Welcome Dudu

Or Eduardo Da Silva. I hear though that he prefers to be known by his nickname, Dudu, and failing that, then at the least Eduardo. I guess we’ll see Dudu on the back of his shirt next season. So who is he you ask? Well you might recognize Wenger’s latest signing for, incidentally, he actually scored the first competitive goal at the Emirates, back when we hosted his now former club Dynamo Zagreb in the Champion’s League third round qualifier. We went on to win the game 5-1. He also scored against England in that rather disappointing 2-0 defeat to Croatia.

Who would’ve guessed, after being linked with several strikers, based on idle speculation quite more than anything else, with the likes of Anelka, Martins, Owen, Tevez, Trezeguet and a whole bunch of others tagged as Wenger targets, that we’d sign a bit of an unknown, someone a bit out of the blue. Well he’s not completely unknown, as I mentioned, he’s already managed to score against both Arsenal and England, but when I woke up and switched on Sky Sports New and saw the familiar yellow ticker suggesting we’d signed Eduardo Da Silva, I did have to rack my brain a bit and pondered the question who the hell was he before getting a little excited and researching Arsene’s third purchase of the season (Fabianski and Nordveit the other two.)

I’m not too sure about how much he’s set us back in terms of money because as always, official word from us is ‘an undisclosed transfer fee.’ There was some confusion though because the Dynamo Zagreb President appeared to suggest we’d shelled the same sum as Barcelona had done for Henry – £16M. It was later suggested that that was wrong and the fee was more likely to be in the £7-8M mark, which does sound fair. Not only did he put pen to paper on an incredibly lengthy ten year contract ensuring Zagreb were always going to get the maximum for their man but he boasts a fantastic goalscoring record, for both club and country though admittedly plying his trade in the Croatian League takes something away from a 34 in 32 record (7 in 12 for Croatia) – still impressive though. Scoring goals seems to be his main talent and he’s been described as something of a goal poacher which would do us fine. That of course won’t be a wholesome solution to our failing to convert the majority of our chances last season, but it will help.

Now it’s inevitable that Eduardo will be compared to Thierry Henry, but he isn’t an immediate Henry replacement. Van Persie’s more likely to shoulder the responsibility of being our star striker while it’s likely that we’ll see this new fella rotating withAdebayor and Bendtner being fourth choice. Or maybe he’ll be utilized on the left wing, where he’s played before. Maybe he’s seen as someone who can get goals and add width to the flanks, which is something we’re also craving out for. Or maybe a bit of both, like Reyes. I dunno, I guess we’ll have to wait and hear what Wenger has to say on the matter or just wait until we sign someone else, a likelihood as we’re supposed to be interested inBakari Sagna and we could do with another winger, or striker, and then once we’ve signed everyone we have to sign we can consider who’ll play where.
It’s a signing I’m pleased with, anyhow. The guy excites me and looks capable of great things. I’ve a feeling he’ll go on to do quite well with us, more of a hope probably. All the best to our new signing anyhow and here’s to hoping he enjoys a similar goalscoring record to the one he enjoyed last season, though that’s unlikely given that the Premiership will surely prove a tougher test of his abilities.

And in other news…

• Real want Reyes, it would seem, but they want him cut-price and on the cheap. £9.5M’s quite cheap enough considering the player they’d be getting, a very good one who looked on the road to making a success of himself with us until he decided he didn’t quite like it here in England.
• Cesc’s agent has clearly said that Cesc isn’t interested in moving to Barcelona or Real Madrid and is quite happy where he is. I didn’t think he’d be off this season myself and if he does ever leave it won’t be for a while, I’d expect, though maybe a bit dependent on the future of Wenger.
• Arsene Wenger is expected to increase his £6M offer for Auxerre’s Bakari Sagna, a player who I’m not even sure why we’re interested in what with Hoyte and Eboue here already and both having very recently been signed to long term contracts.
• There’s talk we’ll look to beat Tottenham’s offer of £6M for West Brom’s Curtis Davies although I really can’t see such a transfer going ahead unless we was to see someone leave the club. For the moment, the central defense -Toure, Gallas, Senderos and Djourou – looks rather strong and is in no need of strengthening, even with the prospect of losing Toure for a short time to the African Nations Cup in January for we have Gilberto to rely on in an emergency.
• Aliadiere’s move to Middlesbrough is now officially official, having been confirmed on the official Arsenal website. That’s old news though.
• Birmingham are said to be interested in Mathieu Flamini who would be a good signing for them, a really good signing. It’s a shame that because he can buy out his contract we’re likely to receive nothing for him.
• Oh and I got my chance to see Carlos Vela for the first time tonight. He’s playing for the Mexico U20 side in the U20 FIFA World Cup. Mexico won the game 3-0 against an impressive looking Gambia side and I thought Vela looked very tasty, showing glimpses of what he was capable of, the highlight being a scorcher of a shot that flew just above the crossbar.