Bye Bye King Kolo

King Kolo is out and I’m not at all happy. You can say what you will about the remarkable piece of business Wenger has done the club as Kolo has brought us a title, 2 FA Cups and helped us to a few good long runs in the champions league, including the final in 2006. He stood up and replaced Keown and Adams when nobody else could, he stood up and continued when Campbell left and he’s our longest serving player, he’s our only connection to the invincibles. In a squad with so much youth and such little tradition and leadership, letting go of one of our most experienced leaders, the only player who can carry on the Arsenal tradition left over by the likes of Adams, Keown, Parlour and Bergkamp, is in my mind a mistake. I’m very upset about this transaction and don’t have it in me to write much more. Arseblog said that this is football and players come and go but under our circumstances I don’t think it’s right.

Alright, that was bit dramatic, my heads on straight now but I’m still pissed off. 16million is a lot of money, more than we’ve ever spent on a player and Wenger does know when to let go, particularly when it comes to players around Toure’s age. Overmars, Petit, Vieira, Hleb, Campbell, Edu (I have a bit about him you’ll see later) all left between the ages of 27 and 30 (I think) and have all gone on to less prestige and glamour in their post Arsenal careers. You might say they became slightly useless even. Speaking of Hleb, he was part of the deal that saw Ibrahimovic go to Barca as he was loaned out to Inter for a season with an option of a 10m Euro buy at the end of the season. He couldn’t get a game at Barca, who don’t have a lot of midfielders, going to Inter who have about 900,000 midfielders won’t do his career much good. I doubt we’ll be hearing about Hleb for a long time.

Having said all that, that money better go into the team and we better not let Eboue go. I understand that Eboue, Toure and Adebayor were all great friends and perhaps this will be playing on Eboue’s mind in his decision to leave and it seems that Fiorentina are in talks with him over a move said to be somewhere in the 10m range, which again is very good money.

We’ve spent 25m since January, on Arshavin and Vermaelen and have made that back with the sale of Adebayor. We’ve got another 16m for Toure coming in, which really ought to be enough money to sign a quality center mid like Sissoko. Even if it costs more, I have to imagine that we had money in the kitty without selling Adebayor, there must be something to spend. We obviously won’t replace Kolo, I’m sure we’ll keep Phil the Swiss and probably Silvestre. This is beyond me, I’ve said that I like Senderos and that I see the value that Silvestre can bring but keeping these guys over Toure just sucks.

We’ve signed Vermaelen to be a starter, I don’t think Wenger would have paid that money for a sub. Kolo and Gallas and Djourou would have been scrapping it out to play alongside him and maybe Toure just didn’t have the fight in him. That doesn’t seem right though, Toure has tons of fight doesn’t he? So maybe it was the money. Maybe the excitement of a new project, maybe a chance to join up with his buddy Adebayor and make some new buddies in the process. Or maybe it’s the money. I’m sad to see him go and I thank him for his work with Arsenal but there’s a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t suppose I’ll ever know where it’s coming from.




Highbury86