Lazy Sunday Afternoon

The Sunday papers continue to be dominated by Thierry Henry's future at Arsenal. This time however, it is the "revelation" that Arsenal rejected two bids of £50m for his services both said to eminate from Spain. Given that the plural was used when talking about the bids, the suitors were Real Madrid and Barcelona. Ordinarily, you would dismiss this as paper talk based on a little bit of fact but given the widely quoted source is David Dein, the veracity of the claims should not be doubted.

To have been a fly on the wall in the Clubs Boardroom when they received those bids would have been interesting as there would have been serious discussions about whether or not to accept one or both, not just from the financial perspective but from a playing one also. The money would have created a world transfer record, being some $95m. This is a seriously huge sum for the club to reject, given that it represents 1/8th of the cost of the new stadium. I suspect that if it had been received two years ago when the Board were struggling to get the funding together for Ashburton Grove, then reality would have checked the accept the bid box. To counteract this though is the knowledge that the monies received would have potentially been lost on matchday revenues at the new ground unless Arsene Wenger could have signed someone of equal stature to replace Henry, using a large chunk of the £50m to replace his mercurial striker. On the playing front, the teams over-realiance on him to score would have created a massive hole to fill, if indeed it could be filled. At this moment in time, there are probably only two forwards that could guarantee the sort of goals to game ratio that Henry produces; Eto'o and Shevchenko. To be honest, the former is the only one that I could see ever playing at Arsenal. Shevchenko seems to be too settled in Milan, although the lure of Stamford Bridge is proving strong this time around with a decision on his future due by the end of this week. Should he become available, will Arsene ask the Board to put together the funding for a bid? With £35m being the widely quoted fee, I suspect that the answer to that would be a "No" as it represents all of the money expected to be available to Wenger in the summer and he has never been one to blow it all in one go. From a playing perspective, the absence of Henry on a permanent basis would have meant an overhaul of the playing style as the team is set up to utilise his pace, something that is unrivalled in a forward in football currently. It would have necessitated playing two forwards in a traditional 4-4-2 which is the formation Wenger prefers. The departure of Henry this summer would have simply been too big a hole for the team to currently fill. It is a credit to the Board that they have rejected these offers in a game dominated by money.

Other transfer news - gossip might be a better description - in the papers this weekend has centered on three players. Firstly it seems that Henry has asked the Board to retain Pires' services and so he has been offered a two - year deal. At least that is what the press believe. Whether he will accept is another matter, particularly having been sacrificed on Wednesday night in what should have been the pinnacle of his career. Chelsea are still rumoured to be interested in Ashley Cole which makes little sense given their supposed wish to offload Asier Del Horno for £3m plus Roberto Carlos to Real Madrid. It would be no surprise to see Del Horno in the Bernabeu next year as there is a feeling in Spain that when he was at Bilbao he reserved his best performances for Madrid in the hope of getting a move there. However, the media here have "informed" us that Cole has been offered an £80k per week contract to keep him at the club. At the same time, they claim Chelsea will offer £16m plus Shaun Wright - Phillips to tempt the Board into allowing the move to take place. This would be an interesting one when considered with Pires. Should SWP join Arsenal, he would fill the right hand side slot in midfield, leaving Hleb to either move to the left or infield to his preferred central midfield role. This then gives the left to Reyes or Ljungberg. To accommodate this, Reyes would have to move to the supporting striker role, squaring up to Adebayour, van Persie and Walcott. Should the latter have a blinding World Cup, the clamour for his inclusion in the starting lineup may be at the expense of Reyes and Adebayour although I am not sure that Wenger would bow to the Press in the way other managers do, or appear to at the very least. At the same time, Wright-Phillips is going to be at his lowest ebb having been omitted from Eriksson's World Cup squad, quite rightly in my opinion as his form this season has not been particularly good. Wenger would be a good manager for him to have in terms of rebuilding that confidence but whether Le Boss believes that he is an Arsenal player is another matter.

The final piece of gossip this morning surrounds Andy Johnson of Crystal Palace. According to reports, Arsenal are preparing a bid of around £7m for his services. I can see some logic in this "story" as he has shown he can score at the top level but my question is whether he can fit in at Arsenal. Mainly this centres on his mobility as I do not recall him being particularly quick and given that this is what Arsenal's game is based on, it would be an odd fit. Personally, I would rather Wenger added £13m to the £7m and landed Fernando Torres but we shall see.

Todays Tunes returns with a laidback groove for this Sunday morning. The El Michels Affair are a solo project for Leon Michels, sax player with The Dap-Kings and organist with The Mighty Imperials. This one, C.R.E.A.M., is on Daptone records. Next up is Ms Nicole Willis, a commercially underrated vocalist. This is a haunting melody, Siesta, from her album Soul Makeover. You can find more from her website here.