Cedric Soares admits his future is “up in the air” as he looks for a new club as a free agent.
The Portugal international, 32, confirmed recently that he is leaving Arsenal after four-and-a-half years having made 64 appearances.
Initially signed on loan from Southampton to provide depth at right-back, Cedric later signed a permanent contract on big money during a phase when Edu and Mikel Arteta relied heavily on super agents to bring new players to the club.
While he played quite regularly in the 2020/21 and 21/22 campaigns, he was mostly phased out last year and went on loan to Fulham for six months. That spell might have led to a permanent deal but neither party fancied it despite the Cottagers retaining an option to buy.
Having only played 193 minutes of football this season, Cedric is now banking on a club taking a chance on his experience.
“Right now, I’m very focused on my career. I want to keep playing for many more years,” he told the 1 PARA 1 podcast, hosted by UEFA dork Pedro Pinto.
“My goal now is to find the right team where I can continue to be competitive, be on the field, and do what I love most.
“Now, it’s about getting together with the family, my agent, analysing what will be on the table for the next season.
“Everything is a bit up in the air. I don’t have any certainties yet, but I will analyse, and understand where the best solution for me to continue my career is. That’s what I’m going to focus on.”
Cedric has had a front-row seat – often literally – during Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal rebuild and has plenty of praise for the work that’s been done.
“The group continues to be excellent and that, of course, helps in many aspects. Arsenal has been growing year after year. There is that connection with the fans, which might be closer than ever before, and that sometimes makes a difference,” he added.
As for the development of his teammates, he says there are some standout performers.
“Bukayo (Saka), without a doubt. I’ve watched Bukayo grow.
“I’d also like to highlight Martinelli. I saw his growth because in the past there were many games where he was unhappy about not playing, and I saw him grow, becoming almost a regular starter, with a lot of quality, not just good at one thing but very complete.
“Gabriel Magalhães, tactically, has also evolved a lot. Gabriel Jesus, surprised me when he arrived. I trained with him, and I thought, ‘Wow! This guy is very complete. He’ll help us a lot’. He’s not a player tied to statistics, but he gives a lot to the team.
“There are many players to highlight. Martin Ødegaard, without a doubt, has evolved, becoming a more consistent player, and more capable,” he said.
When we signed him on a 4 year deal I was shocked. He’s a nice guy but definitely not Arsenal material. Thankfully those kind of deals seems to be behind us now. Hopefully he finds a new club soon.
Those ‘connection based’ favour to agents signing seem to have disappeared along with Raul Sanllehi. I was dubious of Edu at the time too as I believe he was hired by Sanllehi to work with him. Thankfully he’s proven himself to be a proper sporting director and not some swindling charlatan
What is this non-sense “connections based”, “super agent” talk about?
Surely Technical Directors have connections with pretty much all agents, that’s literally their job, to talk to various agents. Are they only allowed to talk to agents they don’t know?
And what is a Super Agent and why shouldn’t we deal with them?
It’s such a bizarre focus.
Were you around then?
Raul Sanllehi was bad news for Arsenal.
What were these connections based signings we made under him?
I’m not going to do a history lesson, but his best mate Kia Joorabchian did very well out of us. Signings of Cedric Soares 4 year deal(!), and then David Luiz with £6 million agent fees. There was Dennis Suarez, Ceballos and of course Pepe, who Emery clearly did not want, we could have had Zaha for similar money. And Willian, on a 3 year deal at 32. There were occasional bright spots, but it was very expensive and did not amount to a coherent policy, the club went nowhere until Sanillehi left, and Arteta and Edu started to work… Read more »
Cedric was signed by Arteta, so was Willian. The transfer strategy was as coherent as any, and was just as shit as the transfer strategy we’d had for the previous 10 years! What we needed was someone to get rid of all the player we had and replace with new, which is eventually what we did. We have absolutely no idea what Sanillhe’s job remit was and what he was brought in to do. At the time the club was very vocal about buying young players who could be sold at a profit and become a Dortmund style club. My… Read more »
And didn’t Josh Kroenke also say something along the line of us being a Europa League club with a Champions league wage bill?
Does it not occur to people that this might have ramifications on te types of players we might be signing?
Pepe
A super agent (ridiculous term) just means an agent who charges more commission for doing bugger all…
Does it or does it mean they have a bigger pool of quality players on their books? Or in other words good at their jobs
It’s a media term, it doesn’t mean anything.
No, it just means they’re really good at selling snake oil to incompetent idiots.
Good at being a slimy sleazeball.
We were signing low value, high wage players from Kia Joorabchian eg Cedric, Willian, David Luiz – players that he would have struggled to find deals worth anything like what we were prepared to offer. As well as the vastly overinflated fee for Pepe. At the same time we were sacking a lot of our scouting staff, for the stated reason that our recruitment would become more contacts based than analysis based If you want to be charitable it was because we were hoping that by doing these favours for Kia, he would then pull the strings to allow us… Read more »
Willian and David Luiz were proven winners signed on free transfers to short term contracts. You didn’t like them but there was rationale to the deals. Pretty sure Luiz was signed after Koscielny threw his toys out the pram. Would the club be making these types of signings now? Of course not but at the time and given the state of the squad they made sense. Same goes for Pepe, he had just scored 22 goals and 11 assists, was 23 years old and had all the top teams in Europe after him. His fee was about right at the… Read more »
When have their been internal investigations into transfers at our club? The only ones I can think of are John Jensen and Pepe which says enough, doesn’t it?
And what was the outcome of it? If there was any fraud surely the police would have been called?
I do not think you are remembering correctly. Pepe had come off a great season. Emery wanted Zaha. We delivered him Pepe. Even at the time the 70 million for Pepe was thought to be very high. It was a major contributing reason Stan brought in the auditors.
I don’t think you’re wrong about Sanhelli. He DID deliver Saliba, for which I will always be grateful.
Agree, Mr Wenger made a lot of those “connections based” signings that nobody regrets.
Exactly, no one questions his relationship with Mustafi’s agent!
Who are the ‘connections based’ signings Wenger made that ‘nobody regrets’?
Doesn’t have to be “dirty”, you know?
Runnarson and Lokonga were good “connections based” signings of Arteta.
That’s the point, no questioned whether or not his expensive shit signing were “connections based”, people just called it a shit signing.
Is that you, Ivan?
Kia is that you?
Don Raul should have gone to prison for his dodgy deals with Arsenal’s money. Allegedly Edu was told to pull his fucking socks up after Raul was shown the door and fair enough he did.
What exactly did he do?
Massively overpaying for players sold by his friend Kia which was enough for the up till then silent Stan to launch an audit into the club’s financial comings and goings. Upon said audits conclusion he was out the door so quick his feet didn’t touch the found.
You may choose to see that as nothing untoward at all. To me it reeks of the Kroenke’s having all the evidence they needed while choosing pragmatism thus sparing themselves and the club the embarrassment of a drawn out legal process.
Thank fuck that dodgy cunt is gone!
You sound paranoid, i suggest you lay off the drugs. No audit to the clubs books is going to show whether or not he was receiving kick backs from his mates. My guess is the audit was to determine whether or not the clubs transfer policy, which they probably set, was cost effective. Why did we sign David Luiz or Willian? or Ceballos/Suarez on loan? because they were CHEAP! or more specifically cheaper than the alternative. Is paying Luiz’s agent £6m in fee’s cheap? No, but it is compared to paying £65m for Ruben Dias or Laporte, which is the… Read more »
“You sound paranoid”
And you sound gullible.
“i suggest you lay off the drugs”
Now you’re just being a rude cunt.
“My guess is…”
LOL
Highly intelligent counter argument.
“My guess is”
LOL
My conjecture is as good as yours, yours just makes you sound thick and ignorant.
Just go, mate. For the love of God, GO.
Good-ish crosser, average defensive skills not good enough for our RB spot, on wages too high due to raul? Would thrive in a mid table team that plays 3 at the back and who plays more defensively to stay up in the pl. A manager who plays 3 at the back and fancies a good crosser might suit cedric. Probably southgate after he gets the sack after the euros and takes over man utd.
Lol
Good to get him off the books, his salary doesn’t justify the amount of minutes he’s played. Hopefully we stick with the current model of new recuits ie young, lots of potential and spirit.
Cedric is one I feel like probably you won’t be able to fault his attitude too much, otherwise Arteta wouldn’t even want him around the team. But football isn’t just about being a good character and working hard, in a club like Arsenal you need talent too and Cedric maybe has less of it, and even if you do have talent you also need to apply it on the pitch consistently, which i think is more his compatriot Vieira’s problem. I think it was Blogs who suggested recently based on an article by James that Vieira not playing the 2nd… Read more »
And paradoxically football isn’t just about talent, at a club like Arsenal you need good character and hard work too, which is where Cedric comes in. Wenger left a squad with talent but woefully lacking character and work ethic. Arteta’s first job when he arrived was transforming the culture at the club, that meant replacing talented but entitled players like Ozil and Auba with less talented players of a better attitude. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is where would Saka or Martinelli be if they’d spend the last 4 years being influenced by the perennially late… Read more »
I don’t see why that’s paradoxical. That good character and hard work are necessary has become very obvious, especially to us gooners the last few years, which is why it doesn’t even bear mentioning anymore. I was trying to point out the less obvious… Arsenal’s standards are now such that you need both hard work AND talent, one alone won’t keep you in the team.
But weren’t at the time when he signed.
Heard that Ozil trained hard in the gym after retirement.
Most expensive cheerleader.
He seemed a good character. Stood up against a senior pro who was getting heavy handed with an academy player. Arteta would not have kept him on if he was not contributing something positive to the group.
Clearly isn’t up to the standards of the squad in its current form, but at the same time also not as bad a player as he was made out to be (I found Blogs’ criticism of him a little over the top personally). Regardless, clearly a good pro as Arteta simply doesn’t suffer anyone around the squad who is anything other than that. He must have relatively fresh legs as he has played so little competitive football so he could be a good signing for someone.
He is–or was, when we got him–as good as many right backs in the league, including the top half of the league. But he was not Champions League level. Given his obvious professionalism, having a player who is one step down (or maybe one-and-a half steps) from a first-choice player in your squad is still valuable. What caused the supporters’ anger and, I suspect, influenced Blogs’ opinion was his wages. Clearly, you can’t blame him for accepting higher wages than he “should” have gotten. He didn’t create the situation–whatever it was–between his agent and Arsenal management that produced his windfall.… Read more »
In my mind Cedric made a lot of mistakes that led to goals. When he was brought on as a sub, or if someone was out injured and he started it just made me nervous. He never seemed to take responsibility for getting things wrong on the pitch.
Really? I always felt like he was ‘good enough’ and often surprisingly solid when we eventually did see him on the pitch. Just… unspectacular. Lacking that edge that Ben White brings. But cos we didn’t see him play much, he came to represent the also-rans in the squad
He deserves to play regularly somewhere, not as a backup player for a large team.
One of our weirdest signings. Tried and tested in the league and playing second fiddle at Southampton at the time.
Seems a good bloke and a professional but even at the time he signed we had Bellerin, AMN and Chambers so I never really understood it.
Still, good luck to him and I’m sure he must’ve at least been good in the dressing room, otherwise he wouldn’t have been here so long.