Arsenal's Andrei Arshavin Saga: Deal or No Deal?

The outstanding nominees for the top performance in the worst football storyline during this January transfer window would have to go to Andrei Arshavin, Zenit St. Petersburg, or Arsenal for their role in “the Arshavin saga”.

I honestly saw clearer football related stories in Footballers Wives.

Just what is going on?

Discussions would appear to have been going on for at least three weeks now with all three parties involved releasing dribs and drabs of information but not even the famous jigsaw identification by the British press has yielded any concrete answers.

The 27-year-old Russian playmaker has been at odds with Zenit St. Petersburg ever since the EURO 2008 star was unable to agree a move away from Zenit in the summer. The story didn’t end there though, with talk of strikes, buying out contracts, and links to just about every top club in Europe being the order of most days back pages ever since.

Now I’m not sure I’d like to play for a Russian club, it would appear to be a bit 1950’s in respect to player-club relations over there.

These days, the general rule is that if a player wants to leave that badly, you take the money and the fans call him Judas. Sounds fair enough to me as I appreciate loyalty and hate players like Craig “I’ll be here for a season” Bellamy.

Over in Russia though it is more like, you are our player, like it or don’t like it but we’ll kill your dog if you don’t put up and shut up.

I may be wrong but there must be plenty of reasons that the 41 times capped Arshavin hasn’t left the club yet—or do I mean one reason?

Zenit St. Petersburg are a rich club who don’t actually need the money. They don’t want to be seen as a selling club and you can understand such a point of view. The European Super Cup Champions want to make it big in Europe and no, they won’t do it by selling their best players.

But has a player who really didn’t want to be at a club, ever won them anything?

I think it is time for Arsenal to offer another couple of million, Zenit to let go and let the fans get round to calling him a traitor.

What do you say?

Will the Russian banker ever accept Arsenal’s money or are the Russians simply running down another transfer window with the aim of holding onto their prized asset?