Tag Archives: homegrown

Rice, Arteta, Arsène, and that British core…

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Amid the flurry of transfer talk and deals of the last few weeks, one overlooked element to the evolution of the squad under Arteta has been the apparent focus on a British core—something we haven’t seen since late-stage Arsène when it was Wilshere, Walcott, Gibbs, Jenkinson, Ox, Chambers, Welbeck and Ramsey (Wales? Is that a country? Yes and no), among others who seemed to represent a return to dear ol’ Blighty after years of Arsènian francophonia. Arteta may be Spanish, but he’s resurrecting the good old days when a Briton was a Briton…

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Time to sell Theo. Sorry. Just facin' facts…

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With Alexandre Lacazette in, it’s time to ask who’s out, and the answer comes almost as fast as the player once ran: Theo Walcott. It may sound harsh and unsentimental, but the Theo Walcott Experiment has fizzled. Amid rumours of Everton offering £30m for the soon-to-be 29 year old, we should sell before whatever it is they’re smoking over there wears off. In this market, the one in which Kyle Walker was sold at £50m and Romelu Lukaku at £75m, £30m might seem like a pittance. Theo did, after all, score 10 Prem goals (19 total) despite limited minutes. However, it’s increasingly clear that we’ll ever get a better offer, so it’s time to move him on. Let’s make it a classic “it’s not you; it’s me”, at least to start.

What’s that writing on the wall say?

The arrival of Lacazette, of course, makes the front line that much more crowded, and Theo is will want more playing time than we can offer. In last season’s run-in, Theo had to settle for dwindling minutes as he fought through injuries. Either Theo accepts a much smaller role or he accepts a larger role at a smaller club. Enter Everton.

With that, we end the “it’s not you; it’s me” phase.

Theo has never seriously been pursued by any of the larger clubs. This suggests that they don’t want him and that we’re not likely to get an outrageous fee for him. Even in his most-productive periods, we might have gotten £25m for him. I’d submit humbly that he is not only past his most-productive period; he’s also not a good fit for Arsenal—not now, if ever. Let’s face it: he’s little more than a speed-merchant. He’s not a clinical finisher, he can’t dribble defenders, and he doesn’t contribute much other than running in behind defenses playing a high line. I’m not sure you’d need more than a few fingers to count how many opponents play a high line against us. In other words, his one asset—that speed—rarely if ever comes into play.

Even if it does come into play more often, we have to consider his fitness and age. He’ll turn 29 in March, hardly ancient, but certainly an issue. Few people get faster as they get older. He has fought back from his knee blow-out, but other niggles popped up, each one eating away at that one asset of his. Still, that one asset would make him useful to a club more accustomed to parking the bus and trying to hit on counters. Almost by definition, this would have to be a smaller club, and Everton fits the bill. They finished 14 points below us in our worst season in a generation, and they have £75m to spend. If they want to put 40% of that in our basket, who are we to turn up our noses?

Even club-legend Ian Wright agrees, if only ruefully. Wrighty tweeted that it’s “sad to see the amount of disrespect that Theo gets from the fans. I’ll always love him, but if it is a 30 million bid, got to take it 😢”.  Compared to some of those other transfer-fees, we might feel a need for greed. If we could get Bayern or PSG or Real Madrid to bid, well, then, we could turn an even tidier profit on him. That’s not happening, at least as far as any of the clickbait out there would suggest.

I genuinely like Theo. He is, by all accounts, a good person. However, if life has taught us anything, loyalty and sentiment don’t win trophies. I’m not being ruthless, am I? I’m aiming for practical. Maybe I should return to the “it’s not you; it’s me” routine if only to soften the tone as we wrap up? Theo deserves to play more than he does. Arsenal can’t offer him that. Theo deserves a club that will be thrilled to have him. Arsenal, again, can’t offer that. We can offer another few seasons of passive-aggressive, noncommittal support, or we can let him find someone who can truly appreciate him for who he is.

Theo? You’re welcome.

It looks like Vermaelen is off to Barça. £10m? Works for me.

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Official confirmation is still in the offing, but a saga that has dragged on since the middle of last season looks to be entering its final chapter as Thomas Vermaelen looks ready to finalize a move to Barcelona, continuing a trend of Gunners leaving for the sunnier climes of Spain. There was a time when such moves would lead us to gnash teeth and rend garments, but this move feels quite a bit different. At the risk of slighting Vermaelen, the Camp Nou Express is no longer carrying coveted players but settling for second-choicers. Some may quibble with the reported transfer-fee, but I’d much prefer selling Vermaelen out of the Prem than to a rival like Man U. He may not be quite good enough to crack our starting XI, but if Barça need him, so be it.

We might mark the beginning of the end at 3 March 2013. For those with addled brains, that’s the North London Derby that Tottenham found a way to win. The scene: Nacho Monreal had just joined the squad a month before. We were committed to playing a high defensive line—even though Tottenham featured Bale and Lennon, two fleet and occasionally dangerous wingers. Vermaelen, our captain, was twice culpable as Tottenham exploited that high line to score on their way to a 2-1 win. It was a nadir but not the death-spiral that a certain manager consigned to the Russian hinterlands dubbed it. It was also the match that may have marked the end of Vermaelen’s time in London as well.

From that point forward, Vermaelen would play sparingly, relegated to the bench by the emergence of the Kos-Per axis (and the Arteta-Ramsey one as well) as we developed a firm defensive foundation for the first time since perhaps the Graham years. Vermaelen was never truly a defender; his forward-thinking instincts always dominated, resulting in the delivery of some famous goals but exposing him and the squad to disastrous concessions to boot. Most famous, of course might have been the “assist” at Old Trafford when Vermaelen squibbed a clearance that van Persie, himself freshly away from Arsenal, blasted home. That, of course, was back in 2012, but it looks, in retrospect, to be an omen rather than an aberration.

Throughout the entire 2013-14 season, he’s become little more than an afterthought, an “oh yeah, whatever happened to Tommy Vermaelen?” His cameos here and there only serve to highlight his relegation. Through the ordeal, though, he has endured it with nothing but class and dignity. A lesser man would have found ways to leak his dissatisfaction to the press or been photographed smirking or sulking during a match. Vermaelen has been loyal, perhaps to a fault, as he’s watched his chance at first-team football fade, first with Arsenal and then again with Belgium in the World Cup. At 28, this may have been his last best chance at representing his country. He missed it with nary a mutter.

If this rumored move to Barça proves true, Vermaelen will likely pair with Piqué while winning a few pieces of silverware along the way. I don’t mind that in the least. It’s far-better, of course, than seeing him help Man U climb back towards relevance.

All in all, this deal looks like it would be a win-win. The player gets a chance at first-team action and silverware; the club clears roster-space and sheds a non-homegrown player. That’s a nice bit of business with no hard feelings to be found. If I may say so, it may even start to look like Barça’s players are looking to Arsenal as a promotion while Gunners are looking to Barça as an opportunity for first-team action. We live in interesting times…

We're in for Nastasić, are we? Hmm…

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Well, it’s not the wildest of rumors, but reports from Italty’s tuttosport and England’s El Metro suggest that we will make a move for Man City’s centre-back, Matija Nastasic. The 21-year old Serb would make for a more-than-capable upgrade on our Thomas Vermaelen (sorry, Tommy) and was good enough to replace Joleon Lescott as a first-choice CB and being named Citeh’s Young Player of the Year in 2013. As unlikely as they are to sell him to a league-rival, Citeh have picked up another centre-back, paying out £32m for Porto’s Eliaquim Mangala, giving them six CBs in the squad (seven if we count Sagna), and they might be willing to move Nastasic. Would we be willing to pay £15m for him? He’s Prem-tested centre-back, something we may have only two of if Vermaelen completes a move to Barcelona (or, yes, Man U).

First, a few particulars. He’s played in the Prem since 2012, making 34 appearances in that time. He’s massive, standing 1.87m (6’2″). As you might imagine, he’s strong in the air, but he doesn’t seem to trade height for pace, offering speed and agility to the mix. He made just 11 starts this past season due to injury-woes (mostly to his knee). If there’s a worry there, it’s that he last played for club or country way back in early February. He was apparently suffering some pain in his knee which doctors struggled to diagnose. This might raise some red flags (or inspire some Gooners to quip that he’s already got that Arsenal DNA. However, if this injury and the arrival of Mangala have made him surplus to Citeh’s requirements, this might make him available at more of a cut-rate price (again, Gooners, prepare your quips).

One other particular to consider: he should not count against the homegrown rule, and the Prem site lists him in Citeh’s U21 squad. his is a factor to contemplate, especially as our current squad already has 16 non-homegrown players, one less than the maximum seventeen that UEFA permits. We are close then to having to loan out or sell a non-homegrown player before acquiring another one, or risk being unable to register one of those for Champions League play. We need a minimum of eight home-grown players on our roster (not on the pitch), and so we do, at some level, have to be mindful of that factor. Here’s a quick run-down of our players who are not home-grown:

  • Ospina, Mertesacker, Kos, Vermaelen, Monreal, Debuchy; Flamini, Diaby, Rosický, Arteta, Özil, Cazorla; Miyaichi, Podolski, Giroud, Alexis, Campbell.
On that list, of course, are two players likely to be loaned out or sold: Vermaelen and Miyaichi. Let’s focus on Vermaelen as being most-relevant at the moment. If we do sell him to Barcelona and bring in Nastasić, we’re accomplishing a number of goals: one, we add to the squad without adding a non-homegrown player. Two, we upgrade at centre-back, at least in my opinion. Three, we start building our post-Per/Kos defense around Chambers and Nastasić.  However, we would be doing so by keeping our number of non-homegrown players close to the limit, which starts to limit our options unless Vermaelen (and Miyaichi, among others) leaves.

Don’t tell me that clubs don’t sell to interleague rivals. Heck, we do it all the time.  Okay, bad example. Ahem. Could we ring up Mansour and point out that, hey, he’s bought Touré, Adebayor, Clichy, Nasri, and Sagna, and maybe he owes us one? That might be a bit of a stretch, but stranger things have happened, not that we can count on this particular strange thing happening.

We know that we need more cover at centre-back. Chambers needs time and experience. Vermaelen is all but gone. As unlikely as it may feel to us to sign the likes of Nastasić, he’s young, he’s apparently available, he’s familiar with the Prem, and it’s difficult to think of another centre-back who can offer that same combination of qualities. So Citeh might inflate their asking-price. At a time when other clubs are “overpaying” for young players, is £15m for Nastasić “overpaying”?