He's amazing," Santos told ESPN Brasil.
"Besides being a great person, he is also one of my best friends at Arsenal. He is a guy who has given me full support.

"He is very intelligent on the pitch. He smashed the Premier League.
"It helped Arsenal get to where we are, in the Champions League spots, and I have no doubt that he will be one of the stars of Euro 2012.

"He has been at the club eight years and this was his best season.
"Sometimes, a player is interested in getting to know other teams and of course, playing well, he has attracted interest from many other teams. Of course your mind is affected.

"He is currently fully focused on the Euros and then, after, he can talk about whether he wants to stay with Arsenal."

Jeez
For the moment that just about blows my hopes that Robin will stay.

http://footytweets.com/arsenal/news/685827

We have our replacement, no one can accuse Wenger of not being pro-active this time.

are you being sarcastic? Because that's actually true. The Podolski buy was at the right time.

No Tony!!!! It is a trick!

Has to be to make sense...

y va marquer wrote:

Jeez
For the moment that just about blows my hopes that Robin will stay.

Why? No revelations that I could make out.

Hmm. I would've figured your female intuition would tell you SOMETHING Tim...

on Robin van Persie…
Robin sat down with us at the end of the season and we had a good discussion. What we agreed at that meeting was that we would keep all the discussions we had over the summer to ourselves and make announcements when it is the right time. We have to respect the fact we have agreed to keep that among ourselves. Robin is clearly focused on the Euros at the moment and we wish him well, and at the right time we will make the right announcements. But at the moment we are not saying anything.

Gazidis answering the question without answering the question.

I think he did. Robin's gone. There would be zero benefit for either him or the club in keeping a contract extension secret over the Euros. He probably just wants the fans off his back while he's playing the tournament.

that gazidis comment is ominous. it wouldn't make sense for the club to delay any good news.

up to this point i haven't cared much, but the embarassment of repeatedly losing the captain of the club begins to grate.

Klaus wrote:

There would be zero benefit for either him or the club in keeping a contract extension secret over the Euros.

Gazza M wrote:

it wouldn't make sense for the club to delay any good news.

That's not what Gazidis said or suggested, although the way it's been written could be confusing.

could be interpreted as positive or negative, or that there's just nothing to announce at this point. i'm on the pessimistic side of the fence in this case, given our track record.

The way it's written could suggest that they've had their discussion and will announce the results of that discussion at a later date (after the Euro's).

What he actually said was more like "we will keep the contents of all our discussions over the summer secret until we have something to announce".

My guess is he is waiting to see if Spain come calling, if not he'll sign.

So they met at the end of the season and agreed to postpone discussions until after the Euros.
Both parties have taken a vow of silence on the issue until negotiations have ended and a decision has been made.

The fact that neither party is likely to leak or reveal anything more for the time being means we're now free to project our own fears (or hopes) into the empty space that they've created.

My current take is that it's unlikely that Wenger and co are going to go far enough as regards the contract they offer or the players they recruit.
That leaves the issue of who will buy him - genuinely don't believe he would fancy going to City, Barca for me seems more his style.

Most summers follow a predictable script these days … it doesn't surprise me that nothing is resolved.

Van Persie is probably acting under advice from his agent/team to hold out and use his clout put the burner under the club. There's no reasonable first offer we could've made that they would've accepted up front (including all the figures of £130­–170k / week that were bandied around).

Even if he (hypothetically) had no intention of leaving, he has to make it clear he's listening to other offers and push us towards the window deadline in an attempt to maximise.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the supposed media curfew during the Euros is broken by some stunt or other. Le sigh. These transfer sagas have a way of getting under your skin. The sad thing about hardball negotiations is the player always discovers he has a price.

I think he'll either stay or go.

If he goes there will be trouble.

If we were run out of the top four by losing our best player quarrelling over £10m (because remember that's the rough value of £50k/week over four years) it'd be an absolute fucking disgrace of mismanagement.

If he jerks us off all summer and then wants to leave come August, then I'll hate him more than Cole, Ade and Spurs combined.