Spunky Posted September 1, 2006 Posted September 1, 2006 Blues beat deadline to sign Cole Chelsea have ended a long-running saga by signing England full-back Ashley Cole from Arsenal in exchange for £5m and France defender William Gallas. Click here for BBC Report Looks like Arsenal got a lousy deal!! ;)
SiriuslyCold Posted September 2, 2006 Posted September 2, 2006 eh? I thought Arsenal were pretty pleased with the deal
silencer13 Posted September 2, 2006 Posted September 2, 2006 Yeah, I thought Arsenal got a very good deal. No point keeping a disgruntled player on your roster, and Ashley's 'defense' has been pretty leaky. I'm glad he's gone. Gallas is a good addition to the team. :) Looks like there's only Theo left who's a full blooded Englishman? But he'd probably be gone next season if he can't get a starting place.
Spunky Posted September 3, 2006 Author Posted September 3, 2006 Didn't Chelsea initially offered £15m? Galla is worth £10m?
lewlian Posted September 3, 2006 Posted September 3, 2006 Will let the Gunners supporters go into detail but there seems to be clauses built into Cole's agreement that stipulates Chelski pay Arsenal money for every competition win in the future that will build up into a sizeable sum.
Spunky Posted September 3, 2006 Author Posted September 3, 2006 Will let the Gunners supporters go into detail but there seems to be clauses built into Cole's agreement that stipulates Chelski pay Arsenal money for every competition win in the future that will build up into a sizeable sum. surely few outside of chelsea would like to see this happens, right! ;)
scoobydoo Posted September 3, 2006 Posted September 3, 2006 If I were Arsenal, I would be very happy with the deal. I think Gallas is a much better player than Cole.
f_spider Posted September 3, 2006 Posted September 3, 2006 Wif all d youngsters firing all d guns............... Also wif d intro of Gallas................ d Gunners lookz damn gd for d future , man ;)
doomgiver Posted September 4, 2006 Posted September 4, 2006 they also benefited more by exchaning reyes for baptista!
armoury Posted September 4, 2006 Posted September 4, 2006 At face-value, it seems Arsenal got a slightly raw deal, i.e. Chelski got a bargain. Cole is arguably the best left-back in the world today, and whilst Gallas is good, he would not make a World XI. Also, Gallas is already 29 whilst Cole is still, surprisingly for a player with 51 caps, still only 25 -- which also emphasizes how good he is, and that he's still got many years left in him (maybe 8+; Gallas has maybe 4). There is some talk that Chelski are either paying part of Gallas's wages, or there are "bonus" payments due if Cole wins things at Chelski, but these details are fuzzy. However, there's no point hanging onto a disgruntled player, although to be fair Cole was always professional on the pitch -- but how much of that was simply enlightened self-interest (put yourself in the shop-window, secure England place, win a few trophies), who knows? The next thing to consider is that Cole is a pure specialist, i.e. he literally can only play one position, left-back. Gallas is best as a centre-half, but can cover either full-back position, including the now weakened left-back slot, where the injured Clichy is presumably first-choice, with Flamini (a midfielder) previously the main cover; Gallas now covers this position as well. So Arsenal's overall defence is strengthened a fair bit. But the main "gain" to Arsenal is Gallas as centre-half. With the loss of Sol (who was aging anyway), we were short of experience here, the first choice being Kolo Toure (who is still only about 25), partnered with Senderos (currently injured). Cygan was never really good enough (on a separate note, the best piece of business anyone did this transfer window was Arsenal getting someone to actually pay to take Cygan!), and youngsters like Djourou need more experience. If anything, centre-half was Arsenal's most exposed position, and we've gotten an excellent player to plug that gap, at the expense of weakening the left-back slot slightly. Toure + Gallas is potentially the best centre-half pairing in the Premiership -- I concede Terry is pretty good, but he's slow, whilst Rio at MU is gaffe-prone. T&G are both strong and fast, which suits Arsenal's super-speedy style of play very well too. The flip side is how much does Cole add to Chelski? Cole's greatest strength isn't defensively, but in bombing forward, much as Roberto Carlos does (although he's a better defender than Carlos!). Chelski don't play that way, their defence tends to "stay home" and they use more conventional wingers to do the wide attacking. That will limit Cole's overall effectiveness. So although we didn't get much moolah out of it -- Kenyon and Maureen Yo were probably sh#tting themselves at the thought of Arsene Wenger with a 20M pound warchest -- many Gooners think we've done all right. We'll see come May. (Final thoughts: had Cole been with any other club (bar maybe MU or Pool), especially a non-Premiership club, Chelski would have happily paid the 20-25M asking price. Come on, 30-yr-old Shevchenko for 30M? It wasn't about spending the money, it was fear of putting that money into the hands of a competitor. And when that competitor is Wenger, who got Henry for what is now considered a bargain 10.5M, Toure for much much less, and who once made a 23M profit on Anelka, you can understand why Chelski would refuse to pay Arsenal anything close to what Cole was really worth. Chelski's biggest advantage over Arsenal at the moment is finance -- well, it's their advantage over everybody, but Arsenal are paying for a new stadium and feel the pinch the hardest -- and paying big money for Cole would erode some of that advantage.)
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