Arsenal Transfer Rumors: Speculation Rises, Eduardo Looks Set To Leave

Good morning from Dublin and I had hoped for an early post today, but unfortunately it wasn't possible. I'll do my best to remedy that tomorrow but I'm not promising anything. There isn't an awful lot of Arsenal news about today but I'll deal with what there is as briefly as possible as time is short.

First of all, we had the news yesterday that Joe Cole signed for Liverpool on a free transfer for a reported £90,000 a week. It's an awful lot of money to pay a player who has only managed 28 games in the last two seasons because of injury. I can't help feeling that Arsenal have had a lucky escape as we were supposedly one of the clubs he was considering signing for.

I don't imagine that we offered him as much money as Liverpool did and his deciding factor wasn't the lure of glory or Champions league football but the size of his wage packet. A professional footballer's career is fairly short and I don't blame him for getting the best deal he can but his chances of winning anything at Liverpool are very limited at the moment.

We have plenty of players who can do a similar job to him and the consensus on Twitter yesterday was that signing would probably have hindered the development of some of our younger players, particularly Wilshere.

There is no further news on the proposed transfer of Eduardo to Shaktar Donetsk, but the word is that he isn't in Austria with the rest of the squad and there is no mention of him being injured. The squad list for that preseason training in Austria doesn't include him but it does include 27 others. All the players who went out in the group phase of the World Cup are back with the exception of the injured Bendtner, though.

As expected, all four goalkeepers are included, but there is no mention of Almunia's illness that kept him out of the game last Saturday even though he is with the squad. A few youngsters are with the squad too and Eastmond, Frimpong, Henderson, Lansbury, JET, and Nordtveit will all be looking to make an impression on the boss and push for a place in the warm-up matches to show what they can do.

Another notable exception from the squad is Jay Simpson, who might have expected to travel after scoring two goals against Barnet on Saturday, but it only adds to the rumours that he will be on his way out soon. Denilson didn't make the trip either but he is injured as far as I know, with a recurrence of last season's groin strain.

The next of those warm-up matches is against Sturm Graz at 6 pm tomorrow evening and I suppose it will be a bit too soon for the players who are just back, which means those youngsters should get another chance to show what they can do. 

There are reports this morning linking us with a bid of £42 million for three Ajax players. We are reportedly after Suarez, Stekelenberg, and Van der Wiel, and while we may possibly have that sort of money to spend and the sale of Eduardo may be about to go through, I still think it is very far-fetched.

It would go some way to addressing some of the issues of the strength of our squad, but it would still leave us short of a centre back and it might mean that Eboue would see himself fall further down the pecking order too.

There's more talk from Barcelona today of a possible last ditch attempt to sign Cesc, but even their manager says it will cost a lot of money to sign him and Arsenal do not want to do business. At least one paper has suggested that Cesc may hand in a transfer request and in my opinion that is the only way that there is any slight possibility of the move happening. 

I'm running a fantasy football league again this season and I said there would be a trophy if it reaches 100 teams. With that figure surpassed last night I thought I'd give you a sneak preview at the proposed trophy and you can tell me if you think it's suitable or not. 

The link to play the game is here and when you've set up a team you can join my league by using the code 33954-12064. You can make as many changes as you like to your team/squad before the season starts so feel free to set up a team as soon as you like.

That's it for today.

Here's a few goals from Brian Kidd.

See You Tomorrow.