Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Wenger ‘did not know players were for sale’

It’s time for Arsenal fans to forgive Arsene Wenger about what happened last summer. Much has been made of the Frenchman’s failure to sign any outfield players, but it has finally emerged that he had a perfectly valid excuse: he didn’t know the players were for sale.

Explaining his decision not to make an August bid for Anthony Martial, a player Arsenal had apparently been tracking for two years and who has since scored four goals in five games for Manchester United, Wenger revealed that he “didn’t think Monaco would sell him”. Now before you lambast the Gunners boss for jumping to incorrect conclusions, Arsenal fans, we can assure you he wasn’t jumping anywhere and was in fact basing his conclusion entirely on fact.

“Monaco’s statement was always that the two players that would not move were Martial and (Layvin) Kurzawa, so I thought they would maintain that,” Wenger says in the Star.

See, they actually said it. So you can hardly blame Wenger for not bothering to make a bid. This endearing inclination to take official statements at face value would also explain why Arsenal didn’t sign the likes of Karim Benzema, who made it quite clear he wasn’t going anywhere, or anyone else good. Or even anyone else bad.

“But in the end they both moved,” Wenger added, his face contorted by confusion about Monaco selling Martial when they said they wouldn’t. He will probably put it down to a freak occurrence due to some kind of cosmic imbalance in the solar system. It’s easier to believe that than to acknowledge we live in world where people sometimes tell lies, even your former employers who you thought were your friends. And so he will remain content with Petr Cech, who everyone knew was for sale because Chelsea had Thibaut Courtois. So Wenger bought him. Why can’t life always be that simple?

The irony is that Chelsea could do with Cech right now, and several other players, as they make plans to reinforce in January following the club’s “minus one out of 10” start to the season. The latest man on Jose Mourinho’s radar is Porto midfielder Yacine Brahimi, who the Metro says is being monitored by the Blues with “increasing intensity”, which sounds a bit scary. Have they been hacking his voicemails? Relentlessly refreshing his Facebook page? Sellotaping John Mikel Obi onto his kitchen ceiling to spy on his every move? Anyway, he has a release clause of £44.1m – we can tell them that for free.

Finally, Talksport claims Everton and Tottenham will battle it out in January for Inter Milan defender Andrea Ranocchia, who apparently wants to leave the San Siro because he has lost his place in the starting line-up. But as Arsene Wenger would tell you, they’d be better off getting something to that effect in writing before making themselves look silly with a failed bid.

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