Is it Arsenal, or Arsene??

I know Porto loom, but a couple of things struck me this weekend. One was Cesc Fabregas equalled Bobby Pires record of goals scored by a midfield player (according to the stats), the second was one of our blogger’s comment about a French Goalkeeper called Hugo Lloris.

He asked ‘who would want to live in London?

realsocialdad was referring to football and questioning why a player like Lloris would make such a move when he is so happy at his current club. Lloris is twenty four years old, he’s French and he plays for Lyon. A very good question.

What does nearly every half decent French player want to do if they feel the need to move abroad?

Don’t they,

1) They want to move to the English Premier League.
2) They want to play under Arsene Wenger.

No player, regardless of how happy they are at their own club, will rule out a move if the time and place is right – by that I mean the right club and for the right money.

Look at Chamakh, taking it as read that he has signed some kind of agreement with us to be true – why didn’t he choose the Dippers? Surely they would have offered him more wages than us?

Maybe they did, but ultimately it probably came down to playing under the management of Arsene Wenger, just like so many before him.
One player who made that move from France to Arsenal, albeit a while ago now, was Robert Pires – I remember reading an interview with him; it was after he had scored against Southampton in the FA Cup Final to win us the trophy, he had not long signed an extension to his contract.

Bobby was playing in France before he signed for us, why would he want to move to England? Why would he want to play for a club based in the centre of London?

Ok, Arsenal were doing pretty well having won a few little bits of silverware, but why us?

Was having a bit of a tiff at his club in France enough to make him pack his bags and head to England?

Some even suggest he moved after boycotting Marseille, who knows, who cares?

I don’t think either are the reason for him moving, my view is that he, just like many other French and other overseas players, wanted to play in the Premier League and came to play for Arsenal because of Arsene Wenger.
When Bobby was due to extend his contract, other English clubs wanted to nip in and acquire his services and to be fair they would have probably paid him better wages, especially when one of the clubs was Chelsea. However, he said that after a little bit of thought he signed his contract extension. He then went on to say something like ‘I always knew I would!’

English players sign for us because of our club tradition and history, overseas players come to us because of our manager.

That has always been the reason why I can’t usually jump on the ‘Arsene Out’ bandwagon. Would Cesc, Ramsey, Vermaelen, Clichy, Sagna and many others be playing for us today if our current boss wasn’t our Arsene Wenger? Would we have signed Henry, Paddy, Anelka, Petit and many others had it not been for the ‘French Connection’?

I don’t think so, what do you think?

Reality is, the English Premiership is one of the best, if not the best football league in the world, Arsene Wenger is one of the best managers in the world of football, so put the two together surely there is only one club that any overseas player would prefer to play for?
Sadly though, most players think of their pocket before football, so they go and play for the big rich and heavy in debt clubs – us, we get left with the players who want to play football, play for the best manager and play for the club..

Any player would want to play for Arsenal, as long as we pay the right transfer fee, and pay the player the right wage.

Not forever I know, because don’t we all want to go back home….. One day?