BBC reporting this now: http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/28705483 This is an incredible deal, we are making a 5 million pound profit off him, being able to sell him for 15 million pounds considering his dreadful 2013 season (which is what eventually cost him his place in the side, remember the Spurs defeat?), and then last season when he didn't feature much and was injured for large parts of the campaign, is a great deal of business. We have robbed Barca lol. We will need to go out and by a new CB now, people saying Chambers can fill the role, the boy is still very young, you can't rely on such a youngster to be your back up CB, not to mention the fact that he's also a back up for RB, you always need a minimum of 4 cg's in a team. Oh and a big middle finger to United, . How many of their targets have they failed to acquire now?
Wenger's already said that if Vermaelen went we would have to bring in another CB. Vermaelen's a great player. He's had a couple of bad seasons with injuries and form, but if he can regain the performances he was putting in until relatively recently he's easily worth £15m. Hopefully he does.
Agree with the OP, great deal for Arsenal and we didn't sell him to Utd. Vermaelen is a decent CB but he's never going to be first choice at Arsenal now. 15m for a back up CB and selling him abroad is a good move. We need to replace him of course, but it's not a key signing. We just need somebody who can do a job and if we spend two thirds of what we've sold him for on a CB then we can still get a really good player to replace him.
It's great business for us but also reflects the curent market. Footballers are like houses, doesn't seem to matter how they look or perform, they just seem to go up in price ! We now need a replacement and he will cost us more than the £15m we receive if we're to sign the quality we need...
I think the price they payed for Mathieu had something to do with the fee we got (if it is indeed being reported accurately). Good business all the same, would you rather see a young centre back or an older, more experienced one come in as a replacement? If it is younger, than I guess we can pretty much rule out Chambers being brought in for that position long term.
Anyone we sign is going to be a backup. Mertesacker and Koscielny are first-choice, and there's no point buying a ridiculously expensive CB when we're happy with the ones we've got. We can get a good backup CB for less than £15m easily.
Not sure you can buy someone as back-up, as we discovered last year an injury or two and we are exposed so squad players need to be ideally on a par with your first choices. We could easily be playing 55-60 games, rotation plays a massive part if we're to be successful and with the way the market has gone I'd expect us to spend min £10m to get a competent replacement, £15m+ if we're looking for someone of equal ability to those we already have. Very rare to find bargains these days....
He obviously wanted first team football and wasn't going to sign another contract unless he got a lot more game time and I couldn't see him displacing either of Kosc or mert in our first eleven. 15m is good money for a backup player and I think we will get a replacement for cheaper.
One thing I will say about TV5 is that his attitude has been exceptional whilst he's been in the stiffs, no bad mouthing the club or manager or feeling sorry for himself at all, a true advert of a professional. We've had our fair share of quitters over the years who have chosen to trash talk the club, ridicule our approach and criticise anything that comes to mind rather than trying to improve their own game and making things better, not TV5 and for that he deserves extreme credit and our best wishes....
The fact he is going to Barca, instead of United makes it all the better, everyone will remember TV as a solid CB, and if he does ever return to the Emirates as an opponent, he will be applauded!
He is a top class CB but he's starting to get injured far too often and his dip in form was going on for quite some time. I'm suprised he went for so much to Barca, I was expecting 10m max based on his injury record and ill form. A very good piece of business.
Rumours that you'll replace him with Agger which seems odd... replacing why injury prone CB for another! Hope it's true though just pass that £15m straight back over to us and you can have him
Apparently the deal is a five-year contract. Wow. That means he's going to be with Barcelona until he's 33. Add that to the £15m price tag, and that's a lot of faith they're showing in Verm.
Vermaelen shows class in his comments: "I expect pressure, like always. I played for Arsenal as well and it's not different than this club, I think -- you need to win every single game -- so I understand there will always be pressure to deliver a good performance and I try to do that.
