Gratuitous football-related post One Wilf Copping
03-03-2014, 12:18 PM
Amidst the predictable doom-and-gloom post Stoke, a couple of Arsenal-related developments have been missed.
QPR head scout Ian Broomfield has quit 'Appy 'Arry's sinking ship to join Arsenal. Broomfield was at Spurs and Leeds before and has a strong record. Originally a police detective, he later switched to scouting and has an interesting profile. Not really the man for identifying future talent, his main strength is pushing through deals for players – even one's clubs don't want to sell – as well as using his investigative background to research the lifestyle of signings and assess their mental approach. As such, he's more of a threat to transfer fixer Dick Law than to chief scout Steve Rowley...
How many times have we apparently been close to signing major names only to not quite clinch the deal. And how many times have we bought players, only to see them turn out to be flaky and lacking in mental toughness.
At 63, Broomfield isn't a long-term appointment, he's been brought in to do a particular job for two or three years. His arrival suggests it could be a busy summer and a summer targeting a different profile of player – more Özils than Sanogos...
The other development is that Wenger has admitted publicly that the club are monitoring Real Sociedad's Antoine Griezmann, who has been in sensational form this season as an attacking left-winger – a position where Podolski just hasn't cut it this season.
Other major clubs have been following Griezmann, too, but what hasn't been mentioned in the press is that we have a major advantage over those other clubs. We have a 3.5m buy-back clause on Sociedad's other star player Carlos Vela. They won't want to lose both names and we could threaten to activate the buy-back clause on Vela if they sell Griezmann to anyone else. If they let us take Griezmann, however, then we could agree to scrap the buy-back clause on Vela.
QPR head scout Ian Broomfield has quit 'Appy 'Arry's sinking ship to join Arsenal. Broomfield was at Spurs and Leeds before and has a strong record. Originally a police detective, he later switched to scouting and has an interesting profile. Not really the man for identifying future talent, his main strength is pushing through deals for players – even one's clubs don't want to sell – as well as using his investigative background to research the lifestyle of signings and assess their mental approach. As such, he's more of a threat to transfer fixer Dick Law than to chief scout Steve Rowley...
How many times have we apparently been close to signing major names only to not quite clinch the deal. And how many times have we bought players, only to see them turn out to be flaky and lacking in mental toughness.
At 63, Broomfield isn't a long-term appointment, he's been brought in to do a particular job for two or three years. His arrival suggests it could be a busy summer and a summer targeting a different profile of player – more Özils than Sanogos...
The other development is that Wenger has admitted publicly that the club are monitoring Real Sociedad's Antoine Griezmann, who has been in sensational form this season as an attacking left-winger – a position where Podolski just hasn't cut it this season.
Other major clubs have been following Griezmann, too, but what hasn't been mentioned in the press is that we have a major advantage over those other clubs. We have a 3.5m buy-back clause on Sociedad's other star player Carlos Vela. They won't want to lose both names and we could threaten to activate the buy-back clause on Vela if they sell Griezmann to anyone else. If they let us take Griezmann, however, then we could agree to scrap the buy-back clause on Vela.