So, it’s a done deal. English Premier League club Arsenal have sold striker Robin Van Persie to Manchester United mere days before the start of the English Premier League season. The former Arsenal captain has agreed to join United on a four year deal worth around 24 million pounds. Van Persie had plyed his trade for North Londoners Arsenal for many years, but he was disappointed with the lack of silverware the club had managed to grab recently. In July, he issued an official statement that he would not be signing on the dotted line again with Arsenal with one year left on his contract. This statement came on the back of a 2011-12 Premier League season in which Van Persie banged in 30 goals for the club. Needless to say, the interest of football managers everywhere was piqued.
But a number of clubs failed to meet Arsenal’s valuation for their club captain. Meanwhile Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, adamant to avoid the unsteady start to last year’s Premier League campaign when he lost the midfield brillance of Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona and Samir Nasri to Manchester City, started shoring up the ranks immediately.
Impressively, Wenger raided Lukas Podolski, Olivier Giroud and most recently Santi Carzola from other European teams and there was some mild speculation that this might have been enough to keep van Persie around. Evidently it wasn’t.
Manchester United haven’t had the best of summers. The loss of the Premier League championship in the dying seconds was magnified by sobering news emanating from the boardroom. The ownership of the Glazers and Feguson’s loyalty to them, not to mention their lukewarm debut on the New York stock exchange has generated more interest and hand-wringing from fans than anything they’ve done in strict footballing terms over the last few months. Their lack of transfer activity, despite the addition of attacking midfielder Shinji Kagawa, up until this point was also going to be a big question mark heading into a new season. But Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s personal intervention to pry Van Persie from his occasional wine-drinking buddy Arsene Wenger may turn out to be his cagiest bit of business for a while, ushering away the off-season discontent in one fell swoop.
It will also send the rivalry between the two big Premier League Manchester clubs to a new level.
After all, Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini, fresh off snatching the Premier League title from Manchester United’s grasp in the dying seconds of the season, was eager to get Van Persie’s signature himself. RVP would have been a ‘nice to have’ addition on a team that boasts a veritable feast of world class strikers in Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Mario Balotelli. Edin Dzeko and the still-on-the-books Emmanuel Adebayor aren’t half bad either.
Ironically, Mancini’s inability to rid himself of his embarassment of attacking riches may have been the deciding factor in where Van Persie ended up. While Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez are fine players for United, they don’t represent the same kind of obstruction to Van Persie’s playing time. The incisive goal threat the prolific van Persie provides could mean a potentially explosive partnership up front with United’s Wayne Rooney.
With all due respect to the other Premier League teams, the competition between the two Manchester clubs was already going to be a focal point going into this Premier League season. With the Van Persie deal to United now a reality, that excitement will reach fever pitch and the season hasn’t even started yet.
