Manchester United have agreed a deal to sign Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie, the club announced on Wednesday night.
Dutch international striker Robin van Persie has turned down a new contract at Arsenal, signaling his likely departure from the English Premier League side.
Montpellier's France international striker Olivier Giroud has agreed to join English Premier League club Arsenal.
updated: Tue Jun 26 2012 08:04:00
Real Madrid's star player sits down for a 1 on 1 chat with CNN World Sport's Pedro Pinto.
Following Man City's dramatic triumph, here are several thoughts from the end of the EPL season.
LONDON -- It¹s January 2008, and David Beckham, chasing appearance number 100 for England, has been given permission by the L.A. Galaxy to join the Arsenal squad for training. After a session with the first-team, he waits to join the reserves for some extra practice. As he approaches the squad, one player shouts out, "Hey, what¹s your name? Are you here on trial or what?" Beckham laughs and says, "I'm David and I'm just here for a kick-around." The player who asked the question was only 17, and his name was Wojciech Szczesny.
Five things we learned in Premier League action Saturday:
Arsenal's attempts to cement a place in next season's Champions League were thwarted on Monday as Wigan claimed a notable 2-1 win at the Emirates Stadium in the English Premier League.
Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes scored as Manchester United beat 10-man Queens Park Rangers 2-0 Sunday to strengthen their grip on the English Premier League title with six matches to play.
A last minute Thomas Vermaelen goal gave Arsenal a vital 2-1 Premier League home win over Newcastle on Monday, a result that closes the gap on third-placed Tottenham to just a single point.
AC Milan withstood a brave comeback from Arsenal to advance to the quarterfinals of the Champions League Tuesday despite a 3-0 defeat in the second leg at the Emirates.
Five things we learned in Barclays Premier League action Saturday:
The chief executive of English Premier League club Arsenal has urged the team's supporters to get behind under-fire coach Arsene Wenger.
Five things we learned in Barclays Premier League and Carling Cup action Sunday:
England winger Theo Walcott scored twice as Arsenal fight back from going two goals behind to sensationally thrash north London rivals Tottenham 5-2, a result that lifts Arsene Wenger's side back into fourth place in the Premier League table.
AC Milan are all but through to the quarterfinals of the Champions League after thrashing Arsenal 4-0 at the San Siro on Wednesday.
"The system rewards the audacious away from home." So says the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, hoping to bag a goal or two at the San Siro and set up a slightly more relaxed return leg in north London (where Milan failed to score against Tottenham Hotspur last year). Milan's last home Champions League game was a see-sawing 2-3 defeat to Barcelona, while Arsenal's previous travels took them to Greece, where Olympiacos took advantage of a weakened side. This time Wenger will have added audacity in the shape of Robin van Persie and Thierry Henry, while Milan have Alexandre Pato and Kevin Prince-Boateng back from injury.
Five things we learned from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League:
LOS ANGELES -- Greetings from Southern California, where I opted to spend some time with the U.S. women's team this week as it prepares for the Olympic qualifying tournament later this month in Vancouver. (We have MLS Draft coverage elsewhere on SI.com, so don't worry.) I decided to open up the mailbag this week for questions on Alex Morgan, Clint Dempsey, Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry and a number of other topics. Let's dive in:
One mosquito-addled evening in the Arctic Circle, I met a Laplander in an Arsenal shirt who -- on seeing the Arsenal sticker on my suitcase -- told me that he'd once bought golf clubs in London from a man who'd sold golf clubs to Dennis Bergkamp.
Thierry Henry made a sensational scoring return for English club Arsenal as his goal sealed a 1-0 win over Leeds United in the third round of the FA Cup.
Thierry Henry has assured New York Red Bulls fans that his return to English soccer club Arsenal will not interfere with his American commitments.
Two goals in the last five minutes gave Fulham a 2-1 Premier League home win over Arsenal on Monday to continue the recent run of shock results in England's top division.
Ten Ligue 1 players who could move in the January transfer window:
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Thierry Henry is on the verge of a return to the club on a two-month loan deal from MLS side New York Red Bulls.
updated: Mon Dec 19 2011 12:49:00
CNN's Pedro Pinto talks to Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny about the Euro 2012 finals in his native Poland.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has conceded the London club's bid to win a first English Premier League title since 2004 is over following Sunday's 1-0 defeat at table-topping Manchester City.
Manchester City retained their leadership of the English Premier League as a David Silva goal settled a high-class clash against Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium Sunday.
Five things we learned from the weekend's action in the Barclays Premier League.
Five things we learned from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League.
LONDON -- Robin van Persie is sitting next to a Dutch journalist in an otherwise deserted cinema, watching images of himself as a young boy flickering on the big screen. He looks pensive, then smiles as he sees each goal: at 13, dribbling past three defenders and rounding the goalkeeper for Excelsior¹s youth team; at 15, much taller, scoring in a Rotterdam youth game in a similar way; and then, three years later, playing for the Feyenoord first team.
Five things we learned from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League:
LONDON -- Roman Weidenfeller raised his hand one final time, to acknowledge the friendly applause from the Arsenal supporters. The Dortmund keeper and his teammates were politely clapped off the Emirates pitch after Arsenal's 2-1 win. Maybe the crowd sensed that Jürgen Klopp's young team had tried its best out there, that it had indeed "given all" as the 44-year-old manager put it. The Gunners supporters clearly enjoyed seeing such a young, committed side, eager to run and toil even when the game was long lost.
Dutch striker Robin van Persie continued his superb scoring streak this season, netting another double as Arsenal beat German champions Borussia Dortmund 2-1 in the European Champions League to clinch top spot in Group F and secure qualification for the last 16.
A Robin van Persie hat-trick earned Arsenal a thrilling 5-3 win over their west London rivals Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the English Premier League on Saturday.
When Manchester City beat Tottenham Hotspur 5-1 at White Hart Lane at the end of August, Manchester United did what they have been doing for half a century and eclipsed the majesty of that performance by beating Arsenal 8-2. If these had been four anonymous teams, it might perhaps have been rather easier to acknowledge what at the time was barely a puff of dust on the horizon: that it had been City's performance that had been more impressive, that the "noisy neighbors" might perhaps have arrived.
Robin van Persie scored early and late in the game to secure a 2-1 victory for his struggling Arsenal team over Sunderland at the Emirates Stadium Sunday.
Kyle Walker scored a superb second half winner as Tottenham Hotspur beat north London rivals Arsenal 2-1 at White Hart Lane Sunday for their fourth straight English Premier League victory.
Arsene Wenger was the keynote speaker at a soccer conference last year when he was asked, in a room packed with performance analysts and sporting directors from rival clubs in England and Europe, what the next innovation for coaches would be.
Five thoughts from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League ...
updated: Fri Sep 23 2011 15:57:00
Football star Theo Walcott on his new book, being a teen star and his club Arsenal's problems this season.
For once a manager might be pleased to open the newspaper and find that his team's victory is being reported first and foremost as the opposition's loss; after a hair'em scare'em 4-3 win over Arsenal on Saturday, Blackburn Rovers manager Steve Kean will be glad of all the kudos and none of the forensic examination. Before kickoff, a couple of hundred supporters had marched to the ground in monsoon weather calling for him to be sacked, and the ludicrously thrilling match was the second thing to rain on their parade.
Five thoughts from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League ...
Arsenal's sorry start to the English Premier League campaign continued Saturday with a shock 4-3 defeat at lowly Blackburn.
Is there ever such a thing as a fair result? Borussia Dortmund will probably feel aggrieved that it didn't beat Arsenal despite a welter of chances, and yet the equalizer that ensured a 1-1 draw two minutes from time was freakish, Ivan Perisic's dipping volley flying into the top corner as Kieran Gibbs headed clear a free-kick. By that stage, Arsenal had every reason to feel aggrieved, having defended securely for 75 minutes. In that sense, if both parties felt simultaneously frustrated and relieved, 1-1 probably was the right result.
Dalglish has a sip of the managerial whine
The summer transfer window in the Premier League slammed shut on Wednesday night after the usual deadline day shopping carnage. According to Deloitte, the management consultants, whose figures, it must be said, include an element of guesswork; the 20 clubs spent a total of £485 million ($786M). That is a leap of 33 percent on last summer. The total was below the £500 million ($811M) spent in the summer of 2008, but the £225 million ($365M) spent in January make this a record year. Five clubs, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United each spent more than £50 million ($81M) and between them accounted for 66 percent of the total spend. Of course, research shows that the truest predictor of a club's success is not its transfer spending but its wage bill. In that, the three clubs that don't seem to care what wages they pay, City, United and Chelsea, have a clear edge.
Five things we learned from Saturday's action in the Barclays Premier League:
In 1968, Manchester City won the league and a few days later Manchester United won the European Cup. In May, City won the FA Cup; later the same afternoon, United won the league. It was typical of the relationship between the Manchester clubs that after City had thumped one north London team 5-1 on Sunday, United went and thrashed the other one 8-2. Of more concern to the Premier League and football in general, though, is what Sunday said about the relationship between the Manchester clubs and everybody else.
The new Barclays Premier League season is upon us and the teams are jockeying for position on the starting line. Here are my thoughts on how the pack is likely to break up this season: the top six, the bottom five, and the tight bunch in the middle. The clubs are not necessarily listed in order but I'm tipping Manchester United to take the title:
Mid-August and Cesc Fabregas still hasn't left the building. He didn't leave it for Malaysia, he didn't leave it for China and he didn't leave it for Germany. Most importantly of all, he hasn't yet left it for Barcelona. Just two days until the start of the Premier League season, four days until yet another clásico is upon us, and we wait for a final resolution. The good news is that there has been progress -- this looks set to be finally over soon. Very soon.
The way that people are talking about Arsenal this summer, you'd think something terrible had happened at The Emirates. There is ominous talk of an "exodus" from the dressing room, dark suggestions that Arsene Wenger can no longer attract "world-class" players and, for the fifth year in a row, the nodding consensus that a top-four finish may be too much to ask for. It's a little odd because, while it's hard to ignore the fact that last season ended with all the euphoria of a Leonard Cohen poetry reading, Arsenal is hardly a club in crisis.
Samir Nasri has always known his own value, and that sense will be keener now than ever before. The midfielder, voted France's Player of the Year for 2010, has one more year left on his Arsenal contract, and is the subject of serious interest from Premier League champions Manchester United and, reportedly, Manchester City. His dilemma: should he stay or go?
Thoughts on the weekend's action in the Barclays Premier League:
There's no doubt that all eyes are focused on Sunday's big game in the Barclays Premier League when Chelsea travels to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United.
Before he scored the first two goals in Real Madrid's 4-0 Champions League win over Tottenham Hotspur last week, Emmanuel Adebayor did what he does before every game. He thought of all the people that had written him off. It's not a short list. It starts with the friends of his parents back in Kodjoviakope, a Togolese town on the border of Ghana, who said he should not play soccerl, includes coaches at Metz and Monaco who criticized his attitude, and takes in senior figures at Arsenal and Manchester City, with whom he has not always seen eye-to-eye.
In May 1998, Sunderland lost on penalties to Charlton Athletic in the Championship playoff final. Peter Reid's side had ended the season on 90 points, the highest total not to be promoted automatically, and had three times held the lead in the final only to draw 4-4. It could have been a devastating defeat, the sort that sends a team spinning into gloom, cursing its luck and wondering whether destiny will always be against it. A few minutes after the final whistle, though, the center forward Niall Quinn was interviewed on the pitch. He was magnificently uplifting, acknowledging the setback and calling on everybody connected with the club to use the disappointment as a spur to promotion the following season. Sunderland could have sulked; instead it came out that August bristling with purpose and racked up a record 105 points, beating every other team in the division at least once to win the title by 17 clear points.
Tactical observations from Champions League action this week:
Arsene Wenger told Pep Guardiola to congratulate Massimo Busacca, but the Barcelona coach was more interested in congratulating his players. The Swiss referee might have been important during Barcelona's 3-1 victory against Arsenal in a Champions League match Tuesday at the Camp Nou. He might even have been decisive. But Guardiola preferred to believe it was his players who were the difference. The trouble is, on their own, they might not have been. With Busacca, they won the match, eliminated Arsenal and advanced to the quarterfinals; without him, we will never know if they would have done so. The doubts will not go away. Nor will the anger and the accusations.
Last time Arsenal visited Camp Nou, it was on the receiving end of a 4-1 beating. This time Barcelona needs only to win 1-0, and Javier Mascherano told reporters this week that he and his teammates will play to win by as many as they can. Arsenal, though, has the incentive of a 2-1 advantage from the first leg to defend and captain Cesc Fabregas "90 percent" likely to make the trip.
Mathieu Flamini owes his AC Milan captain Gennaro Gattuso a debt of gratitude. So outrageous was Gattuso's behavior in the first leg of Milan's 0-1 Champions League Round of 16 tie against Tottenham Hotspur -- when he first slapped and then head-butted the visitors' assistant coach Joe Jordan, for which he landed a five-match ban -- that Flamini¹s own moment of madness was mentioned only in passing.
Thoughts on the weekend's action in the Barclays Premier League:
Expectation took such a hard beating this week that at one point, concerned neighbors Custom and Destiny must have thought about calling the police. It wouldn't have taken them long to track down the assailants to North London, where Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have each emerged from the first leg of their Champions League matches with a massively against-the-odds lead over Barcelona and AC Milan respectively. Key in both victories was the fact that both teams packed a punch in central midfield.
Observations from Champions League action involving English clubs this week:
It's a sign of how far Alex Song has come in his career that the kid who was once excited to meet France's one-cap wonder Frederic Nee in the Bastia changing-room, can now laugh at the prospect of facing the most prolific strike-force in Europe in the Champions League Round of 16 next week.
Five things we learned from Saturday's "action" in the Premier League:
Reflecting on the midweek mayhem in the Barclays Premier League:
Formations are neutral; it is their application that gives them positive and negative qualities. Arsenal and Manchester City both played a base 4-3-3 at the Emirates in a 0-0 draw on Wednesday, but their interpretations of the system could hardly have been more different as Arsenal first dominated and was then frustrated by City's resolution.
The sacking season is upon us. In the past couple of weeks, Newcastle has fired Chris Hughton and Blackburn Rovers has dismissed Sam Allardyce. It's difficult to believe that at least one more chairman won't mark the turn of the year by pulling the trigger -- Hughton and Allardyce were in mid-table, after all. West Ham's Avram Grant must be nervously running a finger inside his shirt collar.
Past performance might not be a guarantee of future results, but it is a pretty good guide to how Arsenal will get on. Since the beginning of 2009, it has played 11 games against Manchester United and Chelsea, losing 10 and drawing one, and even that was in a game United needed only to draw to seal the title. That narrative of Arsenal's failure merged on Monday (in a 1-0 loss to United) with the narrative of United's season so far: Sir Alex Ferguson's side has now gone a club record 16 games unbeaten from the start of the season, and once again it got the result without playing especially well.
Stomachs in North London have hosted colonies of butterflies this week: tomorrow brings the first league derby of the season, the reopening of hostilities proper for 2010-11. It may lack the nationalist color of El Clasico, the sectarian edge of the Old Firm derby or even the historical class friction of Milan's derby della Madonnina -- the North London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham (Saturday, 7:45 a.m. ET) makes do with stout territorial posturing -- but this is a 123-year-old matchup that still sets supporters' senses aquifer.
ABOARD UNITED FLIGHT 4962 FROM MADRID TO WASHINGTON D.C. -- Lots of fun stuff going on in Planet Fútbol this week--mine and the world at large--so let's crank out a Mailbag. Ready, go!
Thoughts on the weekend's action in the Barclays Premier League:
Notes from the weekend in the Premier League:
The timing couldn't have been worse. On Saturday morning, the newspapers were full of the story that Arsenal had posted a record profit of 56 million pounds ($89 million) for the year ending May 31. By Saturday evening, everybody was wondering why the club hadn't spent any of it on a goalkeeper. Even worse, the same afternoon as Manuel Almunia was enduring his nightmare against West Bromwich Albion, 10 miles to the southwest, Mark Schwarzer was producing a string of fine saves to help Fulham to a 0-0 draw against Everton.
Seventeen years and seventeen days ago, I fell in love in the back of a cab. I was in a London black cab on my way to Wembley Stadium, which is like riding a rickshaw to the Great Wall of China or a camel to the Great Pyramid of Giza. That is to say, I was traveling to a postcard icon in a postcard icon when I fell in love with soccer.
Watch the television coverage of any English Premier League game between a side near the top of the table and a side near the bottom and you can guarantee that before kickoff one of the pundits will say something along these lines: "The great thing about this league is that on any given day anybody can beat anybody." Except it's not true, not anymore.
There is always something to enjoy about a World Cup, and South Africa was no exception. But the verdict this summer was that we'd all seen better. So much of the soccer was mind-numbingly defensive and the final was so teeth-grindingly short of the occasion. We emerged from the tournament nursing something like a hangover, squinting and groggy, with a bit of a thirst on.
Tactical notes from the first weekend of the Premier League season:
What can preseason friendlies really tell us? Anybody watching Arsenal in the Emirates Cup over the weekend would have concluded that it holds the ball well, tends to overcomplicate attacks instead of fully exploiting possession and has a mystifying weakness at the back that can transform a game it is controlling into something senselessly nervous. But we knew that already.
By the time defender Thomas Vermaelen had played just four games for Arsenal after last year's $13 million move from the Dutch club Ajax, coach Arsene Wenger already knew he had a bargain on his hands.
After two months at SI.com, I think I'm just about due a Mailbag column. The first thing to tackle is the mountain of mail I received after picking my Premier League Team of the Season, particularly on the absence of one man: Cesc Fabregas.
With the English Premier League season complete, it's time for the critics to scratch out their reviews. Picking a team of the season is both straightforward and unfathomably difficult; it's impossible to come up with a quibble-resistant list, but here's my squad:
With the final day's Premier League action looming, it had seemed appropriate to engineer a way to have dramatic music boom out at you as you clicked on this page. But after Tottenham went and beat Manchester City on Wednesday to secure at least fourth place and a berth in the Champions League, bringing resolution to one suspenseful storyline, we didn't bother.
With just a few matches remaining of this Premiership season, the time has come for a spot of deliberation, cogitation and digestion. What's happened since last August to confound the surest of expectations and put paid to the sincerest of hopes? Quite a bit, is the simple answer; this season has provided a lasting ride for more than half of a league that has spent several years fending off accusations of soul-crushing predictability. Things we didn't expect:
How the crowing must be reverberating around London's N17 postcode, the home of Tottenham Hotspur and 36,000 fans who don't know whether to stock their medicine cabinet with uppers or downers these days. One minute they're having to cope with defeat to Sunderland and a muted reverse at the hands of Portsmouth in the FA Cup semifinal, the next they've secured spine-tingling 2-1 wins over beloved neighbors Arsenal and old chums Chelsea.
John Terry described it as "the ultimate accolade" after winning it in Chelsea's title-winning 2005 season; Cesc Fabregas was proud to claim a "very prestigious trophy" after bagging the young player title in 2008. To English football's elite, it is the decoration they crave most, the recognition of their peers. So why is the Professional Footballers' Association's (PFA) latest batch of shortlists for its end-of-season awards so underwhelming?
Cesc Fabregas's late equalizer at the Emirates last week set up a scintillating Champions League quarterfinal second leg against Barcelona at he Nou Camp on Tuesday. Barcelona will be massive favourites, even without two-goal Zlatan Ibrahimovic (out with a calf injury), especially since Arsenal lost the influential Fabregas and Andrei Arshavin to injury in that first tie. Samir Nasri and Theo Walcott are pegged as the key men going forward for Arsenal, who just need to grab a goal and then defend like hell. No mean feat, and one that might be made slightly more difficult a task by the absence of central defender William Gallas, also injured last week.
There comes a point in each Premier League season where talk previously disregarded as wild speculation accumulates enough gravitas to be worth considering. And that time is about now.
updated: Thu Apr 01 2010 17:54:00
CNN's Alex Thomas preview the European Champions League first leg quarterfinal where Arsenal take on Barcelona.
As a lone infantryman wistfully bugles a lamenting Last Post into the chill twilight air, Team Limey stands forlornly on the battlements of Castle Limey contemplating our final EPL column for SI.com. Together, over a last pint of ale, let's relive some highlights from our five years here. And what a five years it's been.
On the streets of Manchester, England, they now talk of Wayne Rooney as being the White Pelé. Well, those in red shirts make those premature comparisons; those in blue still draw less kind comparisons between the Manchester United striker and Shrek.
OK, so since there isn't much going on in the next few months -- Champions League coming back, Copa Libertadores, domestic leagues going down to the wire and that thing we call the World Cup -- it might make sense to get a jump on what could well be one of the stories of the summer: the future of Cesc Fàbregas.
Less than eight weeks ago, after his team's 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea, the howls of frustration against Arsène Wenger reached a crescendo. It didn't help that, in addition to losing to Arsenal's North London rivals, the bile thrown at the Frenchman was accentuated by his continued stubbornness in persevering with youth and not spending big money like his rivals around him.
updated: Fri Jan 22 2010 06:16:00
CNN's U.S.-based Arsenal fan iReporter tells CNN why Arsenal are a model football club.
It was a dejected Team Limey that curled up with its warm milks last Saturday night. The closest thing to a shock that day from the 23 FA Cup third-round knockout matches was third-tier Millwall holding second-tier Derby to a 1-1 draw at home. We were as bored as a monk's todger.
Last weekend's English Premier League results had a season-defining air about them, with the destination of the trophy suddenly looking much clearer and the race for the remaining Champion League places looking more open than ever.
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