Cavani on the move? Gomis also linked

It has been reported for some time that Edison Cavani is unhappy with his lot at PSG. How true this is remains to be seen.

Ben Jefferson of the of the Daily Express reported on 28th November last year that Cavani is:

…reportedly unhappy at having to play second-fiddle to Zlatan Ibrahimovic at the Parc des Princes and has made discrete enquiries about his options should he choose to leave.

The apparent reason for this unhappiness is that he is being regularly asked to play in a wider position so as to accommodate Zlatan (he who doesn’t do trials) playing in the middle.

Jefferson went on to say:

According to Le10Sport Arsenal was one of the first clubs to respond, although Chelsea and Manchester City have also been linked with the player in the past.

Hmmm…

It is now being reported in various outlets that Cavani’s advisors have been seen in London and that they are in talks with various clubs to sound out his options regarding the EPL clubs. Some of these outlets are saying that Arsenal were the first club to make a move to sound out PSG on Cavani’s possible availability.

PSG were able to buy Cavani last year because they met the €63m release clause in his Napoli contract and should they decide to sell, they would surely at least want to recoup their initial outlay.

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Would Arsenal pay this type of money for a Player (about £57m)…? Perhaps.
But while it is said that Cavani wants to move on, he is not prepared to drop his wage demands.

Cavani is thought to earn an eye-watering (or mouth-watering, depending whether you’re paying it or receiving it) £7m-a-year after tax at PSG, approximately £135,000-a-week.

But that’s after French Tax – not the huge tax bill he would have in the UK and players like Cavani would expect a monetary sweetener from the club to soften the blow.

Arsenal will not pay this type of money to any player. If Henry returned in his prime and was offered to Arsenal at these values, Wenger would refuse.

However, this may not be all bad news for Arsenal.

There are only two teams in England that could pay this type of Money and that’s Man City and Chelsea. You may argue to include Man Utd, but they just don’t have this type of financial muscle any more.

Man City could easily afford him, but they already have an abundance of strikers with their main men being Alvaro Negredo and Sergio Aguero, with the back-up of Edin Dzeko. Where would Cavani fit in? Because if you ask him to play wide he’s back to the PSG situation.

If you take the ‘advisors being in London’ rumour on face value, the only team they could be seriously talking to is Chelsea.

The Blues were said to be interested in Cavani before he moved to PSG. He is the type of Marquee player that owner Roman Abramovich likes, in that everyone would be talking about the move and the player would arrive to a blast of trumpets and falling ticker-tape.

This may sound strange for an Arsenal fan to say, but I hope that Chelsea do buy Cavani.

The reason being that if Chelsea do sign him they will drop their interest in Diego Costa and he’s the one that I really want to see in a Gunners shirt.

Currently second only to Ronaldo in the La Liga goal scoring stakes (22-20 in favour of Ronaldo) he has a £32m release clause in his contract that can be activated and he could be persuaded to fit into the Gunners rigid pay-structure around the same wages as Ozil.

Go on Jose – do us a favour and sign Cavani.

Another interesting striker on the market is Lyon’s Bafetimbi Gomis, who has denied that he has signed a pre-contract agreement with Newcastle.

Gomis, who will be 29 in August, is a French international striker, whose contract with Lyon expires in the summer.

He has been capped on 12 occasions for France, scoring 3 goals. He has made 141 appearances for Lyon to date, scoring 50 goals, about 1 every 3 games. But it should be remembered that he doesn’t get the service at Lyon that he’d get at Arsenal.

While this could hardly be described a prolific, I am not suggesting that he would be a ‘main-man’, I think that most Gooners would agree that a club of Arsenal’s stature, playing in 4 competitions every year, needs at least 3 good strikers. A big muscular player, he is built to handle the rough and tumble of the EPL.

When speaking to the press regarding the Newcastle situation recently, Gomis had this to say, as reported in French newspaper L’Equipe:

I have not signed any pre-contract with anyone; I can pretty much go, as I can very well stay. I play with the mindset of a player who loves his club and respects his contract and I would not want to give the impression that my head is somewhere else.
I’m still proud to wear these colours and I have a lot of ambitions with OL [Lyon]. So don’t expect me to give up.

But he didn’t say he was signing a new contract with Lyon.

I understand that there were problems with the Newcastle negations, mostly concerning wages (which I believe were resoled) and agent’s fees. It is my understanding that the agreed transfer fee was £8m, but that agent’s fees were to be an extra £2m!!!

However, Gomis would be priced just perfectly for Arsene in the summer, at nothing, zilch, – except a signing on fee and his wages and surely if NUFC could afford him we can.

We’ve got shut of Chamakh and Park. There’s no sign of Big Nic being offered a new contract and Sanogo appears to be Diaby Mark2. We have a vacancy so why not take a chance for free?