Fellaini to Arsenal?

by imothyt

No – he’s not a good forward option – 20 goals and 5 assists in 155 matches for Man U.

No – he’s not a good DM, 79% passing in the Champions League, 79% passing while at Everton, averages almost twice as many fouls as tackles.

No – signing him won’t mean that Arsenal can afford Dembele. He’s just another old body on an old team eating up salary – Arsenal already have massive problems with a bloated salary structure, forcing us to sell players just to make ends meet.

No – he won’t “add steel” to the Arsenal midfield, we are the Arsenal, not Man U or Liverpool, what he will add is yellow and red cards.

No – my United supporting friend told me he would personally fly home in order to drive him to Arsenal. United fans would be ecstatic to offload him on us.

NONONONONONONONONO

Qq

75 comments

  1. No, he’s not coming. Chiiiiill winston 😉 all agent speak, will end up in china

  4. This just in:
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/06/04/unai-emery-hoping-commit-much-summer-budget-securing-aaron-ramseys/

    Obviously could all be made up, but Wilson’s one of those reporters who pretty clearly gets fed some of his stories from sources within the club.

    The Good:
    –No Fellaini (hopefully)!

    The Bad:
    –Saying we’re focusing on securing Ramsey is Gazidis-speak for saying we’re not going to spend much on actually strengthening areas of the team (as opposed to just getting bodies/experience in). We’re shopping in the bargain aisles all summer, fellas!

    2. Yaya Toure sounds entirely believable and honest in that interview. He’s just the latest in a long line of people who’ve worked with Guardiola to say what he can be like behind the scenes, from the team doctors at Bayern to Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Samuel Eto’o.

      1. I think he believes what he says. But, you know, put that together with his birthday cake strop, and it just sounds like another instance of (as I wrote on the last thread) his self-entitlement, immaturity, and mean-spiritedness. He wasn’t at an age where he would be expected to play regularly, but he blames everything on Guardiola, and it gets personal. Unseemly at best. Toure would have us believe that Guardiola is a stupid man. From what I could gather, he’s a man who wants everyone buying into the same project. If you don’t, you’re left out. Sounds like smart team-building to me. And btw, I don’t worship Guardiola like some. He has his flaws. But the Toure interview was cringeworthy.

        1. Toure’s agent is now adding fuel to the fire. Talking down Pep’s achievements and his ‘human’ qualities.

          But..Here’s the upshot. He says Yaya has offers from around the world but he wants to stay in England and play for a top 6 side to show Pep he’s not finished. And he will do this for a salary of 1 pound (plus success bonuses)

          That last part might be the key to how much money he’s actually looking for, but still..Does anyone think Yaya Toure is worth signing for free on a one year deal?

          4. Not naturalised. Africans. Because you’re too smart obviously to get caught out otherwise.

  7. Thanks a lot for killing that other thread, Tim, you enormous Fellaini.

    The reaction has been fun. I love imagining SIRE planting this interest in order to get the fanbase in a position where they would welcome pretty much any other player in the world. Perhaps in this context, fans would be over the moon about Nzonzi rather than merely whelmed (Shard aside, of course)?

    Anyway, I’m still in the non-outraged camp, small as it is, if this rumor proved to be true.

    1. (And need to stress, given the prevailing mood, that ‘non-outraged’ does not mean ‘happy’!)

      [ducks]

  9. Definitely no outrage. I’m just a simple man who wants the privilege to keep calling him Emergency Angry Giraffe no matter where he plays. Is that too much to ask?

  10. Was it against Sevilla in Champions League this year that Man Utd started Fellaini? All I remember is my friend in the office becoming FURIOUS with Mourinho – it was tantamount to conceding the game in his mind.

    I stick with my Bill Laimbeer analogy: Laimbeer couldn’t shoot, couldn’t low-post, was a dirty defender. But man, could he box out and rebound. He led the NBA in rebounding and could barely jump the height of three Kraft cheese slices. Same thing with Fellaini – he can head the ball. That’s it. Garbage.

    1. Laimbeer did win two NBA titles and that was probably the best Pistons team of all time, so your point cuts both ways.

      1. I should add that the Pistons were my team as a kid. I was a big Joe Dumars fan.

        Laimbeer used to make me laugh though. He had no right to be leading the NBA in rebounds or be leading a championship team. It was amazing.

    2. Laimbeer won back-to-back titles jacking 3s and swinging elbows.
      Depends on whom you surround him/them with.

      We should bring in someone to emulate Mahorn too!

      jw1

  11. This is great stuff, John Henry probably has influential friends at MGH but Karius really just got handed the best possible excuse for dropping those clangers. Another way to look at it is that Sergio Ramos single handedly won that UCL final for Madrid by injuring their best player and then concussing their ‘keeper (talk about a dirty player, eh?). That’s Jogo Bonito if I ever heard it, and the Emergency Angry Giraffe would be proud!

    Check this out:
    “On May 31, 2018 Mr Karius underwent a comprehensive examination by Dr Ross Zafonte and Dr Lenore Herget in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. After carefully reviewing game film and integrating a detailed history – including his reported present and immediate post-contact subjective symptoms – physical examination and objective metrics, we have concluded that Mr Karius sustained a concussion during the match 26 May 2018.

    “At the time of our evaluation Mr Karius’s principal residual symptoms and objective signs suggested that visual spatial dysfunction existed and likely occurred immediately following the event. Additional symptomatic and objectively noted areas of dysfunction also persisted. It could be possible that such deficits would affect performance.”

      1. To keep going on my tangent, the arm bar he used on Salah is apparently illegal even in Judo! The way he followed through, slamming Salah to the ground, nobody is going to convince me he didn’t mean to do that.

    2. My take on this article is that it’s less a lifeline for Karius and more a damning indictment on FIFA’s concussion protocols. Concussions are a potentially serious brain injury with both short and long term consequences. And once concussed, another blow to the head is exponentially more dangerous.

      1. The problem is nobody saw the collision in real time, or identified that there could be an issue until well after the game. Hard to fault the concussion protocol when the player never enters it. If he didn’t have symptoms at the time then there is no blame to be assigned, but if he did have symptoms and didn’t come forward because he wanted to keep playing then it isn’t on Karius.

        2. Didn’t the doctor come out to see him? I remember him complaining to the ref about Ramos elbowing him, and I think he lay down after that. But not sure.

          But yeah, I’d missed it at the time. I saw it after the match because Rafa Honigstein pointed it out. It is a disgusting play and Ramos deserved to be sent off for that.

          The Salah incident I am generally ok with. Yeah it was a foul and dirty play and Ramos did mean to pull him down. But that sort of grappling and pulling down happens very often in football. Barely a yellow card. Usually not even that. Usually the player gets up and walks away so nothing made of it.

          I don’t know. It doesn’t register as violent play to me.

          1. It was class A shithousery. Ramos knew perfectly well who he was tangled up with and while I don’t think he set out to hurt him, the arm trap tuck and roll move was wholly And completely a deliberate takedown. The move is illegal in Judo because the other guy can’t break his own fall. That’s why Salah hurt his other shoulder, not the one that was barred. Watch the way ramos follows through on the move, he knows exactly what he’s doing. There is no benefit of the doubt for a player with his track record either.

  12. Well, the echo chamber has reverberated long enough that MEN is now stating that Fellaini will be ‘holding talks with Arsenal’ this week. Followed the links/source back to the original Times/Bill Hurst.

    Tomorrow? Spotted house-hunting in London no doubt.

    1. Nicely done.

      It’s not as if we weren’t warned about fevered speculation around questionable transfer stories a few days ago.

      1. Lol.

        I have to imagine that if everyone, including Tim, had followed the advice, the reaction to this story would have been laughter rather than anger. People are busily editing their Wenger Out signs over fake news!

        1. Hold on, I’m confused: you *know* it’s fake because it links back to a story in the Times? Have they become Don Balon all of a sudden?

          My guess (hope!) at this point is that this came from Fellaini’s people. Maybe there has been some contact with the club–obviously we really are looking for cheap experience to add to the squad, etc–but we’re very unlikely (he says in hope) to be stuck in serious negotiations to sign him right now. But that’s different than the original story being all made up.

          1. Apologies for not expounding.
            Never said ‘fake’.

            Where I’d headed but did’t quite reach– is that the same source that started the rumor? Was thrice removed from a statement– with no further details to prove that ‘Fellaini would be holding talks with Arsenal this week’.

            Zip. Zilch. Nada. Else was given between the start/end of the four stories to get from ‘Arsenal interested’ — to — ‘Fellaini would be holding talks with Arsenal this week’.

            Thus– the use of ‘reverberation’.
            A sound (story) amplified into something altogether different sounding.
            Just the ruse to rewrite a click-y bait-y headline.

            But not dissimilar to where we started on the previous thread– to here– in about 3 hours.

            jw1

          2. Of course I don’t *know* it’s fake. But the whole point of Tim’s piece is that we should be wary of transfer ‘news’, and he gave good reasons and some criteria.

            Just saying, the reaction was and is fun in many ways, because we get to chat about ALL THE FEELINGS (and I’m part of the noise, too, just by talking about it, of course), but in another way it’s symptomatic and somewhat worrying.

          3. Ok, I see. Don’t think I disagree with anything JW1 or Bun has said (I did think the original story mentioned something about actual contact between his people and the club, but maybe I’m misremembering).

          4. Some questions, PFO. What evidence is there that this was true? And if there was contact, what evidence do we have of Arsenal’s interest in actually signing Fellaini? What happened to the standards submitted by Tim only a few days ago? If we used them, does it merit this article, or the reaction, generally? Should we leap to anger or indignation? The response to this rumor has been revelatory. I do worry for the new regime if rumors like today’s are countenanced like this. It’s possible to say “nope, this is a nonsense rumor” and leave it at that, but the vitriolic reaction makes it clear that it was taken seriously.

      1. Can’t help but think that you’re the footballing fan equivalent of Denny Crane with every comment signed off with your initials.

  14. The only troubling thing for me is how quickly the anger descended on SIRE, for an unverified claim of our interest in Fellaini. I get the qualifier “IF this is true, then,” but the reaction generally speaks to a worry I have, namely that Emery will not get any grace if he does something unpopular, like sign a player the fans dislike.

    I suppose this is why, on the last thread, I put up some possible arguments for taking Fellaini. Not because I was happy to hear of the link, but rather because I was hoping we could sit back this summer, and this coming season, and let Emery do the work he needs to, without the poison of angry mobs (which can destabilize that work considerably).

    In my opinion, he deserves the benefit of doubt, even if what he/SIR does is mysterious to us now. Perhaps when we see the fruit of an initially head-scratching move, we can judge. It is true that some players thrive under different managers, and no, I’m not saying that Fellaini is happening or that there was ever any interest. However, I am saying that I think there will be things that happen this summer that we may not like, and I’d like us Arsenal fans to be a little more forgiving.

    I fully appreciate the community of regular posters here, btw. I’ve never once thought we occupy the ranting mob I describe above. You’re a thoughtful bunch, and I enjoy the back and forth immensely.

    1. Imagine a world without itchy trigger fingers, angry hot takes, and filling up endless column inches and hours with speculation about transfers that never happen. In the words of Adam Sandler: BOORING.

      There’s a reason why traffic to football sites increases during the summer when there is no football: it’s smut season. We can’t get enough of it. Ronaldo kicked it off with a bang, to such an effect that nobody was talking about the UCL final in the post match press conference of the UCL final in which Sergio “just being Sergio” Ramos incapacitated two opposing players within 90 minutes. We can’t help ourselves. We live in a world where a manager spontaneously resigns after winning a hat trick of UCL trophies because he can smell the winds shifting. We live in a world where heroes and villains are born and made in mere minutes, where shreds of information cause instant furore, and are just as soon completely replaced by the next thing. As Madonna once sang, it’s human nature. Or perhaps Jamiroquai said it better: it’s virtual insanity.

    2. Great post. And to the earlier one, you’re right… we simply don’t know for sure. Could be true. we don’t know yet.

      I hear what you say about giving the new manager some room, but if we sign Fellaini, Lichtsteiner and Sokratis in one window, that’s not a good look, no matter how patient you tell yourself you should be. And from Welbeck to Silvestre, we haven’t had much luck with Manchester United rejects.

      That said, we brought in Benayoun (31, loan), Arteta (29), Andre Santos (28), Mertesacker and Park (26 both) in ONE window — the mad transfer shopping cart dash of 2011. All the last week, some on the last day, of the transfer window.

      THAT was crazy.

      1. Here’s what I think happened. Arsenal were approached by Fellaini’s agent, and they said no. It gets reported that Arsenal were ‘considering’ the approach. Note that saying ‘no’ in response to a question is also a matter of consideration. Response of fans? Outrage, threats of Emery Out, hyperbolic disbelief, and an impromptu article with a massive “NO” contributing to the reactionary atmosphere. I love Tim and this site, but today was a lesson that none of us are above the crap.

        1. Maybe Thierry Henry recommended Fellaini to him and Josh Kroenke got in touch to offer him a contract….For the Colorado Rapids.

    3. That’s a great post and I agree.

      But it bothers me that you’re now saying SIRE for the 4 guys. Initials of either first names or surnames.. what is this hotchpotch mixture.

      I guess nothing goes with U.. But 4 ‘sur’names together give us GEMS.. Isn’t that more reasauring than an overlord SIRE who may rule in an arbitrary manner 🙂

      2. Yes, I should avoid SIRE. It’s not consistent. SIR Emery it is, though SMEG is hilarious.

  15. Unlikely to happen, this transfer, I agree indeed. But, just in case, I have to defend Marouane anyway. Of course, everyone will think that the Belgian is blind to the obvious shortcomings of the Belgian. But don’t underestimate my ability to be objective in all circumstances. For instance, I do think my daughters are soooo bright and pretty. But this was independently confirmed by my wife (who knows everything) and their numerous boyfriends.
    Anyway, Fellaini is much more than a lumbering brute. Fellaini can patrol the midfield tirelessly, intimidate the opponents, get the ball back, participate very well to the build up (no with genius passes, defense splitting forward passes but with simple, well timed high security passes.) Fellaini will dominate the air on corners and free kicks both defensively and when attacking. Fellaini will never give up and drive the others with him. He will give you a few goals each season. He is tactically disciplined. His coaches love him (clubs and national team). He has the best chest control in the world past and future included.
    again, he works well in a team that wants quality passing and patient build up. He is smart.
    That’s a lot of useful skills. But, indeed, no dribble, little elegance, flying elbows, questionable haircut.
    Give him a chance!

    1. 79% passing does not show simple high security passes. And whenever I’ve seen him in the past few years, he has never seemed ‘smart’ to me. All he’ll be good for is chucking the ball into the box and hoping he wins the header. And I don’t think we should be signing a guy just for that. Maybe if we were allowed Special Teams like in American Football for set pieces.

      If he signs, I’ll give him a chance. I’m not outraged about this, but Fellaini would be an outrageous signing for Arsenal.

      1. I believe there’s truth to that rumour when I see him sign. Never in a million years do I believe this is true. Maybe someone somewhere took a meeting or someone spoke to his agent abut something but no, he’s not signing for Arsenal. Arsenal is still the go-to club to get a players’ name out there, massive online following and constant speculation over it. Why would that stop now just because of the new regime? (Not a slight on them btw.)
        Fellaini is a jack-of-not-so-many-trades. He’s not a DM, he’s sort-of-not-really-box-to-box player, he’s not an attacking midfielder.

      2. He wins headers and can play a bit of bully ball in midfield. You add him for salary only on a short term deal. He brings something to the team that we don’t already have. He’s not going to be a crucial piece or a regular first teamer. If he is ok with that and still wants to come help us then I don’t see the harm. Honestly though it won’t happen because he likely won’t settle for those terms.

  16. Hilarious to see all the hipster arsenal fans losing their minds over this. Really cuts against their self-image I guess. Another legacy of the Wenger era.

    I really don’t care one way or the other if we sign Fellaini on a free transfer, though we probably won’t. Think of the number of crocked players we have had over the last 10 years who have sucked up wages while literally contributing nothing year on year (rosicky, cazorla, Arteta, diaby… Then the likes of Squillvestre et Al). Fellaini on a free is fine. I hate him but I’m not arrogant enough to think that should matter.

    1. I think this is the first time I’ve agreed with you on anything. Fellaini, the great unifier!

      It is a little bit ironic that now that we are seeing a real change in approach, it seems like people want to go back to signing elegant little technicians. The message seems to be, we just want someone to do what Wenger was doing but better than him… well, the reality is Emery is a different sort of coach with a different sort of system who wants to bring in a different sort of player. Give the man a chance to do his thing before you judge. (Even if he brings in a Belgian pumpkin)

    1. I’m chill about this. Similar to what I said about Fellaini, this is a low risk depth signing. We needed cover at RB and now we have it. I know he’s not at his peak but that’s why he’s on a free. He always been a physical freak so I’m not surprised if he has more left at 34 than most players. And, again, this is another veteran from a serial winner (pun intended) who brings something we don’t have a lot of in the clubhouse.

  18. Well, we got the Licht for sure. It’s official. Thought he looked lively in the friendly against Spain, which Switzerland drew.

    Read a number of transfer stories on Fallaini with a troubling absence of quotes and sourcing. The Sun said we was offered to us, and without providing evidence, said that we’re unlikely to sign him.

    Sigh.

    We have 3 more months of this.

  19. By the way, does anyone know if it is legal to have contracts where player’s wages drop in subsequent years?

    Because I was wondering if we can frontload Licht’s wages in the first year, and pay him like 10-20k in the second year(presuming he is going to be here for 2 years), so that we have a higher wage cap and more wage room.

    1. dont see why it wouldn’t be legal, bigger issue is any player worth his salt would be insulted by that offer especially in this age where salaries start at 50k per week (don’t they?)

      1. No I mean, we agree on say a 75k/week deal but say we’ll pay 140k/week in the first year and only 10k in the second year. It should be better for the player to get money up front and for the club, especially if they expect to make some big signing next season, it gives them more wage room. (7m up from this year’s wage bill, and the 7m drop in wages for this contract)

        1. That would be great for the club but I don’t see a proven pro like him accepting that offer, he could do much better elsewhere.

          2. Because it seems like an easy way to be shot of him after one year. It implies a lack of confidence/respect.

          3. You mean we’d sell him? That would be foolish from us. To pay him 140k a week for a year and then to sell him when he only costs 10k. And THEN he really could do better. So that would be to his benefit.

            I don’t see the problem. It says to him we’re trying to build a better team around you, while still paying you the same total you’d earn, and giving you more up front. How is that not a good deal for the player?

  20. According to (probably fake) internet sources, Lichtsteiner was on around 2m euro a year at Juve. That works out to 38K/week GBP. I doubt he will be earning more than that with us. In fact I would assume he took a cut due to his age and back-up status but I could be wrong about that.

    I think some of the push back against Lichtsteiner is that people are assuming much higher wages than I think are realistic. If we are paying him roughly the same as Holding or Chambers, as I think we are, then it’s an absolute no-brainer to get an RB of his class and experience.

    1. Italian salaries are usually reported as net. So the 2m EUR would be after taxes. 4m would would be about 77k EUR/wk or 67k GBP/wk which would be more in line at least to me that somebody of his stature would be making at a big club like Juve.

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