I recently read, in the Metro, that Barcelona are ready to sell playmaker Ibrahim Afellay and will apparently accept offers in the region of £6 million this summer! Now I don’t know about you guys but this is a deal Arsene Wenger must pursue and seal this summer.
The 26-year-old joined Barca from PSV in January 2011 for £2.3 million, but the midfield maestro has struggled for game time at the Camp Nou since, featuring just the five times last season for the Catalan club following a chronic knee injury which ruled him out for approximately seven months.
Despite this though, Arsenal should seriously consider the prospect of signing Afellay.
Barcelona will be desperate to sell the Dutchman in order to raise extra transfer funds this summer, and the Gunners could certainly do with a creative midfielder after losing both Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri last year.
I still firmly believe that this issue has not been dealt with by our club, despite Alex Song’s assist rate last season. We still lack someone in the middle of the park that can turn a game on its head and produce some magic when needed. Afellay is this type of player and our club would be foolish to look elsewhere.
We shouldn’t have a problem with the financial aspects of this deal, as he pockets around £80,000-a-week at Barca, which we could easily match, especially if we offload some deadwood. In addition, £6 million in transfer fees isn’t a lot to part with either; in fact, it’s a bargain price for a player of Afellay’s quality.
The potential signing of Afellay could also persuade Robin van Persie to commit his future to us, as they are very good friends, so Wenger should do all he can to acquire the former PSV man, especially if Barca are only asking for £6 million!
Tottenham, Liverpool and Newcastle are all believed to be interested in signing Afellay, but with the only team out of the bunch offering Champions League football, we should easily fend off the abovementioned clubs for his signature this summer.
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Bet Spurs will now bid then buy him
chronic knee problem??!!!
This may explain why he is being offloaded for just £6m
he has most of his short barca career in the treatment room hence the low price.
we have enough of those players at Arsenal dont need anymore.
i dont understand the clamor for more midfielders we
we will have jack back and diaby will surprise all imo.
we need to have more faith in our current squad and only need to sort out the RVP situ.
imo we should let him go if is getting a bigger contract that we cannot match.
hope its not citeh but if it is there is nothing we can do as they have money that no one else in the footballing world can match, no point in trying until football starts to feel the ill winds of the world economy going in to a major slump.
watch out for the spanish clubs going bust or being taken over by foreigners on mass.
Agree. The last thing we want is any more midfielders especially when we are desperate to have a back up to Schez with Fab wanting out. We need another quality goal scorer, even if RVP stays and we really could do with a class utility defender such as Vertogen who we seem to be letting slip to some smaller club.
But midfield? We are well covered with Jack to come back, hopefully Diaby to get rid of his demons, Arteta to come back. We have Tomas who has shown us what he can do when gets rid of his injury demon.We have Coqelin as backup & hopefully there is room for Lansbury somewhere.
Would love him at Arsenal, could see him doing very well. Great talent, and for around £6m he’s worth the risk despite his injury problems. If he’s on form and injury free for even just one season, the fee could be paid back.
I think he’s going to have an impressive Euros and attract interest from several teams, so his fee is likely to increase unfortunately.
Arsenal sighn giroud
Hmmm,every seconds,every minuite,every day nd every week we ave been linkind wit most player across the eropea. Pleas Le Boss shuld sign player nt 2 be trackin nd shout out players name.once we scourt a player den go for dat particular player instead of shoutin d players name.PLEASE LE BOSS WE FANS ARE NAVOURS.
this is not a matter of bargaining we need take the money and go for him we need him and marvin martin just
AFALLEY is a big talent and arsenal shud quickly sign him up
i see christiano ronaldo in him….his injuries are not chronic, he hasnt been lucky.
Am sure he will overcome this.
RVP is an example
One – He doesn’t have a chronic knee problem, he just had one, long injury. Two – He won’t leave for less then 10 million, and if he does well at the Euros, could quickly be 15 million.
I think he would be a quality signing but Arsene Wenger is sort of worrying me because he’s being interested in these player but he’s saying we are having a quiet summer and we’ve got Diaby and Wilshere coming back, how pants is Diaby, and Wenger is not patient enough with dealing with players to buy cause quality players are saying they will decide their future are the Euro 2012 had finished, that isn’t long so if we dont buy Giroud, Afellay, Belhanda, Martin, M’Vila and another CB Van Persie Probably won’t stay. Although he is injury prone, he may do well at Arsenal.
i mean we dont need another CB, cause we have, Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Santos. We only need 5 defenders in the 18 starting and bench players. Look at Chelsea they have already signed 3 (nearly 4) players. We have only bought 1 player Podolski, but he’s quality
We need another rb vand der wiel or debuchy wud b gd n we do need another cb if djourou leaves weve conceded more goals this season thn any i cn remember as we dnt have strength in depth if one of our starting defenders r injured were usualy fuukd