Morning all.
Mesut Ozil has married his long time girlfriend Amine Gülşe. Great new, congratulations and all that but now I hope she puts her foot down. Him in North London, her back in Istanbul isn’t going to work. One of them has to give, if they want to live together. I know, it’s worked for them so far so why should a piece of paper make any difference? It’s called hope, hope that she insists he joins her in Istanbul so they can live as a ‘proper family.’ Start a family maybe, Play for a Turkish team…
Back in the real world, Arsenal made a big announcement yesterday, although it wasn’t that big really. They simply confirmed what we already knew and that’s that the following players have left the club.
- Cohen Bramall
- Petr Cech
- Charlie Gilmour
- Stephan Lichtsteiner
- Julio Pleguezuelo
- Aaron Ramsey
- Danny Welbeck
Seven out means seven can come in then? No, it’s not that simple, in fact it’s not simple at all. I’m not going to try and explain what Arsenal can or can’t do this summer, mostly because I wouldn’t know where to start but over at She Wore A Yellow Ribbon they’re on the case. A really good read I thought and as the author explained at the end, if the club plan to make wholesale changes, more players will need to be moved on.
The Womens Football World Cup kicked off yesterday evening with hosts taking on South Korea and it really was a one sided affair. Three goals in the first half, two from Wendi Renard who at 6’ 1” tall, towered over the South Korean defenders and made it look easy to head her two chances home. A fourth goal in the second half from Eugenie le Sommer, one of seven Lyon players in the France squad,ensured the tournament favourites got off to the perfect start.
England, one of the teams tipped to win this competition, kick start their campaign tomorrow afternoon against Scotland. Arsenal and England’s Leah Williamson and Beth Mead will be up against their club teammates Lisa Evans, Kim Little and Jennifer Beattie in that one in what should be a good battle.
One thing you seldom see in the women’s game is abuse towards the officials, diving is another which is refreshing considering the men’s game is full of it. Talking of which, an expect at the latter has just secured a move to Real Madrid for a feed which is likely to rise to £150 million. A ridiculous amount of money but money I guess the Spanish side believe is well spent. If he helps them return to winning trophies again. Roughly three million of his shirt sales would cover that amount. Or a years television coverage revenue. Certainly if in Spain it’s the same as England. Real Madrid can obviously afford to pay that kind of money and his reported £400k a week salary otherwise the FFP gurus would be all over the club.
£150 million is the kind of money Arsenal fans would no doubt love our club to spend, not so much on one player I’d have thought, but this summer. We could too if we had a quick fire sale, or certainly somewhere close to that amount including our already in place transfer budget. We might even have more available if we make a big sale like Aubameyang, Lacazette or Guendouzi if the latter really is valued at the £50 million he’s reported to be. The seven players leaving are just those walking away for free, actual sales haven’t begun yet.
Nor have our signings.
Have a good weekend guys…
I didn’t realise they were still living apart, not an ideal situation for any couple. Fenerbache is his favored club to play for , ( which would solve several problems ) but they have already said they are not interested in having him at the club.
I really hope that this thorny problem can be resolved somehow, but it is difficult to see any result that will be a good one financially for Arsenal .
I agree with all you say about the Womens game , I am really looking forward to their World cup, Sundays game v Scotland will be a cracker …Arsenal have got a good Ladies team , bit by bit I think interest will grow in the ladies game
My name has gone up my accident…I am SOHARA can you change it PLEASE
No probs Sohara, all done.
I’m guessing re Özil and his new wife as she works in Turkey so I read.
Morning Rico. Odd having a dictator as your best man.
Morning Adam. I thought I’d steer clear of that subject.. lol
Human rights tend to spread their way into all parts of life Rico. 😀
They certainly do Adam. Lol
I wonder if Bob Magabe went on his stag do?
Morning Rico.
Ozil getting married – yawn…..
Cech, Ramsey, Suarez, Welbeck, Lichtsteiner all gone, that’s a lot of wages saved…
Still a lot more to do, but it’s a start.
Seems that the Kolasinac rumour to Barcelona was fake news – what a shame.
Morning Kev. They both look miserable as sin. Wedded bliss eh…
Surely not re Kolasinac? 😜
I reckon those who have departed will cover the the wages for any coming in as I don’t see us as a club dishing out big money contracts anymore.
But
Ozil does some really generous stuff, especially for disadvantaged youngsters. As per the BBC Sport home web page. I’ll leave you to look and judge. Fundamentally I think he’s a very good bloke but his appearance and, seemingly his choice of friends may be judged by us, the ordinary men (and women) to be a little eccentric, to say the least!
I’m sure
Erdogan could pull a few “strings” and find him the club of his choice in Istanbul. Ozil only has to ask……..!
He is a fabulous player when on form (too little seen at Arsenal)
Real had the best of him and then the poisoned dwarf sold him. He’s not really been the same since, a great, great shame. Will he be sold this summer, I doubt it. The money he earns and the offers that may be made will not be enough to prise him out, so we’re stuck with him. I wonder if UE can earn his corn and get the newly married man playing positively again? Or will we see more misery from Mesut?
Perhaps Erdogan could lock up a load more teachers, policemen, members of the armed forces and a few doctors, who oppose him, that should release enough cash to pay formOzil and his new life style! (Sorry Rico, don’t mean to be too politically volatile but sadly I don’t think Turkey is being run very democratically at present. Not a good place to be).
I agree Wavy, as a ‘man’ he always seems to do so many good things, as do a few footballers and famous people but as a footballer, he’s a miserable, lazy git.
If we need to move on another big wage earner and Ozil won’t shift, then I guess that Mkhitarayan is the next cab on the rank…
As it stands, if we sold Chambers (£25m), Elneny (£10m), Koscielny (£5m), Monreal (£5) and Ospina (£4m), that little lot could bring in around £49m and that could be reinvested on younger potential like Claude Maurice and Saliba who’d be on reasonable salaries.
Anything we got for Mkhitarayan would be a bonus.
Monreal, Koscielny and Micky are on big wages, so a big saving there and in a years time Koz & Nacho can walk for nix anyway so why not cash in now?
Tbh their legs have gone and keeping players on because we’re a nice club has to stop.
I want to see if the club remain true to their word about contracts, if they are then we’ll see quite a few leave..
The thing is, if said players refuse to leave or we can’t get a good price for them then we’re snookered Rico.
Smith Rowe needs to have his contract sorted it runs out in 2020.
There is that Kev…. But I know I wouldn’t want to stay somewhere I’m not wanted for two years.
..Even for £350K a week Rico? 😉
Yeah, I could do a month at somewhere I hated for £350k a week…
It would be a chore, but in true Jack Higgins manner I would stiffen my upper lip and see it through.
Interesting to see at this stages of the summer that Bundesliga clubs have spent twice as much as Premier League clubs and it’s somewhere like £230m more spent by La Liga over the EPL…
FFP having an effect perhaps?
….and the transfer window doesn’t open until July the first does it?
The Premier League summer transfer window in 2019 again opened — and is closing — earlier than other leagues in Europe.
The transfer window for domestic deals opened on Thursday, May 16.
However, international transfers will not be possible until the FIFA international window opens on Thursday, June 11, although for contractual reasons many deals will not be technically completed until July 1 or later.
The transfer window will then close at 5 p.m. BST on Thursday, Aug. 8 — with the new Premier League season scheduled to begin on the weekend of Saturday, Aug. 10.
No club will be able to buy or loan a player after Aug. 8 — but they will be able to sign up players who are free agents.
The Championship has decided to match the Premier League’s date of Aug. 8. Unlike last season, however, Championship clubs will not be able to continue to loan players after that date. Clubs in Leagues One and Two can continue to trade players freely up to Sept. 2.
yes Ozil go to TurKey go to Basashair!!!!
It’s been my hope for over a year now. Who purchase Robinho, Adhebayor, Thuran … sell Robinho, buys Ozil for 100 million or more!
Hiring:
We could go try one or two Mali players from the U-20 attack
Ukraine also has an interesting one or two players. They should not be expensive. Xhaxa on the way to Inter. Ruben Neves (wolwes) good alternative; Ramsey out. Bruno Fernandes to his place, but it seems that goes to the totts. As in the past, I indicated Bernardo Silva to replace Ozil but no one “listened” to me and the city, half a year later went to pick it up.
Now an article from a few months ago:
The Basaksehir of Istanbul is a double contradiction in Turkish football. At a time when the big clubs of Turkey are going through a stifling financial crisis, Basaksehir has his pockets full and money to get people named. But it lacks what Galatasaray, Besiktas or Fenerbahçe, even in crisis, have to sow: adepts. In a country where football is more than a passion, Basaksehir are well-placed to win their first Turkish championship title, even though they have the second-lowest standings in the league. But who needs fans when you have a friend named Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
The Turkish first division is almost a matter reserved for the three big ones of Istanbul, that divide between them almost all the titles: Galatasaray (21), Fenerbahçe (19) and Besiktas (15). Only Trabzonspor (6) and Bursaspor (1) have managed to smash this tripartite domain, but may soon be an unpublished champion. With 20 games to go, Basaksehir are eight points ahead of second-placed Galatasaray and 11 ahead of Besiktas. After two quarters places (2015 and 2016), a second (2017) and a third (2018), to be champion seems the natural evolution for a team that in 2014 was in the second division.
If this title happens, there will not be many people celebrating on the street. Basaksehir have an average attendance of 2766 home games, the second lowest among the Turkish Superliga’s 18 clubs – eight are above ten thousand per game and Fenerbahçe, who leads this table, has more than 35,000 assists. This is true even with a new stadium with a capacity of 17,000 spectators and a team with many international family names such as Robinho, Emmanuel Adebayor, Arda Turan, Emre Belozoglu, Gael Clichy and Demba Ba among other international players. players of 14 different nationalities) and some known “old” Portuguese soccer players, such as Júnior Caiçara (ex-Gil Vicente) and Márcio Mossoró (former Sp. Braga).
If it is true that box office receipts do not even come in to pay electricity bills, as the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet recently cited in an El País article recently wrote, and without a membership base to pay dues, how does Basaksehir survive and thrive? Basically, the club is a company that is managed as such and without having to account for members (who does not) or worry about elections, but this does not explain everything. It is a club that has strong connections with Recep Tayyp Erdogan, President of Turkey, and has a board of directors with members linked to various state-owned enterprises, and sponsorship, for example, of Turkish Airlines or Ziraat bank. Club president Goksel Gumusdag is not only a member of the Justice and Development Party (the Erdogan party, the AKP), but also married to a niece of the Turkish President’s wife.
Erdogan’s relationship with the club comes from the days when he was mayor of Istanbul. During his tenure between 1994 and 1998 he was responsible for setting up Basaksehir in the outskirts of the city, a suburb aimed at a more conservative population with strong economic and population growth (it currently has about 400,000 inhabitants) in the following years, already with Erdogan like prime minister of the country. At this time, the club still existed as Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediyespor (BB), founded in 1990 and funded by the city’s water company.
He started underneath, got promotion to the Turkish first division in 2007 and still got trained by Carlos Carvalhal in 2012, but the following year he came down from division. The stay between the “big ones” cost him little to break the popular domain of the three biggest clubs in the city – he played at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium, but the visiting fans were always in greater numbers.
The 2013-14 season was contradictory for the club. In terms of sport, they got the promotion, but, by popular pressure, the club stopped having municipal support. As he had risen from division and, to finish, he advanced to privatization, and the club changed its name, becoming Istanbul Basaksehir, in addition to having moved to the stadium Fatih Terim. Erdogan, who became an amateur footballer in his youth, played at the venue’s inauguration (he scored three goals, highly consented by the opposing team) in July 2014 and the number he used, the 12th, was withdrawn.
Back in the first division, Basaksehir immediately established itself as one of the dominant forces of Turkish football, combining the recruitment of thirty-year-old footballers with international football history with the development of a training structure and the hiring of young players to other Turkish clubs – and that has already resulted in 2017 in a major transfer to the Serie A Italian, advanced forward Cengiz Under for 14 million euros. But with all its success, it remains a club without supporters. If it is a champion, as it all seems to indicate, this is going to be a quiet night in Istanbul.
No Cicero, my happiness is far more important than any amount of money. How much does a human being really need though, Ozil is probably already a multi millionaire…
RIP Justin Edinburgh lately manager of the Orient, for whom I have a soft spot. They, yeh O’s were on the up with him in charge and would have been okay in League 2 next year, they may still be but to lose your manager so soon after success will be absolutely devastating for the club it’s staff and probably it’s immediate future. Absolutely loathed him as a player for the scum, he was a violent animal but he clearly had something going for him as a coach.
( Sorry LC I know you won’t be as upset about his passing as I am but every human being has his/hers attributes that are largely good!)
Sad day
Morning Gooners
Morning Rico.
No news today, nothing even about Mesut (thankfully) but I did have a butchers on his instagram and quite a lot of it is carefully crafted PR stuff on there, put up by his energetic PR machine no doubt. Those boys (n girls?) certainly earn their wages…
Who takes all this wonderfully enigmatic, endearing and normal looking pics, ah the daily machinations of your average multi millionaire ex international footballer, doesn’t it warm the cockles of your heart as you go about your daily life, knowing that Mesut doesn’t have a care in the world as he hangs out with all his mates like Shkodran, Sead, Mathieu and Recep…..
Afternoon all and congratulations to Mesut, I can tell from a lot of the photos of being touchy feely and the way they look in each others eyes that they are deeply in love …………so I expect Mesut and Erdogan to have a happy life together !
RIP Justin Edinburgh, but God is a Gooner, so good luck up there !
As for our 100`s of signings via newsnow, well not a dicky from Dick or Ornstein…………..
Morning Kev, Lc, all.
There’s a new post up now.