POSTED: Saturday July 30th 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arsenal Transfer Dealings Gather Pace: Eboué and JET Set to Leave the Premier League

Transfer Activity increases at Arsenal as the Gunners look to Strengthen before the new season.

Arsenal Football Club will say goodbye to two more players this week. Gael Clichy's transfer to Manchester City earlier in July is now followed the exit of two much less established Gunners.

  Many Arsenal fans will be delighted with recouping £4m for controversial utility player Emmanuel Eboué, who has often been an outlet for supporters frustrations, sometimes unfairly so. A degree more of sorrow will be felt, however, for Ipswich bound Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. The young forward impressed at youth and reserve level as well as on loan, but he was never really given a chance to prove his worth for Arsenal.

In Emmanuel Eboué, The Gunners will be losing a much maligned player who's turbulent tenure at the club will be remembered for catastrophic errors and unpopular behaviour such as rash fouling and feigning injury. This image of him is perhaps a little unjust. Mostly the Ivorian has shown real heart and desire in his performances and had the character to come back from being booed off the field by his own fans in 2008.

At times Eboué he played in such a direct and powerful manner, causing real danger to opposition defences. His defending was always questionable which is why Sagna was brought in at right back, pushing Eboué out of the side and into an occasional right-wing role.  He persevered and worked hard at his game but the errors never subsided and in the end it has to be seen as a good decision to let him go. Nevertheless, his polarity amongst the Arsenal squad is well documented and the dressing room could well miss his levity and humour. I must note at at this point his impending transfer to Galatasaray is not yet finalised.

Jay Emmanuel Thomas was born in London and has been with the club since he was eight year old. Local born first-team players are drastically underrepresented in the big football clubs of the English capital and the fans love nothing more than to see their boys break into the side and hold down a place. Unfortunately we'll never know if Jet could have made it after he had just one Premier League appearance during his time at Arsenal.

Successful spells at Blackpool, Doncaster Rovers, and Cardiff City were expected to encourage Wenger to give JET some game time for Arsenal, but the French manager now has opted to sell. The decision would appear justified as interest in him was limited to Championship teams, and at the age of 20, his failure to make the under-21 England team maybe suggests his talent isn't sufficient. I wish him all the best at Ipswich Town and hope he can prove me wrong.

So what does this mean for Arsenal going forward? Well the wage bill has been cut (assuming the Eboué deal goes thorough) and at present the club has broken even in transfer deals, with the signings of Gervinho and Jenkinson offsetting the sales income.

  The prospect of further departures for Arsenal is likely with Almunia and Bendtner expected to reach agreements with potential suitors before the Premier League transfer window shuts. The thinning process is an obvious transfer policy target this summer which would suggest that Arséne Wenger is indeed preparing the squad for two or three fairly high profile recruits.

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Keywords · arsenal · gunners · football · soccer · premier league · transfers · almunia · eboue · mata · jagielka · gervinho · wenger · fabregas · nasri · emmanuel thomas

Name: J A Kinchin-taylor
Organization: Arsenal Aether
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URL: www.arsenalaether.com

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