The above headline appeared in various media outlets in January 2010 as the club agreed a deal to sign 16 year old Brazilian Wellington Silva. At the time the youngster was playing for Fluminense in the Brazilian Premier division and was being described as the next Robinhio. Having come through the same Brazilian International youth team as Coutinho and Casemiro big things were expected of him. Featuring at youth level for the Gunners he scored goals and impressed all and sundry. I saw him play against a United Reserve team in Dublin where he scored a great goal and impressed with his all round play (also in the same game JET featured for the Arsenal team and stood out as a class above everyone on the pitch, shame about his attitude).
Owing to problems gaining a visa for Silva he was shipped out on loan to Levante where he only managed to feature a couple of times due to disagreements with the Levante manager and a rumoured over fondness for Spanish pizza. Upon his return to the club a new loan club was found and he subsequently joined second tier Spanish team Ponferradina. Having not exactly set the world alight during his team in Europe it remains to be seen whether or not he has any sort of future at the club. At the minute it would seem not.
The reason for this rather long-winded brief on Wellington Silva is due to the managers answer to the media questions regarding possible moves by the club during this transfer window. We got the usual answers regarding exceptional quality and strength of the squad blah blah blah. So we need exceptional quality and lets see if it can be purchased in the form of someone not 16 years of age and under £3.5 million.
We will only go back as far as 2010 in our search
January 2010
Younes Kaboul joined Sp*rs for fee of £5 million pounds. Pretty sure he would add to our squad
Summer 2010
Yossi joined the Chavs for £6n million, he was a very good addition to our squad last year
Moussa Dembele joined Fulham for a fee of £5 million
United signed Javier Hernandez for £10 million. A top quality striker who would start for the Gunners
Newcastle signed Tiote for £3.5 million.
Sp*rs sign Van Der Vaart for £8 million. Signing of the season for that money. Top Top Quality
January 2011
Newcastle sign Hatem Ben Arfa on a permanent deal for £6 million. Winger with bags of pace and tricks aplenty.
Sp*rs sign Steven Pienaar from Everton for a fee of £3million.
Summer 2011
Arsenal sign Park Chu Young for £3 million (just threw that in for the laugh)
Aston Villa sign Shay Given for £3.5 million
Liverpool sign Jose Enrique for £6 million. An argument could be made for him being the best left back in the Prem
Newcastle sign Yohan Cabaye for £4.8 million
Swansea buy Michel Vorm for £1.5 million
January 2012
Chavs buy Gary Cahill for £7 million
Everton buy Jelavic for £5.5 million
Summer 2012
We will just go with 1 name in this column, I could use more but Michu signed for Swansea for a fee of £2 million having scored 15 goals in La Liga the previous season.
The above names could all bring quality and improve our squad in the Premier League run in. The highest fee paid for any of those players was £10 million. Perfectly acceptable fees in the eyes of Mr Wenger I would imagine. Hopefully we will see a couple of signings along the lines of those mentioned above to give us all a lift.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview of the West Ham game
follow me on twitter @wicklowgooner
I’m sorry but this is just a bit silly. You can pick any manager in any year and find a signing that is relative crap compared to other signings in League. Yes in the 2011 we could have had Cabaye for 5m. We could have also had Charlie Adams for 10m or Torres for 45m.
What more can you say
you are really wasting our time with this nonsense look at years gone by. We all know all this stuff, and the team’s lack of ambition is now well known to us all.
If mr wenger can sign David Villa,i think it wil be a great signing for our club. Hope 2 c that deal completed soon.
Nice.
please wenger brings us players.avoid this of your shameless excusses we are tired of your attitude or you please quet out of the club.
What a pointless article. I find it strange why people would try so hard to write which can’t really be described as anything more than just pointlessly negative. Just listing some players we didn’t buy. Like a wierdo conspiracy theorist trying to gain status by whipping up hysteria and rounding up other bottom feeders to a fucked up way of thinling. Granted fuck knows what signing Park was about? Maybe wenger lost a bet?
Why not write an article about some of the great buys wenger has made over the years. Cesc less than a mil, Henry was bought for fuck all, so was song, so was RVP. And if only we didn’t have to sell our top players each year to pay for the stadium we would build on the team each year and not have to rebuild each year.
Or that wenger is actually build a new team based a round a british and or arsenal supporting set of very talented youngsters. Scezney, Gibbs, jenks, wilshire, Ramsey, the Ox, Walcott, frimpong, le coq et al.
Nah, fuck just waste our time buy listing some players we didn’t buy.
Simply, Arsenal.
awful article. Learn how to use punctuation! Also, its ‘Robinho’ not ‘Robinhio’, get it right!
I do not think our club cares about the supporters at all. One moment we are told there is money to strengthen the squad – three weeks later nothing has happened except dropping more and more points. It is really tough being an Arsenal fun at the moment. What has gone wrong at the club?