I love our club but why are we offering £40m for a player that is widely valued at £80-£100m? Does his love of Arsenal mean that he’s going to be successful for us or is he just following in the footsteps of other English players who we want to be better than they turn out to be?
I know sometimes you have to take a punt on a player but surely not at that price. I can see this becoming embarrassing while Palace dig their heels in for more and Zaha comes out and says he’ll only play for Arsenal.
Is the desire to buy Zaha (and Tierney to some extent) linked to the Homegrown Rule where in a squad of a maximum of 25 players there have to be 8 homegrown players over the age of 21?
Arsene Wenger (or Gazidis?) always made sure that there were sufficient numbers of Homegrown in the squad to satisfy the rules. Losing Welbeck means we must replace somewhere with homegrown, similarly if we sell Jenkinson and Chambers. Homegrown means that a player has to have been at an English (or Welsh) club for three years before they turn 21 ……… so Bellerin (Spain) counts as homegrown having come through our academy.
One of our bloggers summed it up for me yesterday ………….
I think we could buy Zaha for £45 million plus the likes of one of our lower earners (but half decent players) as Jenks or Elneny etc. but the only reason I see for having him would be that we wouldn’t have to face him again and the increase in our penalty count.
In other news Swiss Ramble put a brilliant thread on Twitter about the state of our finances, have a read if you get a chance, we have really dropped down the pecking order against the other top six sides. Shockingly our income from commercial deals is well below the other clubs ………… and we’re supposed to be a self sustaining model.
I’m sure there’ll be more mad news today ……..
peachesgooner
Posted by peachesgÖÖner 
Arsenal News 24/7
arsenalarsenal.net 