The hot story of the last few days has been the potential £22m arrival of Higuain at The Emirates, with some sources reporting the deal will be done this week. Here is the truth.
Higuain: Turth: 30%There is some actual truth to this one, though it is a little dated, and has been turned in to far more than the hard evidence should allow. The Real Madrid man is on the move as clearly implied by a comment he made after a game against Osasuna at the end of last season, in which he was captain. Whilst the quote has appeared in numerous forms, the origanal source, a website called Football Italia reported Higuain as having said the the following on June 1st;
" I am leaving Real Madrid, the decision has been made. I have not decided where I will go, but the club already know that I want to go. I feel that my time here is over, so I want a change of scenery after seven intense years.
The full comment was more extensive and can be read on various sites including Yahoo but it all points to the fact that the Argentine who has scored 107 goals in 187 league appearances for Real Madrid is calling time on his career at the Bernabeu. Though the strong suggestion at the time of the quote was that Juventus were front runners.
It has been reported (though with no concrete evidence) that Juventus are cooling their interest as they are unwilling to raise their initial bid of around £18m to the £25m reportedly required to land the 6 foot, 25 year old striker. It has also been suggested that Juve would want to make the payment in instalments, which are not favoured by Real.
The Source
Whilst a whole host of well established sources in the UK have jumped on the Gonzalo bandwagon the original source of this article is a Spanish journalist called Ulises Sánchez-Flor, who writes for Marca, a reputable, sports focused news paper in Spain.
Whilst a whole host of well established sources in the UK have jumped on the Gonzalo bandwagon the original source of this article is a Spanish journalist called Ulises Sánchez-Flor, who writes for Marca, a reputable, sports focused news paper in Spain.
Whilst the orignal article has no comments or hard evidence the fact that the reporter in question has close ties to Real Madrid and is in fact Higuain's biographer implies that he's a man in the know, with a reputation to protect.
This story could be accused of lacking any real substance like quotes from Wenger, Arsenal or something more recent from Higuain himself. You could even go as far as saying that it is created from the same substance that allowed Rooney to be linked to Arsenal. That substance was little more than the marrying of two comments made by representatives of the club, neither of which actually made implications of any specific player being signed.
2+2 = £20m - £30m
Those comments from Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger, which you can read in the Rooney article linked above are now being paired up in a classic 2+2 = whatever the hell you want to to, in order to link Arsenal top class any player with in the £20m - £30m range, which is pretty much all of them. They alone will supply bored hacks across the land with as much excuse as has ever been required, in order to link Arsenal to any player who has ever farted in a lift which his manager, or some other club board member then happened to enter at a much later date.
Those comments from Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger, which you can read in the Rooney article linked above are now being paired up in a classic 2+2 = whatever the hell you want to to, in order to link Arsenal top class any player with in the £20m - £30m range, which is pretty much all of them. They alone will supply bored hacks across the land with as much excuse as has ever been required, in order to link Arsenal to any player who has ever farted in a lift which his manager, or some other club board member then happened to enter at a much later date.
Having said all that, with Mourinho gone, and Ancelotti likely to be on his way it does look like Higuain wants out, and may well get his wish, though even this is uncertain, Ancelotti could of course decide that Higuain is actually the man he wants and release Benzima instead, in which case you'll be reading this exact same article in a few days, with Higuain's name crossed out and Benzima's hastily written in.
Even if he does leave whether or not he's heading to Arsenal does seem to be largely a work of fantasy based transfer-semi-logic rather than being based on the hard evidence we usually seek. We can agree that with Arsenal still in search of big, strong center forward to spearhead their attack where Giroud may have failed, then Higuain would fit the bill, which must put The Gunners in the top 5 list of clubs that Higuain is likely to join especially if you believe that the Spanish journalist who is the source is actually only protecting his own sources by not naming any of them.
Likeliness of Signing: 30%Fit at Club: 75%
No comments:
Post a Comment