I'm sitting on the fence a little with Gervinho. I've seen him a few times and he does have a lot of potential, he's lightening quick, very direct and quite strong. Sure he's a Project.....but he's not a massive gamble and if developed properly could turn into a very good player.
I do agree it's a risky signing...though a lot of this risk depends on who else we buy.
Personally I would have preferred us to have moved for someone like Ashley Young but that boat has sailed.
I dunno, I am a fan of Young but I don't think he is what we need, sure he can cross and he's got a bit of pace which wouldn't go amiss but he's also a bit inconsistent and lacks power, we need the honest hard-working type of players along with a bit more power and sheer force to get the right attitude into our squad and I don't think Young is that guy.
Gervinho seems like a good fit all round, for some reason people seem to think that Wenger was going to go out and buy big names and only big names, hence the ire directed at both this transfer and Jenkinson; right age, right position and right type of player, I'd give him a chance.
Seems a bit ridiculous to me to write a player off before he's even played for us, because he's not a "big name".
FFS.
Get a grip people.
I know people don't trust Wenger anymore, but he has bought his fair share of unknown players to the club who have gone on to be fucking good players.
It's short-sighted to say the least.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
Fair enough that's your opinion, I think Young would have been a good fit because he's use to the league and would probably hit the ground running. He played at quite a high level towards the end of the season for both club & country and IMHO would have been quite useful to us not just domestically but in Europe too.
Gervinho is definitely a talented player, that I'm not doubting. I just question how long it will take him to adjust to the league.
I'm not really asking for big names, just players who are established in this league, is that really too much to ask?
I would have preferred a more proven international player, with more experience of top level competition. Wenger seems to focus too much on young players from the French league, which is strange for someone with a supposed encyclopaediac knowledge of world football. We'll have to see what Gervinho offers, but it is a risky signing.
We're don't sign big name players so people shouldn't get caught up on that idea. We sign players off the radar that might have potential and we can get for a good price. Gervinho is about as big as it gets for us.
In fact the primary objective seems to be to buy young, unproven players for next to nothing (sometimes providing incentives to parents to encourage their son to move to the club), develop them to a good standard, then sell for profit. On the YoungGuns website, the owner of the site effectively said the same thing when asked about the failure of the youth project. Yes, I don't doubt that Wenger would be pleasantly surprised if the Youth Project delivered as a trophy, but that's a secondary considering to profit making IMO. How often has Wenger pointed out how we are a self sustaining business. Well, one reason why we can be a self sustaining business is that we use our Youth Project as a Cash cow, churning out profit to maintain the value of share prices.