O Jogo report this morning that Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting Lisbon) have rejected a €30m offer from Arsenal for William Carvalho.
With the Gunners on the look out for a central defender to replace the soon to depart Thomas Vermaelen, the Portuguese newspaper say that Arsenal’s offer fell too far short of the player’s contractual release clause of around €45m
They say that Arsenal suggested a two-part payment for the transfer and suggest that this might have been a factor in the rejection. Of course if Arsenal pay the full release clause their desire to keep the player won’t matter, but after spending £30m on Alexis Sanchez, it seems unlikely that Arsene Wenger will splash out £35m+ for the 22 year old.
Wenger’s desire to sign a centre-half comes after his admission yesterday that he was unsure if Thomas Vermaelen would be staying at the club or not. Which, when you think about it, is a diplomatic way of saying he’s willing to let the Belgian leave.
With just Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny as senior central-defenders, the Gunners need to strengthen this area sooner rather than later, especially as the German won’t be back at the club until the beginning of next month due to his extended post-World Cup break.. [irrelevant – ed]
This story has confused us. It’s early and we’re hungover. He’s a defensive midfielder, not a centre-half. But they still rejected the bid.
F – must do better
We’re awarding ourselves 10 poos for this story. Runny ones too.
Isn’t he more of a defensive midfielder than a centre half?
Anyway, unusual that a report that we’ve had a bid rejected without two months of waffle beforehand. Almost makes it seem like there could be something in it. He’s supposed to be an Arsenal fan IIRC for what it’s worth.
pffft…”arsenal get bid rejected” when do this newspapers think it is? summer of 2012?
We dont get bids rejected nowadays. We are rolling in money.
Just found out that from twitter that his agent is Jorge Mendes.
That’s that then. Poo meter should be 11.
Going by the links to Bender, Schneiderlin and Khedira (not technically a DM etc, I know) I think it’s safe to say we are in the market for a defensive midfielder too…
Though I agree that this is almost definitely utter bollocks. Just pedanting. Now to rifle through for some grammatical mistakes
Excels at a position we’re crying out for a specialist in and can cover a position we need cover for. ‘Footbalistically’, this makes sense. 24 million pounds for a 22 year old, though, hmmm…
Although buying a DM and a CB separately could cost us twice as much, considering wages.
Wait carvalhos a centre back? I thought he was meant to be the next big thing in defensive midfield.
If we,r going to spend £35m or more id rather it spent on a striker
Heard of Alexis Sanchez? Supposed to be pretty hot in La Liga atm…
U sound like scholes
Makes losing Verm to United look insignificant.
Where is the poo-e-meter? This deserves a 10.
Yeah, these I look for the poo meter before reading the article – there is no point getting our hopes high for some agent or hack spreading such news for non-Arsenal reasons!
Good signing on Fifa, though more of a CDM than CB. Can’t see this happening though, I would give this 7 poos.
Looks like a decent player. Not sure if he’s worth that kind of money though.
Even after ozil, sanchez and hiw well we’ve gone abouy our businessthis summer I just cannot get used to headlines like this. Amazing. Just reward.
If there was any truth in this then he’d be our defensive midfielder with the ability to deputise at centre back. Would never pay £30 mill for solely a back up.
We need more then one, I do hope Wenger hasn’t decided to gamble on a position going without injuries, yet again
Story updated to reflect our crapness/hangover.
Why are you awarding yourself 10 poos – did you write the story?
10 poos should surely be reserved for Goal.com, offside and metro rumours
I find this article very hard to masturbate to.
But not impossible
Excellent update
This is gonna be a bloody smelly article blogs!
It’s as confusing as I thought we want to piss Jose “I am always a righteous cunt so to prove everyone I’m right I’ve let the title slip out of my hands last season” Morinho and play a little bit of top quality mind games with the utter cunt
Deserved an 11 out of 10.
Arsene to sign a backup CB for this amount? Yeah right. And surely he loves the Mertescielny axis of awesome too much to break it?
If we were into tifos that would make a great one. “Mertescielny… the Axis of Awesome!”
Whoa!!!! A whopping 10 poos!!! Thats some record breaking.
Some record breaking shit!
We should go for Eric Dier (England U21) of Sporting Lisbon pr Benedickt Howedes from Schalke as a backup CB. One of them would be a good signing. Dier can also play DM while Howedes can play RB, CB And LB as he did in The World Cup.
I’m convinced we’re in for Marco Reus and that I’m going to win the lottery this week.
You don’t need to win the lottery, you’re already Rich.
I’d rather make Vermaelen stay, if it were me.
Sounds like a very un-Wenger like signing – a £30M back-up for Mert and Kos? Nahhh.
I can’t see Arsenal meeting his release clause, therefore the bid was a frivolous exercise.
I think Hoewdes or Rojo are significantly better options in terms of Verminator replacement. Both play left back or centre half.
I’ve watched this lad for quite a little while now and if we sign him he can be the physical DM we want and is very adept at central defensive position (obvs that would be put to the test in the bpl) I hope the poo-ometer goes down, but hey football is football….
He was voted best player in Portugal by a mile last season. He’s only 22 and really very, very, strong. He’s more of a true holding midfielder than Khedira or Lars Bender who are more box to box. He’s also an Arsenal fan according to reports. I think after Paul Pogba he is the best young defensive midfielder in the world.
Except for the fact that Paul Pogba isn’t a defensive midfielder…
Except for the fact that he is? Juve are my second team and the main criticism he comes in for is that he doesn’t get forward enough.
He is a defensive midfielder with a little ramsey in him,I mean offensive mobility.he ll be a good buy for even 40mil euros
He is a CDM,a very good one at that,so I dont see how Vermalean is relevant here.
Guys… its not happening. Those poos aint no joke. They are even runny.
He was impressive against USA but 45 million!
As bad as transfer rumours go, this is among the very worst of them. If Mr Blogs wasn’t so hung up, it won’t make the news here.
Great editing though.
I just did an extremely runny poo. If anything it was full-on proper diarrhoea. Truly spectacular. Like ‘wiping it off the back of my balls’ spectacular. I think it may have been brought on by this rumour. Or maybe it was just last night’s stir fry that I reheated.
Stop showing off, young’un. Spectacular is only when the runny poo trickling down the back of your balls came from your mates posterial explosion…. in the next cubicle.
Wtf??!!!
Sounds like agent trying to hype his client.
While I really don’t condone the utterly insane comment made by “Meh”, the “wiping it off the back of my balls” part did make me laugh (in the same way you laugh at a Jimmy Carr joke about sex)
Ps. For all the grammar Nazis in here… http://www.buzzfeed.com/javiermoreno/weird-als-new-video-retroactively-justifies-the-exisitence-o?s=mobile
We need a CDM who can cover easily at CB but has to be top top TOP quality. Very similar type to Alex Song in fact and why Barcelona shelled out in a massive way to us !
Ha ha ha ha ha
Poometer giving it the full Nigel Tufnel
Check out the full story at, which may or may not be utter complete bullocks
http://sportwitness.ning.com/forum/topics/full-story-on-arsenal-s-carvalho-bid-30m-could-actually-be-accept
There’s no chance that they will let him go for less than the buy-out price they put on him because the main business of all the top teams in Portugal comes from buying cheap young prospects from South America, getting them their Euro passport, hyping their reputations up, and slapping on a nice buy-out price so that they can generate a good earner by selling those same players on to other European clubs as soon as they do something of note. They don’t want to keep the guy they want to sell him for at least the price they have… Read more »
Sporting are renowned for being stubborn. Look at what they did with Moutinho and Veloso when they were young, didn’t let them leave due to their huge buy-out clauses and didn’t want to negotiate and arguably stunted the potential of both players.
Interesting – maybe one of the poos has hardened up now?
Its got to be so difficult to play poker with Mr Wenger. He says one thing and the tabloids understand another. That man is top class.
Speaking at the unveiling of Van Persie, the
Manchester United boss said: ‘He (Wenger) could
run a poker school in Govan.”
My team for this year with signings I think we should make, and I know a lot about these players: Hart-Aurrier Deboosy mertescielny blind-Walcott Ozil carvalho bender-Sanchez Giroud drmic sub Ramsey
What???
I think you are own your own on this one!
I can only assume you’re taking the piss, not least because you’ve named a twelve man starting line-up and only one sub.
For those of you doubting on his value, here’s a video to change your minds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGs6QGag5Ng
As soon as I read that he was good at tackle and ball recuperation i realised that that video is something I do not want to watch for 24 minutes.
Same here though I gave it a try. First 10s gave me a headache: tackles in stroboscopic music. I guess it shows I’m over 35…
Quality player, worth watching imo
But is he worth €45m?
No way. He’s clearly a very good defensive midfielder; strong, tall, athletic and good on the ball too. I don’t think he’s going anywhere right now. £20-25 million, good value. But 45 euros is too much. Either Sporting will keep him for a few more years and sell him for a more realistic deal later in his contract, or one of the Oil Daddy clubs will pay that for him. Then again, is anybody worth 45m? I know that’s the inflation of the market and capitalism and shit but it’s a ridiculous amount of money for one player. These players… Read more »
poo/10
Oh the humanity! More top players rumored to come to the FA Cup holders. I can’t bear to sit through this summer any longer…
This is pure and unadulterated diarrhea
A steaming pile of elephant shit of a story. One which originated in Metro, an indication of its putrid pooness.
I recall Arsene saying that signing more than 3 players will destabilize a squad. Think it was in reply to a question about the spuds.
Im happy to forget that, if he is.
I think you have to put that into context, we are replacing some positions, and only 3, maybe 4 players will be starters, with the others just squad additions. The spuds brought in 7 players and looked to use as many as possible.
Was the Podolski-Sevilla tweet legit?
I was wondering that as well. The Metro and 101 Great Goals claim it was a fake:
http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/19/arsenals-lukas-podolski-appears-to-reveal-summer-switch-to-sevilla-before-deleting-tweet-4803748/
https://twitter.com/102greatgoals/statuses/490461427023757312
He has long legs and wears long boots. Not worth the money. Give me Abu all day long.
…chuckle chuckle. Brilliant post.
This shall be the season of no cover in any defensive position. And when we ultimately fail, we may blame it on bad luck.
http://www.nicematin.com/ogc-nice/info-nice-matin-accord-ogc-nice-arsenal-pour-le-transfert-dospina.1831390.html
Ospina deal now through. Welcome to Arsenal!!!
We need a CBACK Vermaelen’s problem is he cannot force himself into rotation with Meterscielny and this may become a big issue next season. I’m not sure if we have quite as much money to spend on a Cback but likely the attributes for a new Cback should include relative experience but still young 23-25 being ideal. Also, a bit of Metersecker’s height and Koscielny’s speed will help. Fourth choice Cback may go to Miquel who is still only 22 which makes me suspicious why we would pay so much according to this report for a similar age player from… Read more »