German giants :bow:.
Printable View
German giants :bow:.
Awesome signing.
Anyone who knows their football will be delighted.
Mertesacker 4 goals
Cahill 7 goals
Cahill almost twice as good.
good signing, just what was needed more importantly in experience and hopefully leadership, the same for santos.
Ju's a captain too :good:.
This is true.
It will be good to see him bossing the big mother fuckers teams like Stoke have. :good:
:haha:Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
This potentially is a very good piece of business. I do worry about Mertesacker's lack of pace but he's a proper Centre Half with bags of experience. He's quite young too.
He could potentially form an excellent partnership with Tommy V.
Agreed. You dont get into the German side that many times by being shit. Great signing and better than Cahill, Samba and Jagielka IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimandi's Perm
Tall
Experienced
Played in big games
Leadership ability
:good:
Leadership ability you say?Quote:
Originally Posted by cheesy bites
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...r-of-need.htmlQuote:
Arsenal's new centre-back Per Mertesacker comes to the aid of his boyhood club in their hour of need
When Per Mertesacker was growing up he and his two brothers would travel to visit his aunt who lived in England.
The three were obsessed with football and their priority was making sure they each came home with a Premier League team’s shirt. Mertesacker came back to his home near Hanover with an Arsenal shirt and he supported them ever since.
Now the German international is returning to England to pull on an Arsenal shirt for real, coming to the aid of his adopted club in their time of need.
Since emerging onto the football scene in Germany in 2004, Mertesacker has spoken affectionately of Arsenal and now, with just a year left on his contract with Werder Bremen, the 26-year-old is about to make good on those childhood ambitions.
Mertesacker grew up in Pattensen, near Hanover, and attended a school in Hemmingen that specialised in sport (it has produced several other Bundesliga players), staying to complete his abitur, the equivalent of A-levels.
While he had come through local teams to secure a professional contract with Hanover 96 - where his father Stefan was one of his coaches - he was not considered a particular promising player and came close to quitting.
There was little to persuade him otherwise when he made his Hanover debut as a 19 year old against Cologne. Ralf Rangnick, the coach who took Schalke to the Champions League semi-finals last season, threw him into the starting XI at right back - not the natural position for a one-paced six-foot-sixer - and then hauled him off at half time.
An inauspicious start, but things started to change very swiftly. In the 2004-05 season Mertesacker established himself as a first-choice central defender and after just 20 games with Hanover was called up by Jurgen Klinsmann for a national team friendly in Tehran.
It was a remarkably swift elevation and he suddenly found himself signing autographs for his school friends. Mertesacker still lived with his parents and had to borrow his dad’s laptop to get his emails from Germany team director Oliver Bierhoff.
When Klinsmann gave him a DVD of footage analysing his performance, Mertesacker meekly offered that he did not own a DVD player.
This all contributes to his reputation in Germany as an anti-star. On leaving school he decided not to do military service, instead doing community service, working in an institution for the mentally ill.
His partner is the German international handball player Ulrike Stange, with whom he has a son, Paul. He has used his celebrity to set up the Mertesacker foundation which raises money for charity through selling football merchandise and annual celebrity matches.
Mertesacker, rake thin with blond hair, cut a distinctive figure at the 2006 World Cup, where he played every minute of every game as Klinsmann’s team reached the semi-finals on home soil. His development had earned him a move to Werder Bremen that summer, for the modest fee of 5million euros.
As a player he is distinguished by tactical intelligence. His height means he is good in the air but really it is his positioning that is his strongest suit, masking as it does a relative lack of pace.
What is perhaps most remarkable about Mertesacker - and something that will come to the relief of Arsene Wenger and his suspension-ravaged squad - is his clean disciplinary record. In 221 Bundesliga games he has received only nine yellow cards and two reds. He has said in interviews that he was never even booked as a youth team player.
He is not perhaps the vocal on-pitch leader Arsenal fans have been craving and his form has declined in the last two years as Werder Bremen have struggled (they finished 13th last season).
This is a crucial move for him as much as Arsenal. But you do not win 75 caps for Germany at only 26 if you are not a seriously talented defender.
all three Wenger signings have an old skool le professor feel about them....i am pleased by this, this is what Arsene was fcuking good at.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItsMe
Fuck the youngsters or well known players, give me the gems that Wenger can bring the best out of.
I am happy however we still need a player to help keep possession in midfield ala Cesc or Nasri and that is where we will struggle to find a replacement.
Juan Mata would have been perfect.
I can't understand the instant dismissal of an experienced tactically aware international defender who is an automatic choice in the German national team. This is IMHO the type of signing we have been crying out for! My only complaint is that this should have been done pretty much as soon as the transfer window opened.
If you've never rated him in the 1st place and have said so many times in the last 5 years I don't see a reason why you would change your mind just because we happened to have signed him.Quote:
Originally Posted by GB.
Samba, Cahill would have been much better IMO, proven in the PL for a start. There's other options but if we were going to go foreign he wouldn't have been my choice.
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by GB.
I'm going to trust the German Mangers' ratings of him more than yours. We need someone who can deal with deadball situations and this guy seems exactly what we need for that. My only concern about him is his quiet nature.
His club form hasn't been too hot over the past couple of years, but then German players always seen to save their best for the national side.
Considering his height and experience though, you have to think he is more than good enough to make a positive impact on a team who is defensively retarded.
It's pretty obvious. If someone takes the position that EVERYTHING Wenger and Arsenal does is wrong, they can't then admit that any signing we make is any good. Even if it does mean dismissing a regular in the German national side and thinking a better signing would have been someone who plays for a team of mid-table cloggers, hardly gets a sniff of a (much poorer, relative to Germany) England set up and hasn't had any interest from any decent sides in England or Europe.Quote:
Originally Posted by GB.
But yes, we should have had this all sorted out in June.
Under neon loneliness
Mertersacker Emptiness
What price now, for a samba, and a piece of dignity :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimandi's Perm
No chance on the dignity, that ship sailed, but Samba could be on, 13 hours to find out.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDG
Everything Wenger and Arsenal does is wrong, I tell you :oldboy:
Your face is wrong, tbh <_<Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
mmm. a german international that has played in two world cups, 75 caps or some spacker from blackburn that no one else wants. decisions, decisions.
Everything Wenger and Arsenal and your mum's face does is wrong, I tell you :oldboy:Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters (TPFKA WWTL@WHL)
Epic burn.
:upset: That's very hurtful.
You're in the God squad, forgive me!Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters (TPFKA WWTL@WHL)
Stupid petard <_<Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
well alright then, but only 'cos Jebus told me to.
That's total nonsense to be honest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters (TPFKA WWTL@WHL)
I want Wenger out regardless of the signings, he's done IMO.
However I still want to see quality players come in, if only for the next manager....as I've said before Ze German Barge isn't one I rate, I never have and it's nothing to do with Wenger. On top of that the last 2 years his form has been patchy as mentioned in the article and he's not a leader either, why would we sign someone who's been out of form and is untested in England when we can sign a player who is established in the PL, particularly in defence.
Really? You should have said.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItsMe
Can't see how anyone can dissaprove of this signing. Tall, very experienced, international quality CB. Good.
I don't think many are really disapproving but the signing of Mertesacker does smack of Wenger going for the cheap option. Jagielka was clearly our first choice target this summer & last summer, we didn't sign him because we weren't prepared to pay up. It seems Cahill was our second choice, again it seems we weren't prepared to pay up.
It looks as if Mertesacker was third on the list and we signed him because he fits into Arsene's fair valuation of a player.
Mertesacker is a good player, I do have doubts about his lack of pace, and he's not playing at the level he was a couple of years ago but he'll improve our defence and has the potentially to form a very good partnership with Tommy V.
Spot on. I think that fans for once want a a player purchased for pure footballing reasons, not economic ones. I don't follow German football, and have no opinion on Mertesacker's ability - but its pretty clear that he wasn't first choice and I worry about what look like panic, rather than planned purchases.Quote:
Originally Posted by selassie
I'm warming to this Mertesacker signing. Surely he'll command a lot of respect with the nippers in our squad given his already impressive history. He brings experience we desperately lack, even if it's not PL experience, the guy simply has to be a massive step up from the likes of Djourou and Kos so quite a few boxes are being ticked here. Plus, if his price means we can sign a serious midfielder in the next few hours it's surely better to end up with Mertesacker + 1 rather than Cahill or Jagielka + nothing else. I think this was the right deal, provided we sign that midfielder. Otherwise it would be fairly obvious he's been bought because he's the cheapest. Next few hours and we'll know.
It can't just turn into a bad signing because we don't go on to buy someone else because of it surely? It's good in its own right, but an experienced CM is needed, we cant JUST rely on creativity from midfield on jack n that welsh cripple.
I'm not talking about Mertesacker as much as the club. The German is a piece in the puzzle, but if we skimp and don't fill in the other pieces then Mertesacker being here or not won't make enough of a difference. Plus the signing will have been made for the wrong reasons, a sticking plaster rather than as part of a bigger plan.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dog Toffee
Ragardless of price, I'd have taken Merts over Cahill or Jags anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice Berg Kamping
I'm surprised Mertespacker hasn't been used yet.
One game with Djourou will probably earn him that epitaph.
:bow:Quote:
1653: Still agonisingly short of a done deal but here is some more news on Per Mertesacker's inevitable arrival at Arsenal: The big German defender has announced on his personal website that he has signed a contract lasting until 2015. Roughly translated, he says: "For Per Mertesacker a long-cherished wish has come true. He never made a secret of the fact that most excites him the English league." Good to see him speaking in the third person already...
The boy done good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ach