The 'hoff is Off

"Amaury will be leaving after failing to make an impact during his one season at the Club. The Portuguese Under-21 international played most of his football in Neil Banfield’s Reserves but did make four substitute appearances for the first team."

- Arsenal.com, on one of our eight delisted players

Amaury Bischoff's signing was a strange one. Okay, he arrived on a free and didn't cost us much. And he had talent. But he was injury-prone, and had only featured once for Werder Bremen. Even Wenger admitted that signing him was a punt.

His year with the Arse was a bit underwhelming. He made played a bit in the Reserves and he got a few apperances in the senior team, but didn't really do anything to impress. I think he had four appearances for the team? It's saying quite a bit that he couldn't break into the first team, especially since we were playing Denilson-Song for quite a large section of the season.

So why did it happen? Why did Bischoff want to leave Werder Bremen?

We're talking about a strong German club with good prospects. They won the league recently. They offered him a contract extension, and obviously rated him. He hadn't played much senior football beforehand, and the sensible thing would've been to stay an extra year, get over the injuries and focus on winning a spot in the first team.

And yet, when the Arsenal came calling, he decided to jump ship and try his luck at one of the biggest clubs in the strongest league in the world. The jump between the Bundesliga and the Premier League is substantial. The jump between reserves football in the Bundesliga and first team football in the Premier League is even greater.

And yet, he decided to do it. He decided to take a punt, and he wanted to go for the exotic. He gambled on the chance that his potential was good enough, his body was strong enough, and his talent could develop fast enough to cope with the demands of the Premier League. I suppose it's one of those situations when you're either going to try, or you're going to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been.

I supposed he's pretty gutted at the moment. The chance of playing for a club like the Arsenal comes along once or twice in your career. I always wonder what happens to players when they get delisted. It can't be easy bouncing back. I understand that he's fielding inquiries from a host of Portuguese clubs, so at least he's got a back-up plan.

Good luck, Amaury.

Werder nobody signs for Arsenal

"As leftfield signings go, this has the potential to be Wenger's greatest coup yet, on the proviso that Bischoff turns out to be as good as the Arsenal manager hopes he is."

- Sam Wallace, the Independent

Amaury Bischoff looks strikingly similar to an actor who looks like Jim Carrey. I can't remember his name, but I think he does comedies as well. Oh wait, he's that guy from the sitcom "Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place"?

Anyway, Sammy Wallace has nailed it. Bischoff is the result of Wenger believing his own press. Buying promising, highly-rated youngsters (e.g. Reyes, Cesc and Nasri) is getting old. Buying stalled starlets from big, big clubs (e.g. Vieira and Henry) is boring. Buying twenty-something superstars from middling leagues (e.g. Pires and Eduardo) is playing it way too safe.

Instead, he's going for a challenge.

He's going to turn an obscure, half-French, injury-prone, uncapped Portugeezer into the greatest player since Vieira. Forget 3 million for Vieira. Forget 500,000 for Anelka. How about NOTHING for Bischoff? Oh yeah.

Does anyone have any idea how good this guy is? I want to believe. I suspect he's pretty good. Werder were desperate to keep him, Portugal wase livid when he didn't front for the U-20 World Cup, and Wenger, by all accounts, is a pretty good judge of a player's potential.

In other news, Tottenham will pay us 8 million pounds for the honour of having an ex-Arsenal player in their side. Thanks, David Bentley. That'll cover Wenger's transfer expenses for the next decade.