Zenit St Petersburg will know that they will not be able to get that sort of amount for a 27 year old in this day and age, especially given the fact that the player has publicly declared that he wants out

Good afternoon Gooners,

At last some pretty semi substantial transfer news going on, and excitingly it is Arshavin’s name that is being linked to us.

From the reports it appears that the current stumbling block is the price of the player. His current club putting a £20 million price tag on his head while Arsenal have apparently offered half of that.

Zenit St Petersburg will know that they will not be able to get that sort of amount for a 27 year old in this day and age, especially given the fact that the player has publicly declared that he wants out.

I am not sure that Arsenal will be prepared to go to £15 million we have to wait and see how much Zenit are prepared to budge.

I don’t want to count any chickens just yet but I am surprised that we haven’t heard about any other clubs publicly declaring interest in the player. Rafa Benitez likes buying players, why hasn’t he come in for him? Manchester City would have been another club that would have liked his services, but hopefully he is intelligent enough to choose us over them even with their money behind them.

As I said, I do not want to assume anything just yet as there is time for us to get gazzumped.

According to Arshavin’s agent, talks have not begun and it is Zenit’s way of trying to get other clubs involved in a bidding war. This could well run on for a while yet.

I wrote a piece on Arshavin last night about what he could bring to the team, but I will not put it up unless Arsenal.com give me the all clear.

Emmanuel Adebayor has refused to give up hope on the title, which is obviously the right way but I cannot help thinking that if the players gave as much as we spoke in certain games then giving up on anything wouldn’t even be an issue.

Adebayor said:

“We are trying to give 100 per cent in every game at the moment but it’s quite difficult,” he said.

“We started the league in a difficult situation. We shouldn’t be 10 or 11 points behind the leaders, Liverpool, but we want to keep going.

“We know the team is strong, we know that we have the quality. When we put everything together we can do well.

“The most important thing for us is to do our best.”

I find it hard to write off our chances even if it appears a little far fetched these days. Mind you it is very possible. Gain our injured players back, have better luck with injuries and go on a winning unbeaten run. This team certainly have the ability to do that, trouble is this team are currently full of inconsistency and that has been our downfall this year and I would be surprised if we shook off that inconsistency.

I have to stop there before my face ends up on the keyboard, I have had about an hour sleep and I feel like a zombie (whatever that feels like) so I need some super strong coffee to get me through the day. Enjoy your day Gooners.

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