Cole signs, Gallas leaves
The most protracted transfer of recent times has finally been completed.
Chelsea and Arsenal released a joint statement confirming that Ashley Cole has signed for Chelsea in exchange for £5m and William Gallas.
“Chelsea FC and Arsenal have agreed terms for the transfers of Ashley Cole and William Gallas,” the statement read.
“Chelsea will also pay Arsenal £5m. Both players have agreed personal terms and passed their respective medicals.”
Cole is believed to have signed a five-year deal worth between £75,000 and £90,000 per week.
A very good bit of business for Chelsea. Also a nice poke in the eye with a shitty stick for all the Arsenal fans gloating about how much money they tought Roman was going to have to splash in order to get Ashley.
Well as much as Gallas is the most talented versatile defender in the world, there is no point having him if he is just going to sulk. I would like to know why an apparently ambitious player would want to sign for a club that realistically has less chance of silverware, and for less wages! Please Willy tell us! I would have thought you would have gone to Italy or Spain instead. Signing Ashley Cole in exchange is not too bad a deal - it is great to have another England international on the books.
I wonder if this is all part of a Wenger plot to oust Cole out of Arsenal, perhaps because he is the only player who cannot speak French - Willy Gallas will fit in nicely with their mentality!
Maybe over the next season Arsenal will need to play Toure at left back out of position to accomodate Gallas and Senderos, which hopefully will piss him off and allow him to sign for Chelsea next year!
I look forward to the release of Cole’s book now.
This is a great piece of business for Chelsea. However you look at it, Gallas didn’t want to play for us anymore and if the papers are to be believed that Arsenal wanted 20m for Cole, we’ve just got 15m for a 29 year old wantaway defender with just a year left on his contract.
Chelsea have unsettled enough players over the last year or so (Makalele and Shevchenko to name but two!), so let’s have double standards here and be pleased we’ve signed the best left back in the country.
Can’t wait until we play the Gooners.
Was Kenyon drunk yesterday?! Either that or he’s still secretly working for Manure.
Not only have we just paid the Arse £5 million to take a world class centre back off our hands in exchange for a player we *really* don’t need but he also disposed of Huth the very same day!
Now we have no real cover for Terry and Carvalho and a proven England international destined to warm the bench till he buggers off in January to a club that will actually give him a game!
The rest of the league must be wondering why they bothered strengthening their squads this summer now that Kenyon’s done his best to cock up our own. Balance? Now we’ve got about as much as a one-legged dwarf riding a unicycle over gravel.
Harry, I am afraid I disagree with almost everything you say.
With the exception of getting Mourinho, this is the best bit of business Kenyon has ever managed. Quite frankly his transfer dealings have been nothing short of embarrassing, but managing to persuade Arsenal to swap their one and only home-grown and truly world-class talent for Gallas plus £5million is excellent business.
Gallas is a fine player but is replaceable. He was in the last year of his contract and had refused to play for the club since the beginning of the season. It made sense to offload him before he continued to disrupt the spirit of the squad. I hate the fact that he has gone to Arsenal, and I fully intend to boo him when we play at the grove. However in return we have signed one of the best (if not the best) left-backs in the world, who has vast champions league, premier league and international (52 caps) experience. He is only 25 and is yet to hit peak form.
Further Wayne Bridge is not good enough at the top level. I know the Chelsea fans adore him, as I do, especially for his goal at Highbury two years ago, but defensively he is shambolic and prone to regular lapses of concentration bordering on the criminal. If we are to compete with the best in Europe we need to be sound at the back, and Ash is solid defensively and superb going forward.
He is young, English, and better than what we currently have and I am ecstatic that he is part of our squad. I feel sorry for Bridge but ultimately I want us to have the best team and he would not be in it.
The centre-back issue is a problem granted - we need another super quick centre-half to compete with Ricky and the Cannibal. However Gallas unfortunately was never the answer to this problem as he did not want to play, and was keen, for reasons that I can’t quite get a hold on, to leave. Surely signing Cole showed Billy that he would no longer have to fill in at fullback and would compete for a spot in the centre?
As regards Huth I loved him because he was hard and strong and determined. However he was rather immobile and clumsy and, while of the quality to play in the Premiership, in my opinion was not good enough to play regularly for a championship winning side.
Up the Chels!
Whilst all you chelski chavs are patting yourselves on the back, there’s one thing that you should know, - something that your dubious board will not want to be made common knowledge. You have paid AFC £5million upfront. You also have to pay another £7 million over the next two years. So you have given us one of the best defenders in the world plus £12million for an ungrateful, disloyal money grabbing little shit.
One other thing is that all you lot think we are a team full of Frenchmen. Well I can only think of two in our first team - the best striker in the world who turned you lot down, and the best centre back in the world - who you have just given us plus 12 million. HA HA.
How do you know this info Mick?
Were you on the conference call? Have you seen the contract?
Or are you gutted at the climb down?
Providing Dein’s arrogance and luducrous self-importance if there were add ons we would all know about it.
A friend of mine - who is NOT an Arsenal fan - works in the registration dept of the FA and is privy to this sort of info.
Well I’ve got a mate that knows this bloke that…
Nonsense!
A joint statement was released by both Arsenal and Chelsea stating the following:
“Chelsea FC and Arsenal have agreed terms for the transfers of Ashley Cole and William Gallas.
Chelsea will also pay Arsenal 5m pounds.
Both players have agreed personal terms and passed their respective medicals.”
Why not mention the add-ons? Would be completely illogical not to refer to them, especially as it would help portray the image of Dein as the masterly football politician that he believes he is.
From the official Arsenal website:
“Arsenal Football Club can confirm that it has reached an agreement with Chelsea over the moves of William Gallas and Ashley Cole, plus a payment of £5million.
Further details will follow shortly on the above and any further announcements.”
Thinking about it, even if the club have committed themselves to pay £7million, AND the conditions to pay those add-ons are satisfied, I still think it is a pretty good deal.
Gallas being in the last year of his contract meant that, despite his ability, he was worth very little.
The Cole/Gallas deal worries me for two reasons.
Yes Cole is s better left back than Bridge but if winning everything was just a matter fo assembling the best players then Real Madrid would be winning everything in Spain and Europe by now - and as far as I know they haven’t. Bridge is playing really well at the moment so is Cole really needed?
The loss of Gallas is potentially more serious since we are looking a little shaky defensively for the first time since JM arrived. I personally feel that is you want to look at someone who is good but not good enough to be at Chelsea and should be sold, step forward Mr Carvalho. His penchant for shirt tugging in the box is an accident waiting to happen and I also feel his judgement is suspect.
If JM can get this lot to gel as a team we will certainly not be troubled by the gooners, or indeed anyone else. Let’s hope that’s not a big if!
Should be an interesting season - come on you blue boys!
Real Madrid’s galactico plan was flawed for two reasons:
1 They initially refused to invest in defenders and went for more glamorous attacking players (Zidane, Ronaldo, Robinho, Figo, Beckham), and in so doing unsettled their number one unsung defensive minded hero - Maka.
2 The manager was incapable of fostering any type of team spirit or team cohesion.
Under JM neither of these are an issue.
So I don’t see buying the some of the best players in the world in their position as an issue.
Losing Gallas is a real concern but people seem to forget that he wanted to leave, had sulked/been on strike in pre-season and that he had refused to ply against Boro and Bburn. The situation should never have got to this (Kenyon majorly at fault here) however it did and I think we got the best possible outcome, providing that we were looking for a top left-back.
It just so happens that we got potentially the best one in the world, who is English, is only 25, at a relatively low price, and have nabbed him from our biggest London rivals.
The only other reason you have to consider in our defense is the man in goal. If cudicini is in goal at any time, we are surely to have a shaky game not matter our class of defenders. I still feel really concerned with the time-bomb we have on the bench, to explode if Cech is down or he plays in other Cup games.
Apart from this, we cannot be like a real madrid. With JM, the sky is the limit for us. When the team gets into full gear, it would be goals galare. The greatest thing we have done this season folks are Shevchenko and Ashley cole…. Wait and see!
Gallas’s deal is but a sweet one. Airline FC fan still cannot believe why they have done this kind of deal. Gallas was never interested in Airline FC and they have just replaced a want-away player with another one, while we have replaced a want-away with an ambitiious one.
it was believed chelsea was going to pay nothing less than 20m pounds, but hey, we know how to spend our money better now. Kenyon, good work and congratulations…your vision is still in good course!
com’on Chels!
Hi Chavs
Your welcome to that money grabbing little shite cole. And has it occured to any of you that the special one might not actually want him! If I remember correctly, he attended that dirty little meeting only to catch up with the gossip at Arsenal, and is not interested in cashley coz he is too small.
Oh and whilst we are on the subject of cashley, he is as thick as shit, under the thumb of his new moaning mrs who is determined to turn them into the new posh and becks.
Get ready for some more gut churning interviews with moronic photos of him with his whites/ medallion hanging round his neck and his mouthpiece mrs wanting to ” move abroad” one day.
cheers for gallas - what a player!
To MicktheGooner and Joe Gooner - alas, we also came to feel the same about Billy Gallas.
Great player undoubtably but he didn’t want to play for us and was unsettling the players who were in the team. I think good business for both teams, you got the central defender you so desperately needed, we got the left back we desperately needed.
Cole might moan and be under the thumb but Gallas has been moaning about wanting away for ages, first it was because Chelsea weren’t title contenders, then he wanted a new contract (which he got), then he wanted to experience another league….I wouldn’t count on him as a long term investment is all I’m suggesting…still might be happier at Francenal.
Should be a cracker and a bit of added spice when we next meet (as if any more were needed!).
cheers
It makes a change to be able to come onto another clubs chat site and not get slagged off too much, as is the case with spurs and west ham. Agree that the deal is good for both clubs. Only downside is that Bridge will now have limited appearances, thus reducing his England chances, which I think is bad for England, as I still think that Bridge is a better out and out left back. Granted Cole is better going forward but is still suspect defensively.
Shame that Chelsea have come out with all this shit today about Gallas scoring own goals etc. Why not just let it be.
Keep up the good work on this site. I’ll leave you all in peace now and go onto a spurs blog and wind them up.
Au revoir
MTG