Hatem Ben Arfa..... can we keep him?

Sorry, but he'll be gone! 35-40M will be enough to prise him away. Whether Ben Arfa wants to stay or not is irrelevant (See Andy Carroll for details).
There are a lot of clubs with a lot of money at the moment which, unfortunately for us, will mean a successful bid for HBA in January. (I'm expecting him to have a superb season this year so he is in the shop window from now til Xmas)

 

£35 -£40M and I wouldn't mind seeing him go. Whether the money is re-invested or goes to reduce the MA loan and speed the sale of the club, it would be a good bit of business. I will be happy to place a side bet right now, though, that no one bids £35 million for anyone in January, and certainly not for Benni

 

I agree.

I have to say the money itself wasn't the best thing about the Carroll deal, the best thing to come out of it was that Ashley now values all of our best players at around the 30m mark. Hence when Arsenal bid for Cabaye his response has been widlely reported to have been "which part of him do you want"? I mean he didn't even counter offer the 11m pound bid which he would have done if he was looking for around 18m-20m. It also shows that Arsenal knew they were nowhere near what we would sell him for as they never returned with a second bid.

It's also bee pointed out that other than Carroll, under Ashley we have sold anyone that we didn't want to sell other than Ba which we couldn't help due to the release clause and Enrique whould requested to leave and only had 12 months left on his contract meaning he had all of the power.

Now before anyone misquotes me as saying Cabaye and Ben Arfa are worth upwards of 25m well no, I'm not saying that. I just believe that Ashley wouldn't sell them for a penny less than that amount.