Let's ignore the misplaced offense taken by Alan Pardew over a football club making a transfer bid for a football player earlier this week. The real question looming over Arsenal’s move to obtain the services of Yohan Cabayeis whether the Newcastle man is actually the player to significantly improve Arsene Wenger’s side.
No sooner had the news of the bid broken on Monday afternoon than the various ‘Panic Cabaye’ jokes were doing the rounds on Twitter.
However, the midfielder’s new-found nickname was more than just a convenient pun: With Saturday’s defeat by Aston Villa serving as a vindication for the longstanding and fiery discontent amongst Arsenal’s fanbase, Wenger’s sudden interest in his countryman certainly had an air of forcedness about it.
Would Cabaye really be a signing that would change the Gunners’ fortunes?
Firstly, anyone who believes that Arsenal’s current squad – especially its midfield – isn’t in need of urgent and abundant reinforcement is either wholly deluded or EmmanuelFrimpong. But what it lacks is not a probing passer like Cabaye, but a muscular, authoritative and positionally savvy presence.
In Mikel Arteta, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Tomas Rosicky and Santi Cazorla,Wenger’s engine room is well-stocked with tidy, tiny ball-players, but urgently short of any real destroyers – if variety is the spice of life, then Arsenal’s midfield is vegetable korma.
It’s hardly a unique observation, but the squad needs someone who will give their full and unrequited devotion to screening a back five that, despite a late-season flourish a few months back, never needs much temptation to disengage their brains and wallop the self-destruct button. In this sense, Cabaye’s acquisition would not appear to solve any of Arsenal’s most inherent problems.
