A Few Thoughts On The Week That Changed Transfer Deals

Rather than starting with the Arsenal part of this story, let's start elsewhere.  Madrid to be exact.

By now, everyone knows of the sums spent and the players purchased by Florentino Perez as he appears deadset on continuing on his trend of bringing the biggest names in football to El Santiago Bernabeu.  

56 million pounds for Kaka' on Monday.  80 million pounds for Cristiano Ronaldo on Thursday.  136 million pounds.   That's a quarter of a billion dollars that was just spent to unite the reigning and former World Players of the Year under the white flag of Madrid.  

And the rumors are that this is just the beginning of a massive spending spree that could see them bring in coveted striker David Villa, the even more coveted winger Franck Ribery, right back Maicon and midfielder Xabi Alonso before the window closes in August.  

Oh and they're also apparently targeting Gael Clichy to take over the LB spot once ruled by Roberto Carlos.  Let me get back to that in just a second.

To no one's surprise, this seems to have kickstarted an arms race across the top clubs in Europe.   Barcelona -- not content to sit on a team that was scoring for fun last season -- are now supposedly after Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Karim Benzema along with Nemanja Vidic while Daniel Alves wants them to bring Robinho over.  Manchester United, flush with the millions from the sale of Ronaldo, are also after Ribery and are eyeing Benzema and are making a move to bring Antonio Valencia over from Wigan.  Chelsea have set their sights on Alexandre Pato and/or Sergio "El Kun" Aguero to partner with Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka and there's rumors of their interest in Andrea Pirlo and Yuri Zhirkov.  Meanwhile AC Milan, having lost Kaka and looking apparently set to lose Pato, Pirlo and even Gattuso, have already made signing Edin Dzeko their top priority and the rumor mill has them after various starlets across Europe.    

And that's just Week 1 of the transfer window.  

Now, let's get to the part where all of this furor applies to Arsenal.

Obviously, we are going to have players with targets on their backs from these big game hunters in designer suits.  As I said above, Gael Clichy is already a rumored target of Perez to help solve some of the left back issues Real has had (namely that Gabriel Heinze is done and Royston Drenthe looks like a lost puppy out there).  Most of me does not want to see that happen.  I like Gael and think he still can improve and become a world-class LB.  That said, if Real offer something in the 25M pound range...could you turn it down?

Meanwhile the annual "Barcelona is Coming for Cesc Fabregas" rumors have already started.  These are a bit more annoying and ridiculous.  One, Cesc shoots them down everytime and says his future is tied to Arsene's continued tenure with the club.  Two, this season will be his first as team captain for the entire year and he's not likely to walk away from that.  Three, he's likely looking to break into the Spanish Starting XI for next year's World Cup and that's not going to happen if he's riding the pine as a supersub for Barca while Xavi and Iniesta continue to rule the midfield there.

Regardless of the realities though, expect to hear many of our players as potential targets for other clubs now even more.  

The other way it applies is in the crazy fee department.  Now traditionally Arsene Wenger has not been one to splash the cash around Europe for his purchases.  I mean, he just broke his own transfer record in January for Andrei Arshavin -- and that was 15M pounds or 1/5 what Real just paid for Ronaldo!  

But as we saw when Chelsea started snapping up players for 25M quid each, there's a knock-on effect throughout the market.  Players who might be worth 5-7M are valuated at 10M.  A rising starlet could cost you between 10-14M quid.  And an actual star...well, you're now talking over 20M easily.   And making things worse is that if Real continue to splash such crazy money around, they're going to be flooding the market with cheap cash for teams to get into bidding wars over players.

I mean, are United and Valencia going to actually pay down their debts?  Why?  When what fans want are those new summer signings!

So does that mean we wont get into the transfer market?  Obviously not.  I just think that if Arsene was secretive before, then I expect him to become The Shadow now to get his deals done.  Don't expect to hear about our signings until they've passed their physicals and are at Emirates with their shirts in their hands.  I also think we should expect him to follow on what his stated plan is -- two or three impact signings.  Don't expect us to overhaul the team.  Not that it was needed, but the idea of buying 4 or 5 players in this market is unlikely.  I mean, there you're talking anywhere between 50 and 70 million pounds easily!

In this brave new world, when even clubs like Barcelona (which pride themselves on bringing up their stars through their ranks) are setting such lofty proclamations aside and getting into the dirty part of business, it's good to see that Arsenal are not one of the clubs desperately racing to hand millions it doesn't have to a player it might not need.  It's easy to fall in love with the new headline of a brand new player joining the club.  Who doesn't love the spotlight?

Just remember that there's always a flip side.   For every mega-signing, there's a player being tossed to the side whose arrival was once heralded as the answer to all the problems (see: Van der Vaart; Sneijder).  And that those players arrived for real money...money that most clubs cannot afford to just dole out like candy.

Real Madrid can miss on a 10M pound signing and not miss a beat.  Most clubs can't afford to be so reckless.   Or to say it simpler, Arsenal cannot afford to be that reckless.