L’Equipe are reporting this morning that Arsenal are signing German defender Per Mertesacker from Werder Bremen.
The 26 year old has 75 international caps and due to the fact he’s in the final year of his contract will cost Arsenal around £6m.
More to follow
nahhhhhhhhhh
Who aren’t we being linked too after the weekends shambles, its was bad enough before the weekend, we all need 3 or 4 new faces where needed.
Naaaah .. can’t be true ..
Please, Please be true. Then add M’Vila and Marvin Staving (for goals) Martin
I’ve always thought he would be a great sign and make a nice combination with TV. As you have seen through the campaign so far, not many players have really stepped up in both final thirds. So this might be a bit too obvious for some, but Arsenal really need players who can DEFEND and players who can SCORE. Not players who can just pass well and keep possession.
DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENCH
Buzz of it if it’s true!
Glad we are signing Mertesacker, hope we are still going in for Cahill.
If true *insert positive buzzword*. but I’m waiting to see what gets announced. We’ve been in the ‘final stages of signing’ too many players without anything happening. Fingers crossed though!
Is he quick enough for PL? Have barely seen the guy….
If he’s played 75 times for Germany, he’s good enough for the PL. And he’s only 26. This really would be a “super-quality” signing, make no mistake.
He was fast enough in the 2010 WC…apparently:
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/southafrica2010/statistics/players/distanceandspeed.html
Would rather Cahill tbh that’s not to say his a bad player
Can’t we have both? How amazing would that be. A Guy can dream
Sorry arseblog, you have got this one wrong. We are set to sign A player called Pierre M. Sacier, a 14 year old winger from the French 3rd division club Bayonne’s youth set up. He looks to be quite the player too. There is a YouTube clip of the boy doing a stepover from multiple angles whilst an obscure American early 90s r&b song plays in the background.
good video that. I’ve sent it round to all the forums and everyone has got quite excited. Yeah!
heh
This Sacier kid sounds good. Sign him up!
dick
pussy!
If this is true, I can only hope a) that I was wrong in previously describing him as the German Senderos b) that he suddenly becomes a lot less injury prone than he has been thus far in his career.
I feel faint. An experienced established international?? More please Arsene.
He’s really good on football manager.
Mertasacker and Alex now thatd be alright
Too old, do not want!
He’s 26…..
For sex? Yeah too old. For football he should be ok though.
I’d rather have Cahill, we won’t get both.
If this deal is 6m, then it looks like we probably did offer the same for Cahill. No wonder Bolton were pee’d.
It’s nice we’re finally moving for players and all but they do smack of bargain basement to me
Can’t see why Cahill is worth much more than we got for Clichy or what we’re paying for Mertesacker. Last year of his contract. Little international experience. No Champions league experience. No titles.
problem is we’re not in a position to haggle on price.
I say offer Bolton 12M plus a few incentives based on say clean sheets and they’ll take it.
Mertesacker is good. At least equal to Cahill, probably better albeit without Premier League experience,.
but hes not english!
As I’ve said elsewhere Wenger will not spend more than 50% of what he got in sales this summer.
Cesc, Nasri, Clichy, Eboue = ~70M
Jenks, OAC, Cambell, Park, Santos, Mertesacker = ~25M
We can expect ~10M more in signings, maybe if you add the 35M transfer budget for the summer (then divide by 2) and we have 27M more in signings.
Good we were linked with Mario Goetze, I would guess they are working overtime to find a creative midfield player.
You’re missing Gervinho in your calculation
and Fabregas!
Blimey, are we really going to sign two established and experienced international defenders (almost 100 caps between them!) on the same day? While he might be a bit slow, I think Mertesacker will be a very good signing. Good age, good price, bags of experience. I also think it will give us some more options, and would allow us to have two back fours depending on opposition. We’d have one for the Stokes and Blackburns of this world (featuring the stronger Mertesacker) and one for more skillful teams (featuring the quicker Koscielny). I still wonder if we’ll still try for… Read more »
Vermaelen is a superior CB to both Cahill and Mertesacker – a waste put on the left. Santos will do the job on the left
Sagna – Cahill – Mertesacker – Vermaelen
Dude that is pure s*x !!!
Kudos
headline reads ‘Mertesacker serait gunner’: conditional tense, no guarantees and L’Equipe obviously being careful. still they’re far from being a tabloid so guess it’s pretty likely.
In French reporting the conditional stands for quoting a source rather than hearing first hand.
YAY
…..let all the speculated be put in action.
will be annouced this afternoon – this deal has been on the table for 2 weeks so I have been told
also scott parker failed a medical at Arsenal in the first week of June for the record
Where’d this information come from?
And of what relevance is the Parker comment?
not gonna put a source up on here am I
the relevance is that he would have been an Arsenal player if he passed his very rigious medical sarkybollocks
Yerr BallonsDuSarkey
Well in, Teddy
How do professional athletes fail medicals? What do medical exams actually test? Are they like your annual physical checkups? Because I don’t see how a normal young man, let alone an athlete, could possibly fail one…
I believe it involves gang probing and a punch test on Joey Bartons head
Who told you? Your cousins boyfriends sister who works as a receptionist at Highbury House? The amount of people that claim to have sources these days….
yeah you know her then
Not the most technical player but good in the air, a strong tackler, used to play in an attacking team, lots of experience. Better signing than Cahill for me, not as good as Subotic but can’t have it all!
That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Would be great for Arsene to make a £50mil bid for Subotic and Gotze, but then were in dreamland
especially since we are playing Dortmund in two weeks
Gotze is a fantastic player but we already have 2 young, promising midfielders in Ramsey and Wilshere. What I feel we need is a bit of experience to lead the young ones and help them grow, like Vieira did for Fabregas. So my certain-to-be-unfulfilled-transfer-fantasies have more the shape of Caca and Sneijder.
BBC has now picked up on the story.
Why the picture of Hleb?
I see a few Chelsea blogs are saying we are after Alex and Malouda…if this, that and the Santos stories are true…thats a lot of work in a few days.
Still quiet on the Centre Mid front, which is worrying. M’Vila would be nice but some creativity would be better.
I can’t believe he’s signing a centre half and not a 17 year old winger the cunt…… 🙂
No mention of Nasri being a CUNT?
Why mention a self-evident axiom?!
Interesting quotes from Na$ri on football365.com.
Basically, it’s all the boards fault and Wenger hasn’t deliberately been penny pinching.
Nasri is a horse faced lady flower and I cant wait to watch santos kick his worthless sack of shit arse in the air as we beat them 11-1.
You can chupa mis conjones Mr Augero as well
The other day he said he had no interest in leaving Werder Breman and wanted to stay for the final year but hopefully this is true and we do sign him as i know i’d rather have him than Gary Cahill who i think is a good defender but also way too overated.
Nasri is a CUNT. Period.
Yes Na$ri is made from cunt period..
Na$ri is a period cunt!
well played
If the story re- going for Alex, Malouda and Benayoun are true along with the stories re- ‘almost’ getting Tevez, Kaka & Mata, then this means the evolution is now complete.
we have now officially become tottenham hotspur*
Nah, if we were the spuds we’d have a midfielder of Modric’ quality
we have one better than Moric… his name is Jack, Jack Wilshere!!
You win – though I wish we had Jack on the pitch and not on the treatment table so often
Park, Santos, Mertsacker and one of Martin or M’villa please. Or both if your feeling generous Arsene….
YESSSSS…
Great signing!!!
A lot better than Cahill ffs
Hmm, not sure about that. A lot cheaper – yes, but this guy always seemed a bit clumsy to me…
Interesting quotes from Na$ri on football365.com.
Basically, it’s all the boards fault and Wenger hasn’t deliberately been penny pinching.
so Cahill is valued at £17m and has 30 mins (competitive) international experience, and Mertesaker is valued at £9m and has 75 caps for Germany. How the fuck are Bolton valuing him at that in the final year of his contract? If Wenger buys Mertesaker, then it will be a great bit of business……..Now if we can just pick up Cahill for £6m aswell……
add 10 million for british passport,that s how it work
[…] Another player linked with us is Per Mertesacker, the german defender from Werder Bremen. Reports in French are surfacing that we are signing him for £6m, however, Bremen general Manager has Klaus Allofs has denied any deal, and says that no offers have been made. However, there can be more no smoke without fire, so there may be genuine interest in the player. Furthermore, moves for Cahil has quiten down and it may be likely that Wenger has switched his attention to cheaper and attainable targets. I saw Mertesacker play before, great in the air, no-nonsense defender, and may… Read more »
How come the mertesaker story is breaking in France? Why not Germany where he plays? Its never going to happen is it? Is it..is it? Oh please let it happen!!!!!!
L’Equipe is actually a great newspaper for transfer rumours, they seem to pick up on a lot of these things. They’re usually very reliable.
Arsenal have signed Werder Bremen centre-back Per Mertesacker, according to Canal+. ….News just in…still not sure why its breaking news in France….or Mr. Wenger is leaking the story there?…All the same happy he’s coming in!
[…] to reports both in Germany and France, German international Per Mertesacker will also sign a long-term contract in North London as Arsene […]
Why weren’t these done months ago? Now we’re 8 points behind in the title race. Fucking shambles.
In all honesty I don’t think we’re really going to be in the title race this year.
last year chelsea was flying at this time of the season and still mu won the title.
it not how you start its how you finish,manchester win title because they have the best team by the end of the season
So everyone calls for experienced signings, then when we do everyone moans. What’s wrong with u. Get behind ur team and be true supporters
is Arsene feeling OK?
I have lost count of the number of players we have been linked with this summer and so far we only got Gervinho with real quality and the rest so called potentials..so unless any signings appear in the AFC website, am going to take these rumours with a pinch of salt..we were one defender away in january to win the league this year and everything would have changed as cesc n nasri would surely have stayed but now we have become a shambles and actually need atleast 5 players to compete just for 4th position..
Over generalisation there….
If we bought a defender it would have put us in a stronger position to challenge for the league, but no way would it have guaranteed winning it.
Pretty sure the other 2 would have left anyway, Cesc always wanted to go home (think he’ll be back though one day, hence the 35m buy back) and Nasri was always a money greedly little rat, so he wouldn’t have stayed
Believe it when it’s confirmed on arsenal.com
Still no word from the board about an increase in our top wage limit….
Heard he’s been given permission to leave the Germany camp for a medical so looking kinda good.
Would be a great signing. We need someone massive with a great physical presence. And Wikipedia’s confirmed he’s joined! (the most reliable source)
Hurrah! Lets get his medical done and sign him up quick please, the clock is ticking – only days left until the next round of internationals, and we need extra players to bolster our upcoming injury list, it’s looking laughably bare at the moment. Tick-Tock Arsene, Tick-Tock
On a serious note, holy shit we may even have a choice of CB’s to play soon. Not sure how AW will cope with a selection headache, its been so long.
On an even more serious note he’s also the captain of Werder Bremen so he’ll add to that “leadership” that every pundit has been saying we need.
German radio confirming that The German Trainer, Löw, has allowed ihm to Miss Training and Travel to London for the Medical. Its Happening, guys!
Its on the BBC Sports front page that he is set for a medical
Now just sign Marvin the Martian.
Do we really need another centreback?? It means Squillachi will get even less game time. If squillestre had played at old Trafford I think he would of been the calming influence we needed………nurse!
Ha ha! Nice one corporal
Looking at Werder Bremen’s tactical philosophy (even more suicidal than ours) and their habit to concede a lot while also scoring a lot, I’m afraid Mertesacker is not the answer to our problems.
http://www.goal.com/en/news/9/england/2011/08/30/2642944/arsenal-close-in-on-defensive-double-swoop-as-germanys-per
Per and Santos for less than the price of Cahill?! Nice bit of business that.
“”Per has had the wish to force his career [for] some time. He wanted to play for a big European club. Arsenal was always his favourite club.”
If he really is available for the sub-10 million fee mentioned then one has to ask why Wenger did not go in for him before. There are two possibilities
1.) He really has gone fucking mental.
2.) Mertesacker is significantly shitter than we think he is.
I can’t quite decide which of those is less appealing. Nonetheless as with Park we’re all behind him as he’s a Gooner now.
He is now available for 8 million pound , because he is in final year of his contract, last couple of years he would be around 14 million .That’s is why wenger is going for him now, and for 8 million it’s not even a little gamble . so shut up and cheer up we made 3 signings in 2 days, 2 of them are international experienced players Per is the rock for Germany team , you were all crying for experienced international players, and now when wenger started to buying them you all started moaning, I can’t understand you… Read more »