It’s fair to say that nothing is going right for Barcelona just now, so it won’t surprise anyone if they miss out on their main transfer targets in January.
They don’t have a lot of money so they will struggle if they face competition for any signatures, so that could cost them when it comes to signing Man City defender Eric Garcia.
ESPN have indicated that Barca are desperate to sign him but they won’t pay the €20m fee that City want because his contract expires at the end of this season.
The problem they have is Mikel Arteta is keen to bring him to Arsenal, while the fee would be affordable and his favourable relations with Man City could help them to get this done.
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In some ways it would be a surprise to see two Premier League rivals dealing with each other, but it could simply be the case that City don’t see Arsenal being a credible threat for some time.
This won’t be simple for Arsenal because Garcia would be eligible to negotiate a pre-contract agreement with Barca from January, so Arsenal would need to get this sorted pretty quickly to prevent that from happening.
Garcia came through the youth system at Barcelona and the prospect of going back to replace Gerard Pique in the long term has to be appealing to him, so the return to Spain still looks like the most likely option.
They’ll also have City over a barrel if they get to January and he does sign the agreement to go back to the Nou Camp, so Arsenal have three weeks to tie this deal up before the Catalans can get involved.
It’s probably naïve to think that he doesn’t already have an agreement in place with Barcelona anyway, so Arsenal will need to make a compelling pitch to convince him to move to The Emirates.
That’s a waste of time and limited funds. Arsenal immediately needs an attacking midfielder that score goals ,creative and provide assists (Szoboszlai for 23m pounds ) and a creative midfielder that provide assists and can score goals too (Buendia for 18m pounds ).The team lack of goals is responsible for being down to the 15th position in the premier league table. Arsenal have scored more goals than only three teams this season. Too many times, Arsenal do not address it’s need first. Arsenal defense is among the top five teams this season. But, the midfield is not creative and that’s the problem. Arsenal needs to link up play in the final third better and to do so,the midfielders should be able to break through the opponent’s defense. In January, Arsenal must strengthen the midfield and should buy Szoboszlai and Buendia instead.
The problem is Arteta wants to play like Wenger. Its endless possession with a reluctance to shoot unless its a90% chance of agoal. Thats why the fm and the Spaniard invariably lost to sides who park the bus.
You may learn alot from a great master but the tools the latter has are different.
So dont be surprised Burnley win or draw unless
the Spaniard goes direct.Its ok if you have high high quality players to implement your tikitaka .
The epl is in England not Spain where other teams play the same way.