Silva/Arsenal - Could be good or bad news re: Martins

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

fk that's a high transfer fee. If I were Arsenal I would have gone for Tevez though

The battle for Tevez is between Real and Man Utd.

[shido]

Apparantly SSN claims zagreb are saying he is gonna cost 24 million euros...about 16million quid

 

Great news as far as owen and oba going to arsenal....

[gray]

fk that's a high transfer fee. If I were Arsenal I would have gone for Tevez though

The battle for Tevez is between Real and Man Utd.

 

if man u get tevez, the league is sealed up for a good 4 years tbh. what a fing squad they have.

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

fk that's a high transfer fee. If I were Arsenal I would have gone for Tevez though

The battle for Tevez is between Real and Man Utd.

 

if man u get tevez, the league is sealed up for a good 4 years tbh. what a fing squad they have.

I agree. Man Utd will become the best team in the world with Tevez.

[gray]

                  Van Der Sar(Foster)

 

 

Neville    Ferdinand    Vidic    Evra

 

 

                      Hargreaves

 

Ronaldo                    Nani

 

                    Anderson 

 

          Rooney            Tevez

 

All quite young too.

[ohmelads]

They already have4 strikers in the squad: Da Silva,Adebayor,Bendtnder,Van Persie.

cant see them paying 13 for another striker

 

If that is who Arsenal intend to go into the season with, then Spurs will finish 4th.

 

I disagree. Arsenal have a far superior manager and coaching set up. People are forgetting that they beat Spurs three times last season with a weakened team every time, Henry didn't play in any of those games. I also don't believe their spending is over and all of their younger players are that bit more experienced than last season. They suffered a lot of injuries last season, I'd be surprised if they get hit that badly again (same goes for us).

 

Arsenal will finish top 4, I'm confident of that. I do see this year as an opportunity for the likes of us and Spurs (and maybe Everton, if they can spend well on a limited budget) to close the gap on them though.

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

                  Van Der Sar(Foster)

 

 

Neville    Ferdinand    Vidic    Evra

 

 

                      Hargreaves

 

Ronaldo                    Nani

 

                    Anderson 

 

          Rooney            Tevez

 

All quite young too.

That is the team of the future, but with Rossi and Pique will replace Ferdinand.

[mrmojorisin75]

They already have4 strikers in the squad: Da Silva,Adebayor,Bendtnder,Van Persie.

cant see them paying 13 for another striker

 

If that is who Arsenal intend to go into the season with, then Spurs will finish 4th.

 

I disagree. Arsenal have a far superior manager and coaching set up. People are forgetting that they beat Spurs three times last season with a weakened team every time, Henry didn't play in any of those games. I also don't believe their spending is over and all of their younger players are that bit more experienced than last season. They suffered a lot of injuries last season, I'd be surprised if they get hit that badly again (same goes for us).

 

Arsenal will finish top 4, I'm confident of that. I do see this year as an opportunity for the likes of us and Spurs (and maybe Everton, if they can spend well on a limited budget) to close the gap on them though.

 

might come down to whether berbatov can carry spurs for most of the season again like henry used to do for arse...if he plays the full season like he played the 2nd half of last season they could take arsenal, perhaps

 

however lets not forget they've got a perpetual cripple as the mainstay of their defence plus dawson is a fucken comedian so goals against spurs are never gonna be hard to come by...some of the spurs fans on here are harping on about kaboul like (a) they've already signed him and (b) he's been cloned from franz beckenbauers genes....if a 21 year-old frenchman comes in and shores up that defence then good luck to them i say

 

they play nice football and score goals but lack a certain steel that arsenal have instilled in themselves via wenger....

 

so for me arsenal every time

[KaKa]

Tottenham surprise me, because their weak point is their midfield and they still haven't improved it. Still no left-sided player and their central midfield partnership is miles away from the top four teams. I don't think they will finish fourth.

[ohmelads]

Henry didn't do that much for Arsenal last season due to his injuries, and yet they still finished on level points with Liverpool. They beat Man Utd home and away, put Liverpool out of both the cups at Anfield and hammered them at home, they beat Spurs three times without Henry. They also had Van Persie out for long spells but coped regardless. He's back now and I've got a feeling this could be his season. Henry has been replaced, this new guy probably isn't as good but he'll play far more games than Henry managed last season. Add to that the continuing improvement of players like Eboue, Walcott, Clichy, Adebayor, Diaby, not to mention Fabregas.

 

Arsenal's midfield is still excellent, with players like Fabregas, Hleb, Gilberto, Rosicky. And their defence is still pretty good, with two excellent players in Gallas and Toure.

 

They could do with improvements in one or two areas (personally I don't think Clichy is up to it defensively, and they could do with a top winger), but they still have the Reyes money to come in.

 

What have Spurs got on that? Their attack on paper might look better than Arsenal (still highly debatable IMO) but on the field I promise you Arsenal will score more goals. They'll probably keep more clean sheets as well. So I don't see Spurs topping Arsenal at all.

[Gash]

Am I going to get wooshed?

Is your source what the Croats said?

 

I dont think Arsene would spend 16 million on someone unproven in the prem and also a club record fee

[Cajun]

Am I going to get wooshed?

Is your source what the Croats said?

 

I dont think Arsene would spend 16 million on someone unproven in the prem and also a club record fee

 

Most media reports I have seen have said its £16m, the only place I have heard it being lower is the message boards. Who knows, are Arsenal a PLC?

[Gash]

nice article

 

Croatia's big-game poacher strikes again

 

created by Jonathan Wilson

Monday June 4, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

 

Poachers may be a dying breed but Eduardo da Silva's killer instinct has driven Croatia all the way to the top of Group E

 

It was just over two years ago that I first began taking notice of Eduardo da Silva. I was drinking coffee in a restaurant in the mountains above Split, looking down over the Adriatic, interviewing Slaven Bilic. The former West Ham and Everton defender is somebody who, if you get him in the right mood, you don't really have to interview. Just set him going and the opinions and the anecdotes roll out.

 

Article continues

He'd been on great form that morning, talking about Ciro Blazevic and the '98 World Cup, about the war, about his love of London, about his job as Croatia Under-21 coach. And then he leaned forward across the table with an air of seriousness. "There is a boy," he said, "who is very special. He came from Rio when he was 15, and you could put him now in the team at Manchester United and you wouldn't know he wasn't from there. Believe me, he will do things."

 

He was right. He has.

 

To say that Da Silva is the only reason that Croatia lead their Euro 2008 qualifying group would be unfair. Luka Modric, with his Jesper Olsen hair and his Arnold Muhren touch, is a sumptuous player, always finding angles; Robert Kovac remains implacably solid; and Vedran Corluka has emerged as one of the most promising right-backs in Europe. But Da Silva is the main reason.

 

We live, we are constantly told, is an age without goalscorers; there is a need for forwards to be able to do more than simply stick the ball in the net. A Gerd Müller, a Paolo Rossi or a Gary Lineker would, supposedly, have no place in the modern game. Zoran Filipovic, the former Red Star coach who is now manager of Montenegro, suggested that the levels of fitness and defensive organisation these days mean that the opportunities, the gaps and the mistakes, on which poachers used to rely, no longer exist.

 

To an extent, he is probably right. And yet, at 24, Da Silva has a goals-to-game record that stands comparison with the great goalscorers of any age. Admittedly he has yet to do it at the very highest level, but it is surely only a matter of time before he is given that opportunity. Even bearing in mind that the Croatian league is only part of Europe's middle rank, his record is extraordinary. Last season Da Silva banged in a record 34 goals in 32 games for Dinamo Zagreb, including the first ever hat-trick in a classico against their great rivals Hajduk Split. In 100 games for Dinamo, he has scored 71 times.

 

What he brings to the national side is obvious. England were outplayed in Zagreb, but Bilic has since admitted that he feared the game was drifting towards a draw as Paul Robinson made three or four excellent saves and a Niko Kranjcar shot deflected wide off Rio Ferdinand.

 

But then, just after the hour, Niko Kovac's looping cross from the left found its way to Da Silva eight yards out. He probably could have scored by taking the easy option and heading down to his right, but Robinson was moving that way and might have reached it. So he put the header in the one place he could be sure Robinson wouldn't get to it, shaping his finish back over the goalkeeper and into the top left corner. Robinson was left looking rather foolish, something that was inevitably highlighted as he subsequently missed Gary Neville's backpass to concede a second, but perhaps rather than blaming him we should have been praising the quality of the header.

 

Da Silva turned a draw into a win, and he was at it again in Tallinn on Saturday, scoring his sixth of the qualifying campaign. Estonia's industry and organisation limited Croatia's chances, but when Kranjcar miscontrolled Corluca's pass, Eduardo swivelled on to the loose ball and hooked a 20-yard finish into the bottom corner. "A misplaced pass, a half-chance, and again we lose," as Estonia's coach Jelle Goes reflected. And that really was how it was.

 

Perhaps poachers are a dying breed, and perhaps at the very highest level the modern club game has evolved beyond them, but their worth in international football should not be discounted. Perhaps there, where the limited time players have to train together means organisation is not so stifling (Hugo Meisl, the great Austrian coach, reflected on the disparity as early as 1932), those half-chances do still occur. How often, under Sven-Goran Eriksson, did Michael Owen suddenly turn a qualifier, just as Lineker used to save England in the eighties?

 

Bilic has been bold in promoting young players he knew from the Under-21s, and has finally ended the endless debate about the merits of the classic Balkan style 3-4-1-2 by simply binning it. His 4-1-3-2 has provided technicians like Kranjcar and Modric, even the ageing Milan Rapajic, to prosper, but the real secret of his success, as he knew it would be two years ago, is that he has a player who scores goals.

[Gash]

Am I going to get wooshed?

Is your source what the Croats said?

 

I dont think Arsene would spend 16 million on someone unproven in the prem and also a club record fee

 

Most media reports I have seen have said its £16m, the only place I have heard it being lower is the message boards. Who knows, are Arsenal a PLC?

They are

[Cajun]

Should be announced soon then.

[KaKa]

Personally, I really hope it works out for Arsenal and I'm sure it will. Arsenal's struggles last season were down to the loss of Van Persie more than anything. Van Persie had already scored 11 league goals by about halfway through the season!

 

Henry's attitude last season was disgusting. Moody and half hearted the whole time and having a go at the Arsenal youngsters even during games. It will be very satisfying to see Arsenal do even better without him.

 

 

[Gash]

Should be announced soon then.

Why? We never usually do :S

[geordie jamie]

if your a plc then there must be some sort of announcement

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

Am I going to get wooshed?

Is your source what the Croats said?

 

I dont think Arsene would spend 16 million on someone unproven in the prem and also a club record fee

UEFA.com

[Gash]

if your a plc then there must be some sort of announcement

Never do usually always undisclosed and noone usually ever finds out unless other club declares it!

[Cajun]

if your a plc then there must be some sort of announcement

Never do usually always undisclosed and noone usually ever finds out unless other club declares it!

 

I think they have to, they would be breaking rules of the LSE if they didn't.

[Gash]

if your a plc then there must be some sort of announcement

Never do usually always undisclosed and noone usually ever finds out unless other club declares it!

 

I think they have to, they would be breaking rules of the LSE if they didn't.

Its making me think i am incorrect in my declaration they are a PLC but i remember sending cheques to "Arsenal Football Club PLC"

:S

[Guest]

Am I going to get wooshed?

Is your source what the Croats said?

 

I dont think Arsene would spend 16 million on someone unproven in the prem and also a club record fee

 

He did spend around £13m on Wiltord & Reyes though.

[Guest gggg]

So UEFA and the clubs chairman say 16m and the Arsenal fans just make up a 6m figure and start believing it.  mackems.gif

[Guest]

Must be something in the North London water.