Blogs pointed out that when we bought JAR for a record fee we were top of the league, saying this was a statement of intent etc etc. Actually the more prosaic truth is that JAR was the nearest player to the top of Wenger’s list… Read more »
It is worrying though Sami, if what you say is true that someone at arsenal actually planned the signing of santos and Gervinho and they wasn’t just panic buys.
@ the only sam is nelson…
Regarding you last comment ‘Do you think that the management structure at Arsenal sit there all year until Jan 1 and go “fuck me we can buy players all of a sudden! shit! what do we do next?”…………..
erm…………. I think thats exactly what they do as I’m yet to see/hear anything to contrary. Really is frustrating times at the mo’.
the critical thing to bear in mind volders is that the list will start at number one and descend accordingly. we don’t know where gerv and cuddly andre sat on wenger’s list but we’d hope they weren’t top 5 (or even top 10). as to why you’d have a long enough list to incorporate players that perhaps shouldn’t be in arsenal colours – that’s a different question. but the fact is that the players ahead of both gerv and santos were obviously not available and it was felt the need to add to the squad outweighed the disadvantages of going… Read more »
That it isn’t true for other clubs though…they just scour goal.com for Arsenal targets and then bid for them.
Well, that’s what people always say in the comments section, so it must be true.
We will sign someone without doudt, but will it be of the quality we need to move forward and if it isn’t sooner rather than later and its towards the end of the month then it could be too late with the fixtures we have coming up. Other clubs have shown this time and in the past that’s it’s possible to do your business early. The mistakes of not signing adequate players was made in August when it was clear we needed another forward and a defensive midfielder, he will buy this time round but it will be to little… Read more »
You guys do realize that our player acquisition team is a bunch of yanks put together by Gazidis that worked in other Kroenke Inc franchises..
They came on the scene trying to conduct business Yank style and were told to piss off by the top European agents… It’s why we ended up with Park, Santos etc…
Same shite happened at the Broncos & Nuggets… Best players sold & replaced with inferior players… It’s the Kroenke Inc business model.
I’m too lazy to look it up, but didn’t Wenger say they would sign players in january at the end of last summer when the 1-2 more signings they were going to make then did not materialize? I wish someone kept track of all Wenger transfer quotes, it would make good, infuriating reading.
I’m also too lazy to look it up; but I believe that in the last 16 years, Wenger generally talks random bollocks at press conferences for his own amusement.
Maybe he gets backhanders from the press for giving them guaranteed headlines. If you compare him to most managers, who just waffle on about football, he talks about economics, politics, religion, etc.
He’s a journalists wet dream for usable quotes.
Who needs new signings when we have L.A.N.S!
Wenger – “L.A.N.S a make ’em dance, L.A.N.S a make ’em dance”
No juicy J fans here then
If we don’t sign anyone I hope to Bergkamp we at least start making better use of the reserves, i think adding one in every bottom 14 game would be good for us, giving some sort of better squad depth/rotation.
Would definitely like to see more of Eisfeld and Gnabry.
Bring back rami shabaan I say!!!
That’s what they all said.
I’m getting sick of hearing that this club is shit and that arsenal is a club in decline from gloryhunting man utd supporters and sp*ds. I’m tired of hearing this, as the rest of the arsenal fans. Wenger time that you open the wallet and spend some money. We are 18 points behind manure ffs, this is not good enough for arsenal.
I really fucking hate January.
My head says, “stay out of the market it’s a terrible time to buy. Keep your powder dry for the summer”
My heart says, “FAaak!!! Buy Villa!!11! Buy Kakaa!!2111!!!!. aaaaarrrrggaaaahhhhhh!!!!!! We lost BAaaaaaaaaa aaawwaaaaaahahaaaaaa!!!!”
I need medication I think.
Excuse the caps but
WHY HAVEN’T WE SIGNED ANYONE YET???!!!!!! I’m getting so close to a temper tantrum.
Arsenal fans. Great news. We have many new wonderful signings. A brilliant young 23 year old striker…TheoWalcott. An exciting19 year old attacking talent. Oxlade Chamberlain. A fantastic young 20 year old midfield general … Jack Wilshire. But wait there is more… Two fabulous young defenders have just signed Karl Jenkinson and Kieran Gibbs . A superb utility Aaron Ramsey. While you are drooling….. Two dominating midfield juggernoughtis comming Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Frimpong As you swoon…. remember Gerv is coming back as is the worlds best striker Nick Bendtner With talent machines like Park, Asharvin, Ryo in reserve and Rosický… Read more »
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