The BBC’s David Ornstein has told Arseblog that stories linking Henry Onyekuru with Arsenal are false.
Sky Sports reported on Tuesday that the Gunners had lodged a £6.8 million offer for the Nigerian striker with his club KAS Eupen.
Chatting on today’s Arsecast, Ornstein stressed his sources inside the club had denied any such contact.
“The Nigerian striker [link], I’m told, is not a true story,” he said. “I don’t think that is happening.
“I don’t know whether that’s emanated from his club or agents around him but as things stand that is not happening.”
Onyekuru has been linked with a million and one clubs in recent weeks, which does indeed suggest he’s got a very talkative representative. With 24 goals to his name last term and a call-up to the Nigerian national team, it does sound like he’s a hot prospect…just not one that Arsene Wenger is interested in at the moment.
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You can listen to Ornstein’s comments in today’s Arsecast below. The overriding theme is Arsenal’s decision to extend Arsene Wenger’s contract with Blogs interviewing Tim Payton from the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust, Clive Palmer from the Arsenal Vision podcast and Gunners legend Ian Wright!
It is going to be a long long summer.
Yes indeed. Finding buyers for Ozil and Sanchez that aren’t English clubs while both players give interviews telling us how they are committed to the club and seeing out their contracts, knowing full well they’ve got us over a barrel and we have to sell. That’s always fun.
I’ve seen it suggested that they want to see what we do in the summer before committing. Hopefully that’s it.
We simply cannot balls this window up like previous ones. We have to get it all sorted early. If Alexis + Ozil don’t want to sign, then they have to go, sorry, but that’s the way it is. From the sounds of if we have offered them truck loads of cash and they have turned it down on all occasions – so that kind of suggests they aren’t interested. So we have to sell them abroad. If we don’t do that then the pair of them will 100% end up at other Premier League clubs next summer. Because at this… Read more »
I can imagine Alexis going to City and getting booed at the Emirates by fans who are currently saying Arsenal should give him all the money he asked for.
Don’t listen to it all, 99% of stories are false. Look at trustworthy sites like this that don’t have gossip on them that gets rebutted a day or two later but otherwise come back late July (a lot saner than you would be) and see what actually happened.
Why ? Because we don t sign a 19 yo striker we don t need ? I look down the academy and I can see a guy named Nkethia. Praised by many when he signed for us
Ah yeah. Don’t mind doing the business early.
Garunteed first game of the season the necessary signings will not have been made and the team will go into the game in disarray.
The season might change but the failure to be prepared in time does not.
Two years later……oh, have you seen that Nigerian striker? Hes quality….we nearly signed him….
“We were close to signing him. I flew him over to my house. We had ice cream in the sun. But I did not sign him because I did not want to kill Sanogo”.
I still have no idea why we don’t just use Fifa to scout. Almost without fail, all the career mode players from Fifa ’15 that get into the late 80’s/early 90’s stats wise are now rearing their heads around Europe as hugely talented youngsters. Gilles, put down the clipboard and pick up the control pad.
That doesn’t make any sense. Why would we say “we nearly signed him”? We’re not interested.
FunGunner – they’re mocking Wenger b/c he never wants to pay the going rate for young talent or they don’t want to play for him (Pogba & Mbappe) so when they do explode he always just says he almost signed them. We’re stuck in a world where Wenger believes the prices for players should be the same as they were a decade ago (which ignores the influx of money into the PL) so we don’t want to pay the going rate for top young talent before they explode onto the scene and once they do they’re too expensive.
First of all we need to get to the bottom of these exploding youngsters and put a stop to it. Is UEFA aware that this is happening?
Thanks for making me laugh.
Almost all the “almost signed him” stories, if you look at them carefully and individually, take this form (I am only exaggerating a little):
Reporter: Did you know about Player X (who is having a great season) before he signed with (rival club).
Wenger: Yes, we scouted him a few years ago, but (a) he didn’t want to leave home; (b) he was quite inconsistent at that time; or (c) we already had plenty of players and young prospects in that position.
Newspaper story: Wenger claims he almost signed Player X.
Usually when it is on sky / BBC it is true
Not quite sure why everyone considers sky as reliable. They usually report rubbish too. It’s just that they have the widest coverage so when people first hear of it, it’s from sky, thus giving the impression they’re always on the ball. The Beeb however, due to being oubliclaly owned, do not run their site or sources for hits and views, and thus have a responsibility to report accurate news only. Outside of their daily gossip page, where hey just round up the gossip and state the sources, they generally only report things when it’s confirmed by their sources or official… Read more »
The thing is that Sky said the fee was agreed but Ornstein said nothing’s true lol
Ornstein is basically the club’s PR department at the BBC. Similar to Cross. Whatever message the club wants out there, they give Ornstein to report.
Ornstein and Cross are genuine journalists with genuine contacts. That is why they have solid information. They are independent of the club. Saying that we aren’t interested in a player isn’t a PR message, it’s actual information.
John Cross may have an Arsenal insider passing him info, but the comparison with Ornstein ends there. David Ornstein keeps his Arsenal-related reporting to a minimum because there’s not that much concrete news coming out of the club.
John Cross abuses the real inside information he gets by mixing it in with his own hot takes, fish bait and idiotic, contradictory football opinions. Both may have genuine contacts, but only one’s proper journalist.
Yes, but who are those sources and what kind of information do they give them? It’s less about the credibility of those journalists but what they’re given.
They’ both regularly get it wrong.
Ornstein less often but still regularly wrong.
Hornystein for Director of Football
Sky is a front for SkyBet, they post transfer stories to encourage people to gamble on them
Exactly this.
The time of the year where “Newsnow Arsenal” is the number one search term on Google for every Arsenal fan.
Frustrating times ahead, especially with all the bullshit on Newsnow, but you know you can’t help it and refreshing it every day.
Don’t bother, do something more interesting instead.
Why don’t you
dee dum dee dum…
As someone who was addicted to that site for years I highly recommend deleting Newsnow from your search history and daily news diet. You won’t regret it.
The only thing that ever comes out of the news there is that theres something extra to talk about at work. And thats all.
Google search? It’s in my bookmarks!
Ah, how I loathe myself when I go there.
Wenger has changed his mind again and the PR has started
I’m torn. Should I be disappointed we’re not signing this guy or relieved that we’re not signing a player that isn’t ready made? This is quite the conundrum.
Don’t bother in the first place. Come back at the end of July having relaxed and enjoyed yourself and see what actually happened.
Unless you are hooked on getting excited over nothing then disappointed a day or two later. In which case poor old you.
Yep, especially when the chances are you’d never even heard of the player until a few weeks ago. All that matters is who’s signed and who’s sold, the rest is small print not worth bothering about. Speaking of which, why on earth am I even writing this… :o)
Wise words.
It actually seemed like a decent buy, but I guess we’re not interested in signing these ‘in-between’ type players that are young but neither worth peanuts nor worth £100m.
That is the sad thing. I was actually excited about this transfer. Young, athletic with an eye for goal and pretty good assists record at 19 for under 8 million. Kind of ticks a bunch of boxes. In my estimation it would be like buying Mbappe a year before he blows up. Hope this is a smokescreen so we can close the deal.
Arsenal deny a transfer link? That’s a shock
Now I regret laughing when i heard this rumour in the fisrt place..
But he looks amazing on youtube!
Belgium league < Championship so why many are excited? Did you watch the Belgium teams who qualify for UCL? Apart from the one who eliminate SPUDS the rest are worse than ligue one. Come on, do you think this kinda signing will help Alexis to change his mind?
Cue all the people who said he was a shit signing yesterday lambasting Wenger for dithering on the hottest prospect in Europe!!!11
Problem is that so much ‘new news’ is recycled by naff journalists – I saw one that had literally copy and pasted guff from the sun newspaper like it was his own!!! What a donk!!!
Then he’ll sign for a lower tier PL club, light up goalscoring charts next season and move to Chelsea for 35 mill
Wenger should just go for him now 6.8 is nothing and if he turns out to be a world class striker in a couple of years everyone will turn on Wenger again as another person that got away.
Learn from your mistakes Wenger yes buy some world class players but take a chance on some young ones for the future.
I have a dream that me make a move for Aubameyang, the kind of striker that can optimize Ozil assist with his pace, positioning, and of course his finishing touch.
60 Mill for him looks like a bargain nowadays.
A little known excerpt from MLK’s famous speech.
I’d love for your dream to come true, but I fear that you may wake up to find that we’ve signed Henry Onyekuru instead of Aubemeyang! 🙂
We are linked to everyone because we are the Gold standard in buying. It is essentially a stamp of approval to link your player to Arsenal. Principally bc Wenger is one of the best in market. He has his fair share of poor buys but in general he buys low which means if he gets it wrong, it is less impact on our bottom line. Which is extremely important as we are a self financing club. When he has bought at marquee prices – Ozil, Alexis, Mustafi, Granit, he has been thus far spot on. Remember Liverpool, Andy Carroll and… Read more »
Steve Walsh discovered Kante and Mahrez, nor Ben Wigglesworth.
Is going to be a very long summer and we are going to see some handful of fake transfer news
Welcome to the summer market and its unending speculations.
In midfield, I wonder if Kongdogbia may be a reasonable target for us. I’m not sure they think he is anywhere as convincing as advertised. He’s strong and at 24yrs, maybe Wenger can fine tune him into the potential he is. Inter likely need a shake up. Both Milan clubs have been piss poor in recent vintage and are now Chinese owned. Potentially, if we are to sell players like Walcott, Ozil, even Metersecker since he will likely step down, Milan could be good destination away from these shores. The Milanese clubs need a revamp desperately. We need to shed… Read more »
if the club, our pet leopard, is truly to change this season, the 1st signing we should get in is undoubtedly an experienced ‘marquee’ Director of Football (not a ‘youngster with potential’- type of DoF) ok, if Arsene says he should make the final decision on football transfers, I agree with that cos ultimately he’s the one managing the team and using the players. However, the process of transfers should b for Arsene to identify the player, and the football director takes over the rest of the negotiations to make things happen. Eg: Arsene says I want player x. Director… Read more »
If we stick to 352 next season (which I certainly hope n expect), we will need 3 attackers up top, and should have 6-7 in total. current options: mesut alexis iwobi giroud (may not stay) welbz (not deadly in front of goal, shld b a great squad player) theo (not suitable for this formation) have a feeling 1 of the above will leave. we certainly could do with 1 more addition + Onyekuru to give us a total of 7 options (with Onyekuru n iwobi given space and time to develop. should be able to get 20 games a season… Read more »