According to The Times, Arsenal will scoop a £1.5 million windfall from Benik Afobe’s move to Bournemouth.
The striker, who quit the Gunners for Wolves last January, yesterday completed a £10 million move to Eddie Howe’s Cherries after impressing in the Championship.
Tipped for a bright career at Arsenal – most notably by Robin van Persie – the Academy graduate saw his progress at the Emirates stunted by two serious knee injuries.
There were loan spells at Huddersfield, Reading, Bolton, Millwall and Sheffield Wednesday before a six-month spell at MK Dons, that included a League Cup hat-trick against Manchester United, saw him turn the heads of Wolves.
In total, Afobe scored 32 goals last season (19 for MK Dons, 13 for Wolves) and has ten goals to his name this campaign.
The 22-year-old joins Bournemouth at an exciting time in the club’s history; the South Coast club are enjoying their debut season in the Premier League having risen to 16th in the table despite a spate of serious injuries to key players.
Good luck to Benik, we trust the goals will be plentiful…aside from when we visit Dean Court on 7 February.
Always liked Benik, and would love for Bournemouth to stay up. Hope he smashes it.
Aye, seems a bit of a shame we couldn’t hold him on loan deals a little longer. He had the potential to do a Coq. Could end up doing a Matic… Or an Andy Cole…
Anyhow best of luck to him (so long as it’s not against us)
That’s probably why Wenger kept him on the books for as long as he did, but we never really suffered a crisis in the striker’s position like we had in midfield when Coq was called back. Selling him was the right decision I think, not least for the player’s own career. Hope he makes it in the Premier League!
One of the good ones, sounded like he had a mature head and not inconsiderable talent
Good deal considering he is going to score the winner against ALL our title rivals.
Judging by our luck against former players, the only title challenger he will score the winner against will be us.
Wish Afobe all the best for the future, he was just unfortunate with his injuries..
As an aside, it was actually a brace and not a hattrick against Manchester United, but that doesn’t take anything away from him. The look on LVG’s face during that match was oh, so special.
Hope he does superbly in the future, scoring in every game except against us!
Stan Kroenke will have impressive morning wood for a guy in his 60s this morning
Best of luck to him. I hope he can carry on fulfilling his potential and maybe one day come back to us. We could use every interview under the sun to mention how he has Arsenal DNA and because of that he would only want to come back to us and we’d get him for way less than he is actually worth. I don’t recall anyone else having tried that before…
Sorry to the Barcelona fans I’ve clearly upset…
“… saw him turn the heads of Wolves.”
Nice 🙂
1.5 million seems like a nice little sum to go in the Kroenke “professional services” pot for this year.
That is a pretty good scoring record since leaving Arsenal. Hope he does not turn out to be a top player we let get away, like Andy Cole who went on to be prolific for Newcastle and Man utd.
I should say I hope he does become a top player for his sake, but it would be a shame for Arsenal if we missed our chance.
The rumour was that Andy Cole was sold because he was bringing more pharmaceutical products into the dressing room than the medical staff, and that the move to the toons was his ‘wake-up’ call to become more professional which may not have happened if he’d stayed in the comfort of AFC.. The rumour!
We sold him to Bristol City – he was picked up by Newcastle from there. I recall meeting him in Cyprus in 1996 after he’d gone to Man Utd and telling him in a somewhat drunken manner that he must rue the day he left the bright lights of Bristol to have ended up having to share the same recycled air on the team coach as the mouth breathing Gary Pallister, – I concede he wasn’t that impressed, in fact it sounded like what he said to me was ”Cluck cough hat” The weirdest things footballers say.
He went to Bristol City from Arsenal, then to NUFC a couple of seasons later.
My only memory of Cole at Arsenal was the fact that he couldn’t hit a barn door
A great sign of character is getting rejected by your boyhood club, getting knocked down a couple of leagues and working your way back to the Premier League. Good luck Benik.
Ps. It was actually a brace against United in a 4-0 victory. http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=57575&season_id=144
“saw him turn the heads of Wolves.”
Like a latter day Red Riding Hood
thats enough talk about the van piss taker. in his case he turned the head of the devils.
Hope there’s a buy-back clause on the guy.
Not sure such a buy back clause would transfer from Wolves to Bournemouth.
No homo and that, but Benik is a beautiful specimen
I watched that mk dons game. I thought it was a hatrick too?
Eddie Howe looks so much younger than Afobe…
Shame we let him go but held onto Sanogoals