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Would it be £14M well spent?

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I’ve spent sometime out of the writing spectrum, catching up on a few games and looking for our weaknesses and areas that needing attention this month, and we clearly have a problem with our defence. But our attack has suffered as also.

We will be losing Gervinho to the African Cup of Nations and as such, with the Ivory Coast international away, a backup striker will be needed to help out Olivier Giroud, who, though in good form, hasn’t played consistently enough since his summer switch from Montpellier. Even though Theo Walcott has been in brilliant form recently, when used as a centre-forward, the England international has lacked consistency in his performances which has cost us at times.

To deal with the potential lack of strikers at the club this winter Arsene Wenger has reportedly lined up a bid for long-term target Adrian Lopez.

But reports suggest The Gunners are reluctant to pay his £14million buy-out clause. Not surprised by that really as we do often hesitate when it comes to transfer fees. Always wanting the cheapest deals.

The Atletico Madrid forward is high on Wenger’s list of potential January transfer targets, and even though he is a senior Spanish international, the 24-year-old is only a bit-part player for the La Liga club and could be allowed to leave this month in an attempt to help ease their financial burden. Rather him than Radamel Falcao they say.

To help aid in the signing of Lopez, Arsenal are ready to offload Marouane Chamakh this month. This would free up a little money for us to offer a ‘big’ contract to the Spaniard.

Wenger seemed eager to start doing business in January and with Shalke’s Klaas-Jan Huntelaar signing a new contract at the Bundesliga club, after being heavily tipped to make a switch to The Emirates, the chances of Lopez emerging as the top target just went up. But even with that Wenger is still determined not to pay over the odds for the striker.

But is this going to be £14 million well spent should the Frenchman decide to stump up the asking price?

I don’t think so.

Why are we going for a player who has been in the shadow of an absolute goal machine? Who knows how long it would take for him to settle down at Arsenal.

If the club refuses to pay the amount being asked for, why didn’t they approach a player half the price with Premier League experience and a knack for goals? Demba Ba’s release clause was around £7.5 million and he would be available to us for the remainder of the season since Senegal aren’t taking part in this year’s edition of the ACoN.

We may be in a rough patch, but I’m sure Ba would have liked the idea of joining Arsenal.

Let’s see where this potential Lopez deal heads.

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huge Arsenal fan, love the team and all that comes with it.follower of all kinds of sports, football being my first love, yet to attend my first arsenal game but i am planning too, some time in the not to distant future. i enjoy writing as well, that's how i ended up here, never looked back....

15 comments

  • davi says:

    The team is lacking creativity and players who are willing to take chances far more than we are lacking a top class striker imo. We are no longer a constant threat to opponents and it’s not because Giroud and Walcott can’t score goals, it’s because they are too often completely isolated and our wingers seem unsure on how to open teams up. RVP is easily the league’s top striker and even he looked useless on occasion last season simply because he was so isolated.
    I haven’t seen much of Adrian, but he does appear to be the type of player we are missing. From what I can tell, he’s like Gervinho with a touch more class/composure and a few other qualities, like heading. Gervinho opens teams up at will but seems to have no idea what to do with the ball once he’s done that, so that is not a negative comparison at all.

  • Ted arsene says:

    Nice one Dave, exactly wat most fans dont see, in our last game we barely created chances. Our strikers dont get enuff service meaning anoda striker cant solve our problems.

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