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The tour of Switzerland is now underway. A 5-1 thrashing of Bellinzona gave a great start to the tour but the game was marred by three injuries.
Bellizona 1 - 5 Arsenal
Bellizona : Massimo Fishcer (27) Arsenal : Henry (7, 35, 68) Adebayor (32, 45)
Jens Lehmann, Freddie Ljungberg and Robin Van Persie all had to go off injured before half time as Bellizona attempted to upstage us by kicking us off the park. The teams quality shone through in the end though. 16 year old left back Armand Traore made it into the starting line up ahead of Justin Hoyte and the injured Gael Clichy and put in a solid performance. I am now thinking about ditching plans to sign a new left back and have Clichy in that slot, Hoyte and Traore as back up.
Physio reports are in from Gary Lewin and to my relief the injuries to Lehmann, Van Persie and Ljungberg aren’t serious.
Lehmann and Van Persie are both out for one week with bruised ribs.
Ljungberg is out for 5 days with a dead leg.
All three will be returning home shortly as Lehmann and Van Persie will be injured for the rest of the tour, and I do not want to risk Ljungberg in the last game, (which is when he will be regaining full fitness). Ljungberg’s injury has outlined the need for a new left winger as Rosicky is much better in the middle and is not an out and out wide player.
The same goes for Jens Lehmann. Poom is not adequate back up and I need a better goalkeeper than Almunia.
Atlas have accepted my £2,800,000 bid for Andres Guardado and I have offered a contract. I am predicting big things for this player and am very excited that he may be joining us.
Transfer season now seems in full flow elsewhere, an article I read in the Telegraph today reported that Barcelona are preparing a bid for Steven Gerrard. That wouldn’t be too bad for the Premiership but to go all the way in Europe you have to beat teams like Barcelona. And when they buy players like Steven Gerrard…… I still doubted they would get their man, the fees being bandied about for players like Gerrard these days were some way over the world record transfer fee.
If I had that amount of cash available to me I wouldn’t spend it all on a player like Gerrard anyway, my style is more to go for promising youth, and occasionally, a player near his prime for a still reasonable fee.
The team improved their performance from Bellizona to smash Yverdon here. Julio Baptista replaced the injured Van Persie and scored a great hatrick before Henry scored a fourth. Armand Traore started but went off injured before half time, giving Justin Hoyte a run out. Vito Mannone replaced Lehmann and played well. Tomas Rosicky also played the full match, replacing Ljungberg at left wing.
On my way back to the Swiss hotel near Yverdon where the team was now staying I was ambushed by an English reporter who’d probably travelled all the way from Britain to get a glimpse of behind the scenes at Arsenal’s tour of Switzerland.
“Mr Wulfric, speculation has been mounting recently that Blackburn are launching a bid to sign Mathieu Flamini, can you confirm this?
“I have not heard anything of the sort” I replied.
“Would you be willing to let him leave the club if Blackburn were to make a bid?”
“Every player has a price and the same goes for Mathieu but like I say, I haven’t heard anything yet, now, if you’ll excuse me I have places to be.” and with that I stepped into the car waiting for me and drove off.
When I returned to my room I found a message concerning the Cardenas deal. His request for a permit has been rejected, I have launched an appeal, and hopefully the decision will be overturned.
Arsenal manager Tom Wulfric admitted yesterday afternoon that he would listen to offers for French midfielder Mathieu Flamini. Wulfric stated that he would be prepared to sell Flamini but only if the club receive an offer matching their valuation of the player. Flamini has been strongly linked with a move away from the Emirates Stadium recently and it now looks like Wulfric is about to let the player go.
The final match of the tour had arrived, and I was quite looking forward to returning to England. It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed the tour, but I had business (mainly transfer business) to attend to, and my work was much more efficient when not travelling around foreign countries playing in unfamiliar conditions.
Arsenal : Gilberto Silva (8) Sion : Carlitos S/O (40)
Another solid performance to coclude the tour, this time Gilberto being the only scorer. An identical line up to the one against Yverdon. The team is now almost fully fit and the tour has seen the players improve significantly. I am considering organising a friendly at the Emirates for in a week or two to really get the team ready.
The team returned safely to England, and there was a lot of news and messages to be found when I returned to my office. First of all was a fax from Roberto Mancini, manager of Inter Milan offering Walter Samuel plus £9,400,000 over 24 months for the services of Alexander Hleb. I have sent Giles Grimandi out to take a look at Samuel to see if the deal is worth pursuing. If I decide against acquiring Samuel then I will negotiate further with Inter to see how much they want Hleb.
The second was much more pleasing news, Sherman Cardenas had been granted a work permit and all that was needed was my signature to confirm the deal. I signed and now the club have their first new buy of the season.
Soon after I signed the deal my speaker phone clicked.
“Boss, it’s Pat Rice here, Alex Ferguson has called, shall I direct him to you?”
“Yes please” There was another click and I picked up my telephone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Alex Ferguson, I am speaking to Tom Wulfric?”
“Yes you are, how can I help you?”
“May I take this opportunity to welcome you to the Premiership, I would like to congratulate you on your new job,” he said before moving into a brisker tone, “I would like to enquire about Robin Van Persie. I would like to know how much you would be willing to sell him for.”
I did some quick thinking. I wanted to keep Van Persie if possible, but knowing the Dutchman, I was sure that he would react badly if he found out that he’d been prevented from joining Manchster United. I had already decided that he was one of the players that I would much rather keep, but that if a huge offer came in I would sell. I decided to tout a fee of much more than Man Utd would want to pay, but that I would be happy with if I did sell. It was win win now. Either they leave it or take it with a very high fee and some extra transfer funds for Arsenal.”
“He would be available for around £17,000,000 with a 10% sell on fee” I replied eventually.
“That is a little more than I was expecting” there was a pause, “I’ll get back to you, thank you for taking my call” said Ferguson.
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