Interesting reports from Spain today suggest a number of things regarding top scorer Adebayor’s future at the Emirates Stadium.
Marca claim that Arshavin could join Barca instead of Arsenal, Chelsea or the other possible destinations for the highly creative second striker. It is Arshavin’s favourite club and he has stated that it is La Liga where he sees his future, not the Premiership. This would mean that they would no longer make a bid for Adebayor and Arsenal, providing Milan do not tempt him away, would have won the fight to keep the Togolese man in North London.
Obviously coming from a Spanish newspaper, large pinches of salt are needed with any transfer story, but I can see how this could fit together. Firstly, Barca need to sell in order to buy, having already spent a net price of around £45m+ this summer on other players. But Eto’o, Deco and Ronaldinho will fail to fetch very much purely because Barca are in a rush to sell, and so prices will drop as a result. I would guess the three of them will get a total price of £45m, more than enough to buy Adebayor, but with Barca hesitating on the Daniel Alves deal as well, finances are clearly tight. Therefore the reasonably priced Arshavin could do just as good a job, even if he isn’t the number 9 Guardiola is after. This would leave Arsenal with only Milan, a UEFA Cup team, to fight off in order to keep Adebayor.
El Mundo Deportivo predictably disagrees with Marca, saying a deal worth between £25m and £30m will be done today for Adebayor, who has apparently told Ken Friar and co. his future is in Catalunya. I seriously doubt any such deal will be conducted just yet, as Arsenal can hold out to see what Milan are going to do in order to raise the price further.
Meanwhile, Wengers comments about keeping his players at the club being his main objective this summer may also come to light as perhaps he will decide that despite his principles tell him £80K a week after one good season is a bit steep, the price of losing the Togolese forward may be even greater. So far it has been reported that only £60K has been offered, but I would be very surprised if we haven’t offered more than that and Adebayor has just decided he wants to leave.
On a side note, Adebayor has been voted the third best player this season for Arsenal, with 20% of the votes on Arsenal.com. This shows his incredible rise in popularity this season, and the reason why Wenger wants to keep him. My current thinking on Adebayor is that if he wants to leave and there is nothing we can do about it, there is definitely other layers who are capable of coming in and doing just as good a job for the team as he has done. Knowing Wenger, that replacement could even be someone promoted from within! Adebayor got 30 goals this season, an incredible feat, but my gut feeling is that anyone leading the line by himself for as long as he did, with only the goal-shy Hleb behind him n the hole, could have got a hat full of goals as well. He missed more good chances than he scored and while he is a brilliant foil to any good striker, with movement and workrate, his quality has been emphasised by the absence of goals coming from other sources. We should keep him, but if we had had Eduardo and van Persie in form and alongside him throughout the season, he would have got less goals, but the team would have got more overrall. And so if he leaves, I have complete confidence as long as his replacement isn’t injury prone, we will do just as well without him. It is our creative edge which is key to us, not who the striker is on the end of the chances.
It is very worrying if it is true we are considering letting a top player go simply because we won`t meet his wage demands. I remember when we signed Bergkamp, Hill-Wood commented: “I can`t believe we`ve spent that much money (£7.5m), but either you compete or you don`t”. This holds true today, and if we can`t compete to keep the players we have, how long will it be before the spuds, who are prepared to spend any amount of money, supplant us as North London`s dominant team. When that happens they can have my season ticket back.