When Will Barcelona Ever Learn?
Whilst Barcelona continues its shameless pursuit of Adebayor & Alexander Hleb, one can’t help but wonder whether the Blaugrana should look into its past dealings with the North London club before venturing any further. They have brought the likes of Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit & Thierry Henry to bolster their ranks for a combined fee of around ₤53 million. So far it has not worked out for either the Catalan club or the players involved.
Marc Overmars moving in the summer of 2000, did deliver solid performances but simply could not conjure up the magic that he had with Dutch mate Dennis Bergkamp, for which Barcelona paid the Gunners an astounding ₤25 million, making him the most expensive Dutch player at that time. Emmanuel Petit, the other Arsenal man moving in the same summer, was a total flop appearing only 23 times scoring a solitary goal for the Blaugrana.
After chasing arguably the world’s best striker using the Spanish press as their mouthpiece, they finally managed to land Thierry Henry in the summer of 2007 for a reported fee of ₤16.1 million. In his first season, the striker managed to hit 19 goals playing out of position, which can be considered a good return, but there was discontent amongst the fans, some even booed him during the past season, as he looked only a shadow of his former self and that didn’t help with the fact that Barcelona had failed to win a single trophy since their Champions League triumph in 2006 not to mention, Real Madrid doing the double over them.
Now, after finishing another trophyless season, the Directors from the Camp Nou have gone fishing at the Emirates once again hoping to lure away two of Arsenal’s core members in the form of Emmanuel Adebayor and Alexander Hleb forgetting that each time these two clubs had transfer dealings, the North Londoners have always seemingly come out on top.
The irony is that Arsenal managed to get two of the most exciting players the Barcelona Academy has ever seen, Francesc Fabregas and Fran Merida, at prices that will make discount stores look expensive.
So, it comes down to this, when will the Directors and the embattled President at a club whose motto is “History & Glamour” ever learn that they are just not cunning as they like to show they are when it comes to doing business with the conservative North Londoners?
Barca, and even Arsenal, never learn !!
Its like this Aarvind, when a player is about to be sold by Wenger, its pretty much the end of his glorious career as a excellent football player, the player will still exist and play at the highest level, but the highest level he can achieve will be a lot lower than what he has been used to.
I’ve noticed this too with a lot of Arsenal players. Wenger just has a knack of knowing when to sell players. If he feels like the time is right to sell Hleb, then so be it. I’ll trust his insight in the matter. He’s also a shrewd businessman who knows how to buy low on players (although he seems to be doing differently with Nasri and Eduardo who were more expensive than most).
Paul - he sold Henry an year late. Just thought I’d point that out. He also kept Lehmann when he could have sold him last summer. I think he, like Ferguson, can get a bit sentimental at times.
H.A.T.E Adebayor!!!!!
Prefer Pandev or Villa
The conclusion here is quite clear. Like Xavi said, EPL is an easier league. Barca should learn there lesson and stop buying over-paid, over-hyped, inferior players from the epl. Look at Cesc one of the best players in epl and not good enough to start for Spain. That says it all…Barca take heed
Now, I could argue that 4 of this years CL quarter-finalists, 3 semi-finalists & both finalists were from the EPL, but why bother. I did, however, notice 2 things:
1) How clueless the German teams were in the CL.
2) Bayern, despite spending 100 Million Euros, could not get past a team from the Russian league, which frankly nobody watches.
That good to know raed but u left off some information as well as made some errors. First of all Bayern spent 70million euros that’s approximately 50mill pounds, nearly every team in epl top ten spends that much. What did we get for it… the league and cup double + semi of uefa cup. I would say money well spent. Speaking of uefa cup none of the epl teams even made it as far as the quarter finals…can u remind me how much Tottenham spent again. Yes we lost to zenit a team as u say nobody watches, just goes to show that ur not a real football fan. This team includes many of the Russians who made it to the euro cup over the highly paid over hyped English players. Also it includes ARSHAVIN who is arguably the best player at the euros, so maybe you should leave the comments to the real football fans who watch the game all over the world.
It is true the EPL clubs are not the cream of the crop when it comes to the UEFA Cup. I agree with you here.
Don’t misquote me, I said:
Bayern, despite spending 100 Million Euros, could not get past a team from the Russian league, which frankly nobody watches.
Now, if your English was good enough you would have understood that I meant the Russian League.
I don’t doubt that the have Russians talent & are doing good in the Euro’s, but where would they been if Arshavin hadn’t come back? Are they depending too much on one player?