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WENGER WANTS ZAHA

The Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has for the first time publicly revealed that he is interested in signing the Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha in the January transfer window. He is expected to start with an opening bid of £ 9 million, although Crystal Palace are looking for a transfer fee in the region of £ 20 million for the 20-year-old. Wilfried Zaha has been thought to be the biggest thing to come from the Crystal Palace youth academy since the days of Ian Wright, who went on to play for Arsenal and become a legend for the club.

Arsene Wenger has not shied away from signing highly talented English talent in recent seasons, as he has brought the likes of Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey. Given the fact that the future of the 23-year-old winger Theo Walcott is in a major doubt, Wenger is already looking at other options. It has been thought for some time that Arsenal have made Wilfried Zaha the number one transfer target for the January transfer window, but Wenger has been reluctant to confirm publicly. However, with only a few weeks remaining before the opening of the transfer window, he has said that the Crystal Palace winger is someone who interests him a lot.

“We are looking at every player who could strengthen our squad – but he is not more on the list than anyone else. He has two-and-a-half years left – that’s quite a long time. We have built a team [where] we have a lot of young English players, or British players like Gibbs, Chamberlain, Wilshere. We still have the case of [Theo] Walcott, Aaron Ramsey,” said Wenger when asked about the possibility of signing Zaha in January. Arsenal are currently fighting to be in the top four spot by the end of the season.

Arsenal News

WENGER UNHAPPY WITH JUVE

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has criticised the negotiations tactics of the Italian club are Juventus who were one of the favourites to secure the signature of the striker Robin van Persie.

The Italian champions were unable to match a fee with Arsenal for the striker. Arsenal ended up selling the player to Manchester United for £ 24 million, which is an extraordinary amount of business given that the player had only one season left on his deal. Juventus recently spoke about the disappointment of not being able to sign the player, but Wenger said that he was extremely disappointed with the offer given by Juventus.

Even though Arsene Wenger failed to disclose the exact amount offered by Juventus, his first appeared to indicate that the figure was in the region of £ 8 million.

However, Arsenal managed to sell the player for £ 24 million. Wenger has said that whenever Juventus players are linked with other clubs, they demand extraordinary transfer fees in the region of more than £ 50 million. However, there are not prepared to offer less than 10 percentage of that amount to other players for bringing into the club. As a result, they had themselves to blame for not securing Robin van Persie.

“Juventus can’t think about selling their players for €70 million and then buying new ones for a tenth of that amount. That would be too easy – it’s not possible in today’s football. Van Persie would have been a free agent in the summer of 2013 but we decided to sell only after Manchester United made a great offer,” said Arsene Wenger. His comments come after the Juventus Chief executive made comments that he felt that Robin van Persie was hugely expensive for the Italian club both in terms of wages and the transfer fees.

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Arsenal News

WENGER SAD AT GUARDIOLA EXIT

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said that he is extremely saddened by the exit of Guardiola as the Barcelona manager from the end of this season. Guardiola recently announced his decision to step down from the post after four years in charge during which time he has managed to convert Barcelona into the greatest team in the world. Arsene Wenger is a known admirer of the very Barcelona play their football. Wenger has not been ashamed of admitting that he has always tried to play the Barcelona way. Guardiola managed to win three league titles in a row in addition to the two Champions League titles as well.

Ahead of the match with Stoke city during the weekend, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said that he would have liked to see Guardiola continue his job at the Camp Nou. Guardiola will be going out after having seen Real Madrid claim the title from Barcelona’s hands, while the club were also knocked out from the Champions League by Chelsea. This meant that Barcelona were unable to become the first club in the history of the Champions League to win back-to-back titles. Wenger praised the philosophy of Guardiola by saying that it is the model for other clubs to follow.

“It comes as a surprise to me because first of all when you make a decision after a big disappointment like he has had in the past week, it may not be the right moment to make this decision. The philosophy of Barcelona has to be bigger than winning or losing a championship. Guardiola is one of the representatives of this philosophy and made this philosophy triumph so I would have loved him, even going through a disappointing year, to stay and come back and insist with his philosophy,” said Wenger regarding Guardiola’s decision to step down as Barcelona manager.

Arsenal News

WENGER TIPS THE OX

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is a player who reminds him of Wayne Rooney or Cesc Fabregas.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has been one of the impressive players for Arsenal in 2012, despite the fact that Arsenal have just won their first game of the New Year in the league. Arsenal demolished Blackburn Rovers 7-1 in the latest Barclays Premier league match.

Incidentally, this was the first victory Arsenal have managed in the league in 2012. Apart from it being extremely special for Arsenal due to this reason, it was also special due to the Robin van Persie hat-trick and incredible performance on the part of the youngster Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

The youngster scored two goals and was also responsible for setting up numerous others. The 7-1 thrashing is expected to provide Arsenal the impetus to take on the rest of the teams in the Premier league over the last few remaining matches. Arsenal are not currently in a position to qualify for the Champions League next season. Thus, Arsene Wenger is expected to make qualifications to the Champions League a priority. Arsenal are currently in the sixth position in the table, which will not even ensure them Europa league football next season.

Wenger curses his luck

Arsene Wenger was left cursing his side’s bad luck after two key decisions went against Arsenal in their 1-0 defeat to Manchester City.

David Silva’s goal was enough to hand all three points to the Sky Blues and return them to the top of the Premier League, but Wenger believes that things could have been very different had the officials awarded his side a penalty and not ruled out a Robin Van Persie effort for offside. The Dutch striker was also involved in the penalty incident, which occurred when his shot was deflected into the path of Aaron Ramsey who then went down under a challenge from Kolo Toure.

Although his manager admitted he had not had chance to watch a replay of the incident, he was happy to accept his striker’s word on what has happened.

“Yes [I thought it was a penalty]. Honestly I haven’t seen it but Van Persie is adamant it was a 100 per cent penalty,” Wenger said.

Speaking about the offside goal, he added: “I haven’t seen it again but we know that these decisions can turn the game and they didn’t go for us today. We were unlucky with the decisions but we have to take it on the chin.”