Antoine Griezmann says he’ll never join Arsenal after the club pulled the plug on a proposed move four years ago.
The France international was 21 and on the books of Real Sociedad when he was linked with a big money switch to the Emirates; a move that he was seemingly keen on making.
Having been kept on tenterhooks by Gilles Grimandi during initial contact, Griezmann was eventually let down by Wenger. When the Arsenal boss changed his mind at a later date, he was given short shrift by the attacker.
Writing in his new autobiography, Griezmann, who eventually moved to Atletico Madrid where he has sealed a reputation as one of the continent’s biggest stars, makes clear the situation left him feeling jilted.
“I waited, I waited, and I kept waiting,” he writes. “When there was no news, Eric [Olhats, his former advisor] called [Gilles, Arsenal scout] Grimandi, who said that the manager was still interested in me [and] to keep waiting.
“Finally a few hours before the market closed, he let us know Arsenal would not make a move. I don’t like to be told something and for it not to happen.
“So when Eric told me later that the London club were interested again I told him ‘Forget it, after the blow they gave us’.”
Arsenal eventually signed an injured Kim Kallstrom on a free transfer during the same window…so in fairness, all’s well that ends well.
We didn’t miss out. Not at all.
Shit like this does make me angry. Arsenal have been so inept in the transfer market for years now. Hopefully the new changes in backroom staff go some way to solving that.
He was a decent young player Sociedad, he scored 10 goals that season, 7 the season before. At the time I’m sure people will remember some excitement about a possible buy-back for Carlos Vela. *He* was the star for Sociedad back then, scoring 12 and 14 goals to Griezmann’s 7 and 10. He was assisting more as well. It’s not like Wenger turned down the chance to sign what Griezmann is now. He snubbed a promising French kid with a few goals at an overachieving continental club like he has to do every year, and even more than that- he… Read more »
Same happened this year with Lemar. Exact same,w ord by word from what Griezmann said.
Who’s reading an autobiography of a player barely half way through his career? Save it for when your wage packet runs out fella and stop trying to destabilise an already fractious situation.
I have not read the comments below yet, but I am sure that many will completely ignore the good sense that Vino expresses. Why did Greizmann end up at Atletico and not Barca or Real–or Bayern or Juve or Man United? Everyone thought Griezmann was pretty good, but no one, *no one* saw what he would become.
Players are gonna sneak under the radar, its just the sheer number of them that we miss at Arsenal that’s the problem.
So why did he go for almost 30m as at that time?? He went to atletico because of Simeone
But that’s the rub isn’t it. A scout lives or dies on whether we sign a Griezman or a Vela. Same guy never pulled the trigger on Mbappe 2 seasons ago.
I donno – I disagree. When you consider the types of player Arsene Wenger is willing to pull the trigger on total unknown quantities like; Chamakh, Bendtner, Sanogo.. It does really bother me that we passed up on a player of Griezmann’s quality. He did exactly the same thing with Hazard as well. Its always down to money. We just refuse to meet the clubs valuation of players these days. Most of the time we are constantly haggling over paying about £3-5 million over more than what we are prepared to. And when you consider you’re pretty much paying £30-40… Read more »
Isn’t Dick Law the one who bids to other clubs?
*Wasn’t Dick Law the one who bid to other clubs?
Welcome to the future my friend
I think it’s funny when someone says ‘Whats an extra £5m’. It’s fucking shedload of money, that’s what it is. Any well run company would have issues with a buyer that said ‘What’s an extra £10k’, let alone £5m, and where does that stop? Should we buy every single player by paying more than we think they’re worth? If the club was owned 100% by one person/company then they could consider running that way, but as we have shareholders (inc small shareholders) it would be irresponsible to spend like that. If he’d turned out like Marko Marin (Not picking on… Read more »
Agree with you that 5m IS a lot of money – but the football world swims in money. Quality is expensive. Quality costs. But Quality also wins trophies. Honestly, Arsenal’s current football status as a club would have been better off paying that extra 5m on a number of transfers over the last 10 seasons. Arsenal are currently top of the good accounting league – and it seems sometimes the results on the pitch are clearly secondary concerns to the people who run the club. We do need to align ourselves a little more to paying a price for “top… Read more »
@Andy Mack Yeah £5 Million is a shed load of money in isolation, but not in the realms of football. Also its not like we don’t have it, we’ve got practically half a billion in cash in a bank account. If you’re prepared to spend £25 million pounds on an asset paying an extra £5 million to meet the sellers valuation makes complete sense – especially when its pretty much guaranteed that the asset you are paying the extra £5 million for WILL be sold for a profit. Lets also not forget that we don’t pay those transfer fees upfront.… Read more »
If you throw an extra £5m at every young prospect then you’d be spending a load of money with very little to show for it. I guess that’s one way to empty the bank account.
Or are you claiming some amazing power to see into the future over which young players with potential will actually make the grade… If so, there’s every single football club in the world that will employ you, because they certainly don’t know for certain which ones will and won’t make the grade.
Well, we could’ve had Higuain for an extra 5mill and what about Suarez? What’s an extra POUND worth 40,000,001….
10 goals in a season for a young wide forward is still impressive, he’d still made enough appearances for a scout to have a good read on him. I think the contact proves that Arsenal were pretty convinced by him so it looks more like it has come down to hesitance over price and mechanics of transfer more than not thinking he’s good enough.
Except he scored those goals from the wing. It was at Atletico that Simeone played him through the middle and altered his game into the player he is now. It was more impressive than you give him credit for and Vela had already not made the grade once already at that point.
What? We were being indecisive in the transfer market? Shocking!
It’s actually nice to get a confirmation from a player that we do mess around too much. We all suspect that’s the case, but there’s always that bit of “well, transfers are quite complex, so maybe it’s just challenging”.. well, now we know. We’re just crap at transfers.
It seems to know who the best players are… we’re just not that keen on buying them.
Suarez
Ronaldo
Mbappe
Messi
Griezmann
That’s arguably the 4 top players in world football and the best young player.
Yet we always fall short in getting deals over the line.
Zlatan!
You missed Yaya,
Yaya Yaya,
Yaya yaya,
Yaya Yaya,
Toure!
Then again we did get Kolo,
Kolo Kolo,
Kolo kolo,
Kolo Kolo,
Toure!
And
Yaya Yaya,
Yaya yaya,
Yaya Yaya,
Sanogo!
Don’t forget Drogba, Cech before he joined Chelsea, Gareth Bale when he was at Southampton and countless others…
And Hazard – when we signed Gervinho!
To be fair I don’t think Arsenal were ever in for Messi. He moved to Barca from Argentina as they paid for his treatments etc.
His growth hormones? Those PED drugs that make him so tall
Oh FFS.
Predicting the future – especially with footballers – is so easy.
Was that when we were trying Walcott as a lone striker?
‘If you sign Griezmann you kill Walcott.’
Erm…and…
LOL
We walcotted ourselves
Don’t be cruel !
Him, Zlatan, Ronaldo, Huckerby… WENGER OUT!
I’ll never get over missing out on Huckerby.
He could have been our new Ray Hankin.
Think it was a choice between him or Alexis. I was felt Wenger had intended on converting Alexis to a 9 but it clearly didn’t work out as planned. If it had, I have a feeling we’d have signed both Griezmann and Alexis that window instead of Danny.
This really sucks to be honest…
Oh my bad…this was at the Jan transfer window 2014. We were also after Draxler that window and it didn’t work out. I heard us not going for him also had something to do with StatDna. I don’t think we’ve made any top sayings with that.
Imagine if we’d signed Draxler, Griezmann and Sanchez in one fell swoop. Enough to make you foam at the mouth.
I’d have taken Sanchez and Griezmann with Ozil behind them. Goals and creativity galore!! No way we wouldn’t have won the league
We’d have still played Walcott lol
To get a minimum of 19 goals out of him.
Didnt StatDna play a part in it , remember Wenger sharing his doubts when he was told griezmann wont make it big by StatDna which was challenged by Wenger. Although at the end of it it was his choice to sign him or not.
Statdna out!
Yep you’re right. StatDna have given us a mixed bag…Elneny, Lucas, Mustafi, Gabriel.
More proof that Wenger has been out of touch with the modern game for years.
Looking forward to Wenger’s spin at next press conference *eyeroll*
ZERO eye roll!
The bottom line is that although it looks like a disaster decision now, who knows if he’d have developed the same way with if he’d joined us then.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Even if he had, he would have probably forced his way out via his discovery of PSG or Barca DNA.
Yeah, we’re all super happy that Wenger kept his faith in sanogo….
Sanogo was free and anyone that saw him play at international youth level understands why we took him (he was very impressive). If you don’t then that’s a reflection of your own knowledge level.
If we’d actually had to pay for him then I doubt we’d have taken the risk because of his injury history, so he was a cheap gamble that we lost out on.
Posts like this, that insist on injecting facts into the discussion, used to be the hallmark of this site. So far as I can recall, by the way, we have never willingly gotten rid of a player like DeBruyne, Salah, or Pogba.
I gave you a thumbs up and then remembered Yaya Toure. Ah well. . . you still deserved the “up” vote, though. Haha
Either Blogs has taken an increasing anti Wenger stance or Wenger outright lied earlier when he said that he recommended Greizmann and StatDNA vetoed signing him.
Wenger would have just played him on the wings anyway and killed/delayed his career like others.
And instead we chose to stick with players like Sanogo…..thank god this is one of the last seasons with this manager, can’t stand him anymore. We must challenge for the league every season and it’s just not happening with him still here….top 4 “success” is not what this club should aim at every season.
Why do so many of you believe that Wenger leaving would somehow bring us instant success? You sound like the Everton Board.
Change will bring something different. We always play as if we are winning by 3 or 4. Then we get sucker punched.
We must change that and play as if we WANT to win
Change can also always be worse. Keep that in mind.
Maybe we could hire David Moyes to succeed him. He’s got a job? Well, maybe Louis Van Gall is free.
Going back a few years we had some people on here swearing that Moyes, Coyle, Jewel, Koeman and even Southgate would be better options than AW. Thankfully the board thought otherwise.
There are still people that want Low who achieved zero as a club manager, but some can’t grasp that managing a national team means very little when managing a club team.
Maybe he’ll turn out to be a good club manager, but I’d prefer him to prove that elsewhere and then move to us…
Wenger probably wouldn’t pay the transfer fee + 1 peseta.
At the risk of repeating myself, did any of you here laugh at Sp*rs last night?
Why would anyone pay a penny more than the transfer fee?
Next time you buy a pint of milk you’re welcome to give the shop a penny more than the retail price they ask for, but don’t volunteer other peoples pennys.
Well thank fuck we signed Sanogo instead! *scream-cries*
Kim who?
He who played for 2 minutes to score a penalty
More dithering by Arsene by the sounds of it. Look how well he’s doing now! I wonder if we’ll ever get Lemar now?
Ok, I’m going to go now, lock myself in a room and scream into a pillow. Don’t wait up…
Wait…I’m still wrapping my head around President Wenger and VP Bould.
Would every state of the union begin with, “My fellow Americans, Look…”?
Why would they be addressing America?
We have Theo Walcott
SMH
I reckon he’ll change his tune as soon as he realises he’d get to play alongside The Eddie Nketiah here
At least now we can stop all these “transfers are hard and 3 parties are involved” arguments.
We are simply sh*t at these things.
another proof that arsene is totally disconnect with young french promising talent. very strange for a man who brought us anelka, henry , wiltord, pires . the list of french miss is incredible from kante to lemar via griezman , hazard who played in ligue 1, martial, mbappe, dembele, pogba, tolisso; very strange . hope we don’t miss out on fekir.
When does Sven start, again?
This is the story that was going out at the time. Arsenal did not snub Griezmann but their mistake was trying to use the Carlos Vela by back clause as leverage. Shoulda just paid up
http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/477275/Arsenal-eye-Carlos-Vela-swap-to-beat-Chelsea-Man-Utd-and-Spurs-to-Antoine-Griezmann
Xabi Alonso is the most painful, could’ve been for me. He and Fabregas would have made a brilliant midfield pairing.
I wonder if Arsene will do one of his ‘we nearly signed….’ stories about this.
‘We nearly signed griezmann before he went to atletico, but then we told him we couldnt be arsed and signed a guy with a borked spine on loan’
I wish it’s been Messi.The pain of having lost Out in such a talent, Mixed with the knowledge that he wasn’t what we were looking for. (Which was ‘top, top class’). Only at Arsenal 🙂
To be fair, I’d hardly say that Griezmann is angry at Wenger and would refuse an opportunity to join us. I remember seeing at the 2016 Euro’s Wenger and Griezmann having quite the conversation pitch-side.
They were smiling, laughing, and the good ol’ slight push at the shoulder…surely that means they were agreeing personal terms?!?
Was that the year we signed Sanogo? Lol
None of you had any idea who Antoine Griezmann was fours years ago. #fact