So for those of you not living in a cave you will by now have heard the bombshell transfer news from yesterday. Jack Wilshere, being so far into the future of English football, was the first to see the news and came back just in time to break it to us poor fools stuck in the present via his Twitter account:
“BREAKING TRANSFER NEWS: I have just moved from the sofa to my bed!!”
Fantastic.
In other news some minor little deals were whispered through in the background including Torres moving from his beloved Liverpool to his beloved Chelsea and Carroll being dragged by his ponytail from Newcastle to Liverpool. How much either of these deals will affect the teams involved is unclear but I would like to offer some speculation as to how it might affect our season both in the short and long term.
As has been mentioned elsewhere on the tinterweb Torres’ signing for Chelsea could work in our favour, with us having already played them twice in the league this season and Man U having yet to play them at all. Whether or not he will justify his £50 Million price tag remains to be seen but were he to discover some form and keep his hamstrings intact he could well play an important role in the title run in by helping to inflict some damage on our closest rivals.
Luiz too may help us in that respect, strengthening as he does a Chelsea defensive squad that in many respects was in a similar situation to our own. Injuries to Alex and Terry earlier in this season had contributed to their poor form and their use of Ferreira as a temporary centre back served to illustrate their own deficiencies in this department. With that in mind, even if the signing of Torres proves insufficient to inspire them to a victory over the current leaders there is good reason to believe that they will have enough at the back to stop Man U winning. They have the best defensive record in the league at present and, as we should all know by now, two draws in those two games would be a better result for us than a loss and a win, in terms of points.
But there is another side to all this transfer nonsense that has been touched upon but not highlighted sufficiently and with all the focus on Liverpool and Chelsea it is all too easy to look past it. The fact of the matter is that in any transfer involves not one but two teams – there is always a club losing a player as well as one that is gaining a player – and it is this more than Chelsea’s potential improvement that may well have a significant impact on us over the next few weeks.
The first evidence of this will be tonight, when we face an Everton shorn of their player of the season from last year. While many may struggle to see what influence Pienaar will have on a Tottenham team blessed with quality midfielders it is hard not to think that it will ultimately impact Everton in a negative way. It was arguably Pienaar and Cahill (also absent tonight) who looked the most dangerous against us last year and I for one am glad to be facing an Everton team without those two in it. That our rivals will also get to face the same depleted Everton at some point team makes little difference tonight. A win this evening will be a boost for us and a negative for everyone else and that’s all that matters at this point in time.
Our next game receives a similar blessing as we prepare to face a Carroll-less Newcastle without a viable replacement. He was by far and away our biggest tormentor at the Emirates earlier this season and without his dominating presence up front we are bound to be given a much easier time of it. The other players too will be disheartened by his exit and we really could not be facing them at a better time. They may regroup and recover but this will be a difficult period no doubt. Losing a star player is not like losing a manager – a la Ipswich. While managers can be replaced at any time the chance for replacing Carroll has now passed and were we to take the lead against them I doubt the Newcastle players would be able to think of much else.
We then play Wolves and Stoke and while the Potters have lost two fantastic creative minds in Tuncay and Gudjohnson I do not think this will have an effect on their performance against us. You could put Plato up front for Stoke and have Steven Hawking pulling the strings in their midfield and they would still try and kick us through the turnstiles. In any case neither had found any form for them this season (Gudjohnson and Tuncay, not Plato and Hawking) so they may not have even played against us if we’re honest.
The league match after that is against Sunderland however and they too have lost their most prolific striker of the past few seasons. They will undoubtedly miss him – he scored some irritating goals against us – and with the much improved Wellbeck currently injured you have to fancy our chances against them. Gyan is a player I like and will of course cause us problems but I am still glad to face them without good ol’ Dazza Bazza.
And as I said earlier there is always a team that gains a player and one that loses a player. In this case the team that gained a player is a certain Aston Villa, who I believe play a little known team called Man U this very eve. Bent’s transfer for pocket change is obviously really boring and sensible now but with his goal against Man City proving decisive he easily sits at the top of the value for money table ahead of Torres and Carroll, who would both be hailed as bargains and heroes were they to repeat his feat. It will be very difficult for him to match his exploits against Citeh tonight against the league leaders but you wouldn’t bet against him nicking a goal for the resurgent Villa at some point in the game.
And who knows – if we can win tonight and Bent can bag a goal then we might just find that Arsenal had the most productive transfer window of the bunch.
WB
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