Ian Henry
So Captain Robin wants to go somewhere else to play football. Fine. Tell him he can go, but only if the club gets what it wants, or he will be held to his contract.
In terms of what the club should set as the minimum, it should be a massive fee if City, United or the Chavs want him; I’d start the bidding at £60mn. Why not? He is better than Torres for starters.
If he is going to go another English club, bleed them. If he goes to an English club, he strengthens them on the pitch, so let’s hit them where only they understand. A season for us on the bench or in the stiffs or in the Carling Cup side may hurt us a bit financially – but we have had Squillaci, Diaby and Almunia getting paid for doing SFA last season, so what’s another player for another season doing nothing – not much more by comparison.
If he wants to go abroad, maybe a lesser fee would be acceptable, but even then I would play hardball and insist of quality players in exchange; Real Madrid? Ok, but we’ll have Higuain or Benzema in return. Barca? Iniesta for starters. Time to stop pussy footing around Arsenal.
Van Persie has made his statement – the club should now ignore him and ignore all so-called bids until they are realistic; and do so until the last week of August. And while doing all that ignoring Van Persie and his self-serving, execrable representatives, make it clear to Walcott that the same thing will apply to him. Having done that, go out and finish the squad building that needs to be done – a new back GK, another centre back, a couple of midfielders, and presumably now another striker. The players who want to move, let them move, but on our terms, no one else’s.
The problem is that the board, the CEO and the manager haven’t got the balls to play it hard. They’ll roll over and accept less than £20mn in instalments and then say no one else is available to buy as replacements. Maybe they will prove us wrong, but I won’t bet my house on it.
And one final thing: stop getting into this mess – a simple solution: when players are two years out from their contract coming to an end, make them extend it by another two years or stick them on the transfer list. This waiting to go into the last year of a deal is stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. And it certainly is not self-sustaining; it’s delusional and akin to pressing the self-destruct button.
