Rex wrote:
Nah, the process really. I mean, Wenger said about 3 weeks ago he expects to sign a CB, and we had obviously already identified Mustafi at that point and made contact. We want to buy, they want to sell and don't count on him for next season, so, what is taking so long? How much time can it reasonably take to reach an agreement? We saw, for instance, in the infamous trolley dash week how we were actually able to get things done quickly. I may be all wrong here, but to it seems that we are more often than not extremely cumbersome when it comes to closing deals.
The honest answer is no one really knows, no matter how much they claim. Particularly in relation to timelines. For all we know, the club could have been in contact with Valencia over the transfer since January! If you're going to base the timeline from the date the news was leaked to the public, you'll probably have a warped view of things.
Fundamentally though, we know that the club will prioritise a favourable fee over timely acquisition of the player itself - or in some cases - risk losing the player altogether. That attitude it always going to lead to protracted transfer sagas. Comparing it to the window where we signed Mertesacker, Arteta, Yossi Benayoun and Andre Santos isn't really fair since the profile of those players were not particularly significant. In fact Arteta still had to take a wage cut to join us. And then you have the clubs themselves, some clubs are a pain to deal and some aren't. I suspect Valencia, now cash rich with the sale of Gomes to Barcelona, are not in any particular rush to sell a player until they have a replacement. They certainly don't need the money.
We did however sign Ozil quite quickly once he was made available but in that instance both clubs wanted the transfer to go through quickly and player himself was reasonably open to playing for Wenger based on groundwork that was laid previously.
