France Football: Henry Signs for Barça / Valencia for Hamburg at Emirates Cup

France Football is quite a reliable source and they report that Henry has agreed a deal with Barça with Arsenal as only party that now has to say yes/no.

Original article here: http://www.francefootball.fr/FF/breves2007/20070611_153137Dev.html

More to follow. This is the biggest news regarding Henry so far.

Also Valencia will replace Hamburger at Emirates cup, which is good news for me. I was never interested in seeing Hamburger.

Arsenal to sign Ángel Di María?

I never believed that Arsenal would sign Ribery. Now it seems that (I stress the word “seems”) he is moving to Bayern.

Malouda seems more probable with reports everywhere saying Malouda will snub Liverpool to join Arsenal – however, always entertaining arsenalshorts.com reckons that we will sign Argentinian Ángel Di María:

From a very reliable sauce, we finally have a story. In the barren, desert formerly known as the Arsenal news round up, we have a rumour, a proper one. Our man ITK has a mate, who actually told the interflap about Denilsons arrival last transfer window, and also called the Baptista transfer before anyone else, so believe what you will.

We’re buying it, any road and he reckons that the same mate, has told him, before the end of next week, we’ll be signing Ángel Di María from Argentinean side Rosario Central. Not a lot more than that is known, aside from Gilles Grimando has been in Argentina and has urged Wenger to make a bid. It’s expected that Sir Wenger will make a move for the youngster as soon as he’s back from his Italian holiday…

Now this is, to me at least, more believable. Malouda’s fee is quoted at around £10m – who will he replace? Rosicky? Hleb? Unless Wenger’s greatly misquoted “we could play 4-3-3″ is on his mind, I think this is unlikely. Rosicky is an experienced player who will get better the coming season and Hleb is an integral part of the squad who cost £10m. Please do tell me why we are splashing another £10m. If Malouda DOES get signed by Arsenal, I think we can expect to see some shuffling in the midfield.

But of course, Arsene knows – only thing I know is that Wenger does not pay that much money for a 27-year old backup.

[UPDATE: A Cultured Left Foot reckons that if Malouda does sign he will compete with Rosicky.]

Arsenal Blogs on WordPress

There are 32 teams that are in champions league.

Why are there so many Arsenal posts on WordPress? I’m pleasantly surprised. Not that I pay much attention to them, some of them seem to be worth following up.