Steven Taylor in £5 million Arsenal deal?
Posted on May 30th, 2010 | 137 Comments |
Apparently the Arsenal boss wants Taylor to beef up his defensive options and will be battling with Chelsea, Aston Villa and Everton for the signature of the player who only has 12 months left to run on his current contract. Sound familiar? Well it should do as whenever Steven Taylor is linked with a move away from Tyneside it is nearly always the same clubs that are mentioned as possible destinations. Unfortunately though, it’s the nature of the beast. We are at that time when the rumour mill spins into overdrive, and until Taylor either signs a new contract with Newcastle or actually does bite the bullet and decide to move on then these rumours will keep surfacing. But say this is true and Taylor does hear London calling, where would that leave us? And what could we get from the Taylor fee?
Well, basing it purely on speculation, if there are four clubs interested in Taylor then that could start off a bidding war, and we could end up with more that £5 million for the player, which is alright as long as it is allowed to be reinvested in the team.
Arsenal are apparently looking to offload Philippe Senderos over the summer, so if they added him into the deal on top of the £5 million then I would take that. It would leave us with the same number of defenders, and a bit of cash to spend aswell, and Senderos is not a bad defender in my opinion. In fact, it makes me wonder why Wenger would be allowing him to leave the Emirates?
Alternatively, if it was just a straight cash deal for the player, what would that £5 million get? Would that be enough to tempt Manchester City into selling us Nedum Onouha? I mean £5 million is somewhere in the middle of what Newcastle and Manchester City apparently value the player at. Thing is, Taylor and Onouha are both roughly the same age, and both have roughly the same ability, so what would be the point in wheeling one out to wheel another, near identical model in? Surely it would be cheaper just to keep Taylor and avoid paying all the silly bits like agents fees and the like?
Then you look at the midfield, what would £5 million get us in that position? Well, Jamie O’Hara for one. Granted, old sack face at Spurts has slapped a £6 million price tag on the midfielder, but surely we could negotiate that down? The biggest problem for me would be the fact that we would be making oursleves lighter in defence having spent the money on a midfielder. Would the money be available from the club to get another defender in?
So although this all been speculative rambling, my own preference would be to give Taylor a new contract with Newcastle. Having said that though, I have concluded that should Mr Wenger decide to pursue Taylor then he should throw Senderos into the deal, which would mean we could then bring O’Hara into the team aswell.
You gotta love letting your imagination run wild, eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGf82oCyLEo
Sorry, got inspired by the “London calling” bits and had to share :)