Top 10 Players Very Nearly Signed By Arsene Wenger

Chris Wright

24th, July 2012

28 Comments

By Chris Wright

With the news today that, despite it looking like a done deal for a good few weeks, Arsene Wenger is reportedly ready to pull the plug on Arsenal’s £17 million move for Yann M’Vila in lieu of waiting for Abou Diaby to fulfil his debatable potential, we thought we’d have a little look at some of the other big names that the frugal Frenchman has passed on at the eleventh hour during his tenure in North London – it’s not a bad little squad as things happen…

1. Zlatan Ibrahimovic: Aged 19 at the time, Zlatan was on the very cusp of joining Arsenal from Malmo for £3 million in 2000, that was until Wenger had the temerity to ask him to play in one – singular – trial match for the club before signing professional papers. The response (in third-person of course)? “Zlatan doesn’t do auditions.”

2. Juan Mata: During the summer of 2011, when every last double helix of Cesc Fabregas’ DNA was pulling him Barcelona-ward, it emerged that Arsenal were in a decent old position to bring in Juan Mata to help ease the pain of separation. Arsenal dithered for what seemed like months in their attempts to coax brassic Valencia into selling on the cheap and, sure enough, Chelsea were more than happy to stride in with a big fat cheque for £24 million.

3. Petr Cech: After flirting for a while beforehand, it looked like Cech was all but set to join Arsenal upon leaving Sparta Prague in 2002. Both fees and personal terms were agreed but work permit issues saw the Gunners weigh up the pros and cons of the wrangling entailed and ultimately deemed Cech to not be worth the hassle. Instead, he joined French side Rennes before eventually ending up ‘you know where’ and swiftly becoming one of the best ‘keepers in world football.

4. Joey Barton: We’ll perhaps never know how close he actually came to joining Arsenal last summer but, having been told by Newcastle that he could leave for free (despite having a year left on his current deal) after bitching about his stalled contract renewal talks on Twitter, Barton was strongly linked with an unlikely move to the Emirates.

Barton claimed he’d been contacted by the club’s coaching staff, while chairman Peter Hill-Wood was swift to deny all accusations as the semi-saga bubbled away – right up until the point where Barton reverted to type and got Gervinho sent off for ruffling his quiff on the opening day of the season. His agent’s number was wiped from the Arsenal speed dial shortly after.

5. Didier Drogba: Wenger once revealed that he had the option of procuring Drogba for as little as £100,000 (less than half his weekly wage these days) back in the early 2000s when the Drog was starting out in France with Le Mans: “We watched him carefully but we felt he might not be completely ready,” Wenger said, “It was a mistake to miss him but when you are in football, everyone can understand. Anyway, we had Thierry Henry.”

6. Samuel Eto’o: Having left Real Mallorca as their all-time top league goalscorer having only been there for three and a bit seasons, Eto’o was offered to Arsenal in 2004 by Wenger’s own admission, though the ego-monster striker’s volatile reputation had the studious Frenchman mulling over whether or not acquiring a player who had recently (allegedly) physically assaulted his own agent was the smartest idea. Arsenal eventually dropped out of the race leaving the Cameroonian free to (allegedly) attack all the agents he wanted at Barcelona.

7: Claude Makelele: The year was 1996 and Wenger had just added a lanky midfield wisp by the name of Patrick Vieira to Arsenal’s…err…arsenal. A matter of weeks later a call came through from Nantes asking if Wenger would be interested in signing the promising Makelele.

Talks were held and a deal for Makelele was ‘close’ (according to an interview with Wenger from 2006) though Wenger withdrew the offer before a biro could be passed around as he thought, quite rightly as it turns out, that Vieira was more than up to the task.

8. Xabi Alonso: As was his penchant for the surreal transfer dalliance, Rafa Benitez suddenly decided in the summer of 2008 that he wanted shot of Xabi Alonso – the man universally acclaimed for running the Liverpool midfielder – in order to free up room for Gareth Barry – a man with a very good punctuality record and excellent handwriting – to help Liverpool kick on in Europe. Yes, that actually happened.

Upon learning of Benitez’s plans to replace him, Alonso opened talks with Arsenal and rumour has it that he was quite literally on his way to London to tie up the deal when Liverpool’s £15 million bid for Barry fell through like a crap meringue. Alonso stayed at Anfield for another year before toddling off to Real Madrid.

9. Yaya Toure: With little big brother Kolo on the books already, Arsenal looked as if they were holding all the aces as they attempted to snag big little brother Yaya. He even played in an Arsenal youth side for one game until those old work permit issues reared their ugly head and Toure joined Olympaikos instead before steadily becoming one of the most frightening midfield monoliths of the modern era at both Barcelona and Man City.

10. Cristiano Ronaldo: The story goes that, as a young’n, Ronaldo was shown around London Colney and was duly presented with an Arsenal shirt with his name on the back by Wenger himself. The Gunners even got as far as agreeing a £4 million fee with Sporting Lisbon.

Then, fatefully, Lisbon played Manchester United in 2003 to open their new stadium. Ronaldo had a storming game as Sporting won 3-1. Fergie had his interest piqued, stumped up £11-odd million, had Carlos Queiroz whisper sweet Portuguese nothings in Ronaldo’s ear and the rest, as they say, was thoroughly lucrative.

Any more of Wenger’s near misses you’d like to flag up Pies fans?

Posted in Arsenal, Featured, Top 10s & lists, Transfers & Rumours

Share this article: Email

28 Comments

  1. chet says:

    *reads list*

    *weeps manfully*

  2. Charlie says:

    This is almost as depressing as the “10 Players Everton could have signed if they had a pot to piss in” list…

  3. Toz says:

    I call bullshit on the C. Ronaldo thing. Supposedly Liverpool were linked to him as well.

    Wouldn’t be surprised if the alcoholic at Old Trafford had him tapped up from the start.

  4. Al says:

    apparently Phil Thompson was charged with checking out Ronaldo and came back to Houllier with a report of him being decent but not ready yet, Utd duly signed him, game him a few years to mature and well we all know what happened, good move Phil, good move.

    Any truth in the rumour Chelsea don’t have a scouting department just some KGB spie camera’s in Wengers office?

  5. AkA says:

    Gareth Bale.

    We had an option to pick him up, but Arsene said that that would have “killed” Clichy, so we didn’t get him.

    Ruud van Nistelrooij.

    This was the only time that the Arsenal board refused to give Arsene the money he wanted. So instead, we signed another lethal striker, a real fox-in-the-box if you will. He goes by the name of Francis Jeffers.

  6. Joe says:

    Sorry to be pedantic, but Ibra was born in 1981-making him at least 19 at the time

  7. pray4muamba says:

    imagine the squad arsenal would have currently if he made those signings……or should i say imagine the team man city would buy from arsenal had they brought in those players

  8. Frost says:

    He’d be wise to snap up M’Vila. Diaby fails.

    How about a list of near-misses for Fergie since the Lucas Moura deal went to piss?

  9. West End Blues says:

    Could be worse he could have missed out on any of Reyes, Silvestre, Mertesacker, Jeffers (lol), Denilson, Igor whats his face, that latvian or lithuianian striker who’s name began (probably still does) with a d, Senderos, Cygan, Bendtner………..there is definitely a few more

  10. Agustin says:

    Arsene should learn from his mistakes.I think Arsenal need to get rid of him, his time has passed

  11. Danger_Dustin says:

    “Zlatan doesn’t do auditions.”

    This! hahahaha! pure class!

  12. Gordy says:

    What a stupid article. If you looked at all clubs you could find ten players that they missed out on. This looks like Wenger bashing for the sake of it, no-one apart from the club officials know what goes on in transfer dealings so you do not know how close they were or not to signing.

    • Chris says:

      @Gordy: There’s absolutely no Wenger bashing at all. Not one single disparaging comment. Of course all managers have near misses, it’s just that Wenger’s are more stellar than most.

  13. Gordy says:

    Chris
    Just by writing that article it was bashing either the club or Wenger for missing out.

  14. futballsznob says:

    how on earth can Joey Barton’s name be on this list??

  15. Andy Carroll's Ponytail says:

    Till the day I die, I’ll never understand or accept Xabi Alonso’s treatment at the hands of the fat Spanish waiter. For all the good he has done us, this ONE incident will forever taint his legacy.

    COME BACK XABI!!!

  16. lurker says:

    eto’o, henry and ljungberg would have been beautiful to watch.

  17. deckard says:

    but think about it. if some of those guys did sign, guys like van persie(coz of ibra), song(coz of yaya), and walcott(coz of cr7) would never have been signed. theo is no rono but not too shabby the less.

  18. dan says:

    Arsenal almost signed Ronaldinho, but he couldnt get a work permit so he went to PSG isntead.

    Imagine, Ronadinho with henry and berkamp……

  19. Towhid Zaman says:

    So cool he was chasing all Blues diamonds. Gosh.. I’m blessed that he wasn’t trying to sign Lampard. :)

  20. MartinF says:

    Wenger confirms the story about being close to signing Ronaldo in this interview with him and Ferguson, where he is asked which Manchester United player he would most like to sign.

    http://youtu.be/WhTIIT1CMIA?t=1m55s

  21. Colski says:

    Nonsense article – clubs scout players, clubs consider transfer to players, clubs speak to agent, clubs decide to sign/not to sign players. This is football and, as Gordy says above, you’d be able to create a similar list of equally big names at every club of Arsenal’s stature. Spurs are linked with every talented player and their mum season after season.

  22. Matt says:

    Yaya was scouted at the ASEC academy by Wenger and brought to Beveren, Arsenal’s ‘feeder’ club. He had a year to go to get the EU passport needed to play for Arsenal, and Beveren decided to cash in and sell him to Metalurg Donetsk. From there he went to Olympiakos, Monaco, and then to Barca, by which point he we too expensive for Arsenal.

  23. […] BSC gelandet sind. Ein eindrucksvolles Arsene-Wenger-Special hat das englische Online-Magazin „who ate all the pies“ zusammengestellt. Genüsslich listen die Autoren die Transfers auf, die dem Großmeister durch […]

  24. Bob says:

    @futballsznob
    He’s the only player on that list they are really missing at the moment.

    @Colski
    Yeah but that’s because Spurs get repeatedly ripped off, so agents shout their name when trying to up the price. Arsenal on the other hand used to pay nothing, ever, so linking anyone with them was pointless as far as an agent is concerned.

  25. Jarren says:

    Hey Bob, good luck with your responses.

    WAATP, is there a way you can remove these FUCKING ANCIENT posts from the links at the bottom of new posts?

  26. PetrovskyKSC says:

    Jarren, i think its pretty nice to be reminded of what happened in the past. I mean otherwise we probably couldn’t remember all of those brilliant articles on waatp, could we? Recently i have come across an article, where i was severely bashed to death by everyone, after implicating that neymars injury was a result of his idiotic behavior on the pitch. And i loved to read it all again.

Leave a Reply to Gordy