OBAFEMI MARTINS scored 17 goals in a rubbish team in his first season in the Premiership.
Born in Lagos, Martins joined Reggiana at 15 and then Inter Milan, scoring 37 goals in 105 domestic matches for Inter, who last August sold him for £10 million to Newcastle, where he signed a five year contract.He’s 23 and has a £13 million buy-out clause.
But he’s a Nigerian 23, so he could be any age.
Can this Martins-to-Arsenal story be true? Does Arsene really want him?
Transfer speculation is a discredited art form but I have to admit it’s infectious. Certain stories keep coming up and you can’t help speculating yourself, if you rate the player.
Martins is explosive, tenacious, super-fast, a one-man whirlwind. Small and stocky like Tevez but more direct, more of a goalscorer, more of a finisher, more of a born No.9
Martins might be too direct and get offside a lot but he would be Ian Wright offside, not Thiery Henry walking around offside.
If Arsene had Eduardo and Martins, he would play Robin van Persie wide right, where Marco van Basten uses him for Holland.
Would that work at club level? Well, Arsenal are an attacking team with an attacking coach who likes to score first and then score two more.
When he had Anelka, Overmars and Bergkamp, Arsene terrified the opposition with fast passing and blistering pace and killed them off with purple passages of bang!bang!bang!
But since 2004 he has had to sell to buy because of the huge cost of the new stadium, and the team has been younger and weaker, wasting the ability of Fabregas to see a killer pass.
In 2006-2007 Arsenal lacked firepower because Walcott was too young and Ljungberg was too old and his best goalscorers were crocked at the same time.
That meant that Arsene had to start two consecutive league games in March with a front two of powderpuff Aliadiere and stumblebum Julio Baptista, which he knew was pathetic and ridiculous. We all knew that was pathetic and ridiculous. We tried to pretend it wasn’t happening and we never want to see anything as feeble as that again.
Football is about scoring more goals than the other team, so you need firepower. If you don’t have firepower, you will not win enough games.
It seems unlikely that Martins will join Arsenal but the reason I’m considering it here is that Arsene loves power football and Martins is a power player. Arsene wants to add power to his team this year and next year and the year after. He loves power. Maybe he loves power too much but I remain convinced that his stylish power football is what made Sir Alex pay big money for the thrilling pace of Rooney and Ronaldo, selling his old-fashioned Dutch No.9, Ruud van Nastelrooy.
Power football worked for Arsenal and it worked for Manchester United too.
AT CHELSEA, the two main men are Drogba and Essien and Malouda is the only player in the world who is friends with them both and has played with them both. He played with Drogba at Guincamp and with Essien at Lyon .Malouda is more reliable and durable than the mercurial Robben.
Basically, Malouda is a £13 milllion investment in Drogba and Essien.
This will be Mourinho’s last season and Chelsea will be like Porto with muscles, grinding out points with safe tactics.
Chelsea had no width last season and they will need width to regain the title and win the so-called Champions League, which can be won by clubs who finished fourth the previous season.
FERNANDO TORRES has never played in a good team in his life, so he hopes Liverpool are a good team.
Torres has star quality and will make long runs for Gerrard’s passes, but I reckon Arsenal’s Eduardo will score more goals than him.
NANI & ANDERSON are players for 2008-2009, I think. Sir Alex has spent £32 million on inexperience.
His best signing is Hargreaves, who will add stability to United. But he’s not as good as Mascherano.
THE CARLOS TEVEZ relegation affair is the biggest farce in the history of English football and it gets more farcical every day.
Kia Joorabchian is now threatening to give Sheffield United’s lawyers vital documents to support their case for a points deduction that would have relegated West Ham.
Wigan chairman Dave Whelan called last week for Premiership chief executive Richard Scudamore to “consider his position.” That is hardly surprising, since almost every schoolboy in the UK knew that Tevez and Mascherano were owned by MSI, an investment company which may contain Russian money.
Scudamore was offered a huge job in the USA, where he is building a house in Cape Cod. But Scudamore turned it down because he is so committed to the EPL, whose 20 chairmen pay him £2 million a year and gave him a £2 million bonus after he negotiated the big TV deal.
The job was head of IMG worldwide, the Mark McCormack organisation. IMG have mega-massive flash offices in Chiswick.