Arsenal Thread

[lafunky xxvii]

Why should Immigrants Stadium host an England match when its team have no English players? It should just go about hosting foreign internationals.

Edited August 2, 2006 by lafunky xxvii

[fineintent]

Why should Immigrants Stadium host an England match when its team have no English players? It should just go about hosting foreign internationals.

Wah wah wah, they don't have any English players, who gives a shit? We're an English club with English fans, we've produced some good English youngsters who sadly weren't good enough to play a standard as high as ours.

Edited August 2, 2006 by fineintent

[TMM]

Why should Immigrants Stadium host an England match when its team have no English players? It should just go about hosting foreign internationals.

Wah wah wah, they don't have any English players, who gives a shit? We're an English club with English fans, we've produced some good English youngsters who sadly weren't good enough to play a standard as high as ours.

I have no problem with Arsenal's selection policy (and I don't begrudge Wenger's success, he's just doing the best with what is available to him), but I don't feel they should be given England games purely because they are doing nothing to benefit the English game. From what Trevor Brooking has come out and said in the past few weeks, it appears to be a massive problem at a load of clubs (at Spurs, we only have one homegrown England international) and sanctions should be put in place to try and solve the problems.

Out of 60 million odd people, the quality is there and it is just a matter of how clubs condition their players. My view on this is pretty firm - if you are an English club, you should do your best to improve the English game. While prices on English players have become astronomical, not having one English player in your first team squad is a fucking joke.

EDIT - Also, are Cygan, Flamini, Almunia or Larsson any better than the likes of Upson, Pennant, Wright or Bentley? I don't think so.

Richard Wright is useless now. He was good at Ipswich, but was pretty shit for us. Upson, Pennant and Bentley all wanted to leave because they couldn't get into our first-team (also known as: not good enough). Cygan, Flamini, Almunia and Larsson are all perfectly content to sit on the bench and be back-up players, English players are not. Especially those who had as much as hype as those four. Everyone talked about how great they are/could be, and if they are all so great (which bar Upson, none of them are) why aren't they playing first-team football?

If you were constantly being told "you've got such a great future, you should be playing first-team football" would you want to stay as back-up? No. Nobody has ever said that about Cygan, Flamini, Almunia or Larsson, so they are content to stay.

[fineintent]

I can understand their frustrations - Pennant barely played a league game which, even with his off the pitch problems, is a joke (I just looked it up for the sake of argument, and he made two league starts and around 8 sub appearances). When he did play, he was good enough - remember that Southampton match where he and Pires tore it up? As for Upson - wouldn't you be upset if Gilles Grimandi was playing more than you?

It was not a matter of them not getting enough first team football, it was a matter of them getting very little first team football. There is no gap in standard between the young English players Wenger has had at his disposal and the foreign ones (bar Fabregas and maybe Van Persie), so why have English players been shunned? Pennant and Wright were more difficult (though I feel Pennant's problems could have been curbed), but in my mind there is no excuse for the others.

The likes of Pennant, Bentley, Garry etc went out of loans to Premiership clubs and proved themselves capable of handling first team football which makes the ommissions even more confusing.

[TheArsenal]

Why should Immigrants Stadium host an England match when its team have no English players? It should just go about hosting foreign internationals.

Wah wah wah, they don't have any English players, who gives a shit? We're an English club with English fans, we've produced some good English youngsters who sadly weren't good enough to play a standard as high as ours.

Edited August 2, 2006 by TheArsenal

[TMM]

I can understand their frustrations - Pennant barely played a league game which, even with his off the pitch problems, is a joke (I just looked it up for the sake of argument, and he made two league starts and around 8 sub appearances). When he did play, he was good enough - remember that Southampton match where he and Pires tore it up? As for Upson - wouldn't you be upset if Gilles Grimandi was playing more than you?

It was not a matter of them not getting enough first team football, it was a matter of them getting very little first team football. There is no gap in standard between the young English players Wenger has had at his disposal and the foreign ones (bar Fabregas and maybe Van Persie), so why have English players been shunned? Pennant and Wright were more difficult (though I feel Pennant's problems could have been curbed), but in my mind there is no excuse for the others.

The likes of Pennant, Bentley, Garry etc went out of loans to Premiership clubs and proved themselves capable of handling first team football which makes the ommissions even more confusing.

Jermaine Pennant ruined everything himself. Fair enough, he didn't get regular first-team football, but whenever he was given a chance, he blew it.

Matthew Upson and Richard Wright both won the Premiership in 2001/02. Upson spent the vast majority of his Arsenal career in the physio's room, so to say he didn't get that many chances is ridiculous. And this was during the time when we did still have Winterburn, Dixon, Keown and Adams, and Upson is never going to displace them. Then Campbell came along, and Upson wasn't going to displace the best English defender around at the time was he?

Richard Wright was understudy to David Seaman. Seaman, the best English goalkeeper in the past decade, and in Wright's one season with us he won the Premiership, but also proved himself to be a liability, and made more mistakes then was worth it. Not to mention Stuart Taylor was/is a better goalkeeper than him. Wanna talk about 'keepers we shouldn't have sold? Talk about Taylor, not Wright.

David Bentley, nobody had heard of until he scored that wondergoal against...uh, Middlesbrough, I forget. Anyway, Bentley was then sent off on loan to Norwich and proved he could be a serviceable player. He comes back, he's told he's not going to be a regular started because we have better strikers. So he moans. He goes off on loan again, and then wants to leave, so we let him.

You name me any English players bar who could play in our current first-team, or any recent first-team.

[FLiam]

This England/Arsenal things needs to stop.

Most of them aren't good enough, end of story.

Jermaine Pennant hasn't exactly set the world on fire with his displays for Birmingham.

Matt Upson, fair enough is a good player but wasn't good enough for Arsenal.

Richard Wright can't get into Everton's team.

Francis Jeffers got release by Charlton because he is shit.

David Bentley isn't Arsenal quality either, would I prefer him or van Persie on my team? not a hard question.

On potential English signings, it is ludacris. What I don't understand is how Carrick can cost Man Utd £18.6m and an established international midfielder who has played at two Euro Championships, one World Cup, had 50 odd caps, captained his national side, played in the Champion's league countless times cost just under £7m.

Another example is Curtis Davies, £10m is a fucking joke. We have a player on trial at the minute, a Ghana center back who had also played in a World Cup and would cost maximum of £500,000.

[therockbox]

Jermaine Pennant hasn't exactly set the world on fire with his displays for Birmingham.

[TMM]

Jermaine Pennant hasn't exactly set the world on fire with his displays for Birmingham.

Except make the most amount of successful crosses out of every player that played in the Premiership last season. Something like 250 crosses that directly found a teammate. Shame he only had Heskey, Sutton and Forssell to aim for.

Wright made a mistake in leaving Ipswich as well, he should've stayed there and developed. He was no where near ready at that point to move to a massive club like Arsenal.

I'd agree that English/British players are overpriced, though. To suggest Carrick is worth £7 million more than Xabi Alonso and £11 million more than Rosicky is ludicrous. Hopefully things will change slightly though when the new rules about 'homegrown' players in the CL comes in.

Apparently those rulings could be challenged as illegal. I don't remember where I read/heard that, but I did.

[Guest muddatrucker]

Its fair enough but all that'll happen is the squads will have some youth team players that won't get a game, they might aswell just reduce the squad sizes because thats all that'll happen.

[TheArsenal]

It's stupid because it'll make prices on English players go up even more because everyone will know that clubs NEED English players so they can play in Europe. So the clubs without the right players will be desperate for them, and will have to pay over-the-odds prices.

[therockbox]

Don't some of them have to have been trained by the club, though? So players like Carragher and Gerrard would be OK but Pennant wouldn't, for example.

[fineintent]

I think the likes of Fabregas count as "homegrown" players, so because of Chelsea and Arsenal's policy of getting these young players pre-contract they should be fine.

[TheArsenal]

Jose Antonio Reyes has once again denied that he is looking to move to Real Madrid.

Over the weekend, the Arsenal striker had to refute reports that he was after a transfer to the Bernabeu club. The story resurfaced in the media this morning.

“I did not say these words,” said Reyes in response. “I’ll tell you once again, I am happy at Arsenal and I am looking forward to the coming campaign. We have a new stadium this season and we are pushing for honours in all competitions. I do not want to leave Arsenal."

Edited August 6, 2006 by TheArsenal

[atoned]

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_page...rt/sport1.shtml

[TheArsenal]

I wouldn't say no to Gallas, at a cheap price. Didn't he complain at having to play full back instead of centre back?

We do need both, but we probably need a left back more.

[TMM]

Gunners win Merida race

Arsenal have won the race for Spanish wonderkid Fran Merida, with the 16-year-old opting to join The Gunners after leaving Barcelona.

The hugely promising midfielder is in London to put the final touches to the transfer which sees him follow in the footsteps of Cesc Fabregas in swapping Camp Nou for Arsene Wenger's side at a young age.

Merida scored for an Arsenal XI in a 4-0 win over Boreham Wood on Friday night and will now hope to enjoy the same rapid rise through the Gunners ranks as his much-vaunted compatriot.

Merida's arrival as the club enter a new era at the Emirates Stadium is a sizeable coup for Arsenal given the large level of interest in the player, with Manchester United and Liverpool both keen on the skilful midfielder.

However his capture may come with its own problems as Barcelona are believed to be looking into the possibility of involving Uefa given their anger at losing another young prospect to English shores.

Fabregas and Manchester United's Gerard Pique both departed in 2003 and Merida's exit is also contentious due to the fact that reports in the Spanish media in March claimed that Merida's agent Joseba Diaz, who also represents Fabregas, had been keeping the player away from the Catalan side in order to secure his passage to The Premiership.

Arsenal are no strangers to transfer controversy having angered clubs in the past due to the captures of players such as Nicolas Anelka and Mathieu Flamini, but Merida will now be focused on carving out a successful career for himself under the watchful guidance of Wenger.

Source: Sky Sports

Another Spanish wonderkid who Barcelona were apparerntly desperate to hang on to. He scored against Boreham Wood the other day as well.

[fineintent]

And another example of Arsenal's amazing double standards regarding transfers.

[Guest muddatrucker]

How so? this is completely legal.

[TheArsenal]

BUY A GOD DAMNED DEFENDER WENGER!!!!!!!

But a good coup all the same. Can't wait to see what Merida can do.