Aug 26
Is Arjen Robben worth a punt? Here are some stats
The Arjen Robben story continues to gather steam, especially now that Wesley Sneijder has reportedly agreed a five year deal with Inter.
Robben, best known for being a crock — aside from being among the few creative outlets in a Chelsea team — also shone during his spell in Real Madrid. He is on the right side of 26, in keeping with our policy to sign ‘younger players’. However questions need to be asked on whether we need another creative winger instead of a dominant central midfielder. There is little doubting Robben’s ability and credentials. However, we must keep his injury history, what it means for our wingers, namely Nani and Valencia who’ve been promising and the price for the player. If this ever were to happen, Nani would be most worried because he currently occupies the left wing. [Robben has also been known to function as a right winger who can cut in, but in this current United side, that would sound contradictory to Ferguson's pre-season pronouncements.]
Robben would be a fantastic addition, if he can stay fit. [Keeping in mind we've signed Owen, this will be another potential crock we're signing.] But it won’t really address the key issues with the side.
Here’s a summary of his appearance records for Chelsea and Real Madrid [inclusive of league, cup and European appearances]. It must be noted that was one of Mourinho’s untouchables which meant he invariably started if fit (as well as a sure starter for Real Madrid when fit.)
Chelsea
04/05
Started 17
Sub 9
Total: 26
05/06
Started 31
Sub: 9
Total: 40
06/07
Started: 24
Sub: 13
Total: 37
Real Madrid
07/08
Started: 14
Sub: 12
Total: 26
08/09
Started: 30
Sub: 5
Total: 35
Update: Guillem Balague, who professes intimate knowledge of transfers pertaining to La Liga (although I’ve found most of his claims rather dodgy), says Real have received no bids for Robben:
As far as a move for Arjen Robben is concerned, at this moment in time, Real Madrid have received no offers for the Dutch winger from Manchester United – however, the player`s agent has been in touch with the Spanish club in the last few days to clarify Madrid`s asking price, should another club be about to make a bid.
Related items from Red Rants:
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- Ribery, Sanchez, Silva or Eto’o? Who will replace Ronaldo?!
- Sir Alex’s men for the third consecutive CL final?
- Real Cough Up Money for Wheinze | Benitez Moans and Whines
Tags: Manchester United News
Opti (541)
Stephen (479)
RedDevilEddy (459)
Craig Mc (345)
Moscow is my heaven (272)
I dont support man utd going for robben,cos his too prone to injury.
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I will definately support Robben….
On his day,he can be as good as Ronaldo( i mean can score as much)
he was the only success in the very bad ending last season for madrid…
moreover i dontlike valencia much as he is one dimensional and knows only one thing….
so with Nani on left and Robben on right,we will be having the best wingers in the premier league and they both are natural scorers also…
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He started 30 games?
So is he like Owen then? People think he’s crocked, but he still managed a fair amount of games?
If he is, I would say go for him, but then again, I have high hopes for Obertan and Ljajic. Tosic looked better recently.. Better than Park.
does this mean that Park is on the way out?
Maybe the diminutive Korean should be converted to defensive midfielder.
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@ RR – Sneijder at 15 million € is a feckin’ steal. If it was us, I’m sure it would have been 25 million.
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Anyone seen Robben playing as attacking midfielder ???
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Depends on the price. He’s certainly got loads of end product but he comes with some risk. If it were sub- 15m euro I’d say yes. But haven’t Fergie and Gill said no more signings?! Don’t we believe them
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@ NicoQB : how many clubs are there who will pay 25 million ,mate( barca will not take,chelsea dont need,liverpools have no money and Fergie is blind)???
moreover the clubs know that madrids are desperate to sell him…
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@owen: Everybody knows that we are buffoons when it comes to striking a good deal in the transfer market, especially when it comes to buying recognised talent.
We still manage to unearth the odd talent, but we are always made to pay top dollar for well-known talent. Owen was another exception, but then again he would have gone to stoke had we not come in.
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Rafael, Fabio, De Laet, Macheda, Welbeck, Brandy… They are all getting really ancient now.
High time for some new blood…
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Off the topic but the champions league group stage draw is tomorrow and ive heard that among the second seeds (we are 1st) are Juventus, Inter and Real Madrid all very tough teams, so we could be seeing Ronnie back at OT sooner than expected
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@Unitedrant: Of course we trust Fergie! After all, when has he ever lied.
Not even when he said he wouldn’t sell Ronaldo to a certain mob.
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@NicoQB: Looks like Ferguson’s taken Grognard’s “Italian football theory” in the literal sense. I haven’t seen us sign these many Italians since God knows when.
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HEs not coming, theres no more signings, lets put this to bed.
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@NicoQB: Park is hardly on the way out mate – we wish! Republik of Mankunia are talking that Park has just been given a 65,000 pounds a week contract. No bloody wonder United are in debt, when they pay fringe players like Park 65,000 quid!
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@Red Ranter: The radio are reporting now that the word of the Robben signing by United, on deadline day, is coming out of rumblings from OT itself. So we wait and see if SAF has duped us all again with another of his deadline signings
. Word is United offered 11 million for Robben. Madrid want 15 million euros. The plot thickens eh? But I can’t see the point really, when it is MF strengthening we need 
.
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I think Robben would be a great asset to United. As RR pointed out he isn’t as crocked as some people think. He’s a class player, proven in many leagues. He’s adaptable, and could interchange wings easily allowing more movement in a 4 2 4 attacking formation. He adds more potency to attack, not afraid to take on responsibility.He’d also work really well in a 4 3 3.
I like him, even years ago when he played for Chelscum, i appreciated his style.
I wouldn’t be suprised to see Fergie dip in the transfer market just once. Something tells me the wily ole Scot has a trick up his sleeve to reveal to us all.Whether it’ll work out or not we’ll soon find out! I still think we have a more pressing need for a centre midfielder, but what do i know?
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The guy is extremely good, but he is not a Ronaldo. He is more like Rooney…who is not a Ronaldo. Good he is but great he is not.
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i for one am absolutely heartbroken we didnt go in for Sneijder. what a fuck up that is. how much longer does fergie think scholes can play on for??
not into the robben deal, our squad is jam packed with wingers.
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why the fuck are we resigning Park, he is fucing worthless. Excuse my language but I really cant stand seeing him lining up for our team on a european night.
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@johnsom33: Yeah mate, my problem with Park is that I just can’t understand why every time he kicks the ball, or runs into the box, he ALWAYS falls on his arse. I mean I have really tried to understand, but it is incomprehensible. What is wrong with his balance, that he can never stay on his two feet when he is on a football pitch
.
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Is it me or am I the only person with the common sense to see that getting Robben now is not only stupid but it shows how incredibly out of touch and ridiculous the hierarchy at Old Trafford are? I come from a world of big business as well as big government and doing business like United have been doing of late would get someone sacked for sure. Please tell me why are we going after Robben now when he could have been part of the Ronaldo deal and would have been cheaper in the process? Real were so desperate for Ronaldo that if we had asked for 70 million and Robben or 65 million and Sneijder they would have done the deal right then and there. Buying him when our great window of opportunity to get him for less has passed makes no sense whatsoever and I for one know that the employers i weorked for in the past would have sacked Gill and Fergie for such a dumb ass move. It’s idiotic from a business perspective and a bit late. From a personnel perspective Robben is not what we need. We have quality wingers. What we need is a central midfielder to partner up with Fletcher. Christ I wished Fergie would wake the fuck up and see what I and millions of other knowledgeable supporters see. It’s so typical of Fergie to go fix the roof when the basement is flooding.
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@Duffstuff: I am making a 100% guaran-damn-tee that we get Real Madrid in our group.
Also, I’d much rather has Robben as an option than Park. If we can sneak in a central midfielder somewhere that’d be brilliant. Thinking like Fergie tho, he sees Gibson as the attacking midfielder we need, and I’m not completely upset by that.
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@Grognard:
. Exactamento!
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@Traverse: I’d rather have Real M in the group stage, than in the quarters or semi knock out stage. Get them in the group, and then we can’t play them again until the very late stage of the comp – right?
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Park may be paid a bit over the top for his on field performance, but as far as finances go, it’s a steal. His presence on the squad opens up so many millions in revenue from the Asian market. He’d have to be as bad as Dong to be let go…
As for Robben, I say get him. He’s still young, and is an exceptional player in my opinion. I’d say he’d get a nod over any one of our other wingers and that’s fine with me. Valencia, Nani, Park, Tosic, Obertan, Giggs, etc need to realize this isn’t day camp. They all have a role to play and if they want that role to be more important, they’re going to have to show it on the pitch. That’s why competition for spots is good. We saw what happened last year when we had an extra striker around… It created a situation where both players had to rise to the occasion and take advantage of the opportunities given to them. It means that players in the early stages of the Carling and FA cups have a strong motivation to perform well. We saw that Carlitos didn’t rise to the occasion, and now he plays for City. If you want to challenge on all fronts you can never have “too deep” of a squad. If Fergie thinks he represents good value, let’s bring him on.
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@johnsom33: As the Godfather would say, it’s nothing personal, just business. It’s got nothing to do with his value as a player because we all know he is a fucking useless muppet. This has everything to do with the stream of millions of dollars or pounds that come to United from Asia. Park is nothing more than a marketing tool to the brass but for whatever inexplicable reason, Fergie has taken a liking to the pratt. Go figure
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@Grognard,I think it’s been established long ago that Park is a decent player but is more of a marketing investment. If we had a quality player in his stead we would have more chances at trophies and the winnings would be reinvested in building the team. In Park’s case we use the marketing money. I agree with your call on him as a player but he is still worth it as far as the club in totality is concerned.
On topic though, I hope we do not go in for Robben, i think he would end up curtailing the growth of Nani : \ , Valencia and Tosic. I would rather have seen us buy Sneijder, given that we need a central mid and the price he has gone for! Robben’s a good player but I would rather see that money spent on Silva! All we can do is hope that Fergie knows best!
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@Grognard: Well actually it makes sense! Real are desperate to get rid of the dutch contingent (how they were desperate to sell Huntelaar!!! Only for 15m!!!! for the supposedly best pure striker still less than 25 yrs of age!) I predict a real firesale at the end, the likes of Robben, Schnider, VDV, RVN would move for bargains! I dont think Real would have sold Robben at a bargain when they bought Ron. They wud have demanded more than 25m. Now the price has fallen by at least 10m! Real need to sell as they can only register 25 players and they have 27 or 28 if I am not mistaken!
Thats why nobody has yet bought any of them! People are just waiting for the inevitable firesale to happen!
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@jos: We had them between a rock and a hard place. They would have given their souls for Ronaldo if we had asked for them so I really feel we missed out on an opportunity to sell him for 50 million and get three good players from them in the process. United brass lack vision and imagination when it comes to making deals. Perhaps it’s because I am from North America and the trading of players is common practice here, but I really feel that we could have stocked up with Sneijder, Robben and even Huntelaar or Drenthe and still made 50 million had they even thought of pursuing things from that angle. United is run by old men with old fashioned ideas and in this day and age, that just doesn’t cut the mustard. I love what Inter did in getting Eto and a ton of cash for the useless and highly overrated Ibrahmiovich. Now that was a deal worthy of the Grognard’s attention and respect.
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@Grognard: Agreed.. I think there will always be risk of we may doing a fire purchase rather than Real doing so called Fire sale. I mean remember last year and whole Berba scene we looked like getting Berba for around 20 mn and then suddenly Shitty came in and it went to 30 odd mn as we had to buy him and couldn’t afford to back down. Ihope we may not end up like that and enter into the bad last day bidding tussle with any one. I hope we will get at least Van der Vart as Snijder is almost gone along with Robben. I would be happy if we get them both for cut price of around 20 mn.
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First I still think the robben stories are schmuck but if there true then my two cents about the saga are:
The reason fergie never went for robben in the ronaldo deal is because he dint want him in the first place, fergie had and still has enough wingers, he probably wanted to use the money on benzema, this is just a reaction to not getting his man. Robben is undoubtedly better than most of our wingers but he’s being pushed out of madrid, so he must have some issues we don’t know about, I would keep faith in Nani and valencia, when they play together they seem to deliver.fergie’s just blind to the real plight of the team, the problem is in central mid, how he is so ignorant to this fact just suprises me, all the fans know this. He is putting his effort’s in replenishing areas he shouldn’t be concentrating on.
I never commented on the anderson topic so I’ll take this chance to say,he is obviously talented, but I think fergie knows he can be better, a lot better if he applied himself and took training seriously. He should learn from this and really put an effort in training and he will become great, or he can act like a kid and start a grudge with fergie and refuse take any lessons from this and his story will echo a familiar tone of failed south American football talents.
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@Grognard: Ronaldo deal was take it or leave it 80m offer! Nothing more! Fergie went for it. And he did good. Ronaldo (or for that matter no player) is worth 80m. We absolutely got the best deal possible! (Only Mourinho’s 40m+Eto’o betters it!)
There is no way Real would have agreed to 50m+3 players as all these players are class and in 20-25m range (in normal sense). Schnider’s real deal was 27m and he has not regressed for his price to fall that much. Same for Robben. Real hoped to sell them for profit and it was too early in the season so they didnt need that kind of firesale at that time. But now it will inevitably happen! Real need to get rid of some players. They cant have all of them as Spain liga rules allow registering only 25 players. Real have 3 or 4 extra players on their plate as of now!
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Reports coming out of Germany, is that Bayern Munich/Real Madrid are in ADVANCED talks where Robben is concerned. Bayern are very worried at their poor start to the season, and are all out to sign Robben, especially as the SUPPOSEDLY Man Utd interest can ROB them of Robben (
) so to speak. They want to tie things up BEFORE United make any intended bid. Did United intend to make a bid though, or is this another SAF smoke screen 
.
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@Craig Mc: I see you have been working on your pundit skills.
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In class, teacher talking math, me discussing football and thinking of Anderson… My day in a sentance!
So whats this I hear about Andy coming out to say he is gonna try to do better in training?! We all know about his party life, and him being lazy. But to be honest I expect a United player to spend more time than you should on the training pitch to improve your skills… My God, when a bunch of 13 year old try to improve their skilsl just for the case of becoming better for their local team, why the fuck shouldnt a guy playing for the best club try to do it. People have been bashing Andy for saying he has not improved his skills since arriving here, and because of my bias for him I have brushed it off, chooising not to believe it because it would make Andy look like a fucking stupid bitch. But now I am proved wrong, you guys are proved right and I am hugely dissapoined by Andy. 
But, because I am the forever optimist I am, and stil think Andy is the dogs bollocks I hope that this will drive him on to become a better player. Here is to Anderson becoming world class!!!
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Ferguson didn’t want Robben and Sneijdner when he agreed the £80m deal for Ronaldo. Fergusons target then was Benzema. £80m sounds a pretty good deal to me.
I’m not convinced we are in for Robben or Sneijder. But as we move towards the deadline they will become cheaper as Madrid look to offload. I’m pretty sure Madrid would have wanted more than 15m euros for Robben back in June.
As for the midfield, we have Fletcher,Carrick,Scholes and hopefully Gibson and Anderson will get more starts this season. I think Ferguson is keeping the faith that Hargreaves will return, which would solve all our problems without spending a fortune on well who exactly?
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@Gubby: I was listening to SAF talking in MUTV interview about players. He said, the amazing thing is, we have about 5 great players about to come through from the reserves, and they are all midfielders
. Perhaps that’s why he isn’t looking for MF players. Sounds like he might mean it, when he says that he intends giving the players on staff opportunities to prove themselves.
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@Craig Mc: Buddy if this what he is saying then prima facia its fine. And then in that case i would support the cause and would say that we don’t need a defender we are going to go with kids this season. But the problem is the old man has not shown any signs of giving any of youngsters any chance to prove their metal. I mean Scholes, Giggs and Red Nev have played more than Gibson, Fabio, Macheda and company. So, no matter what ever he will say i will have my reaservation on this until I see this happening for the no. of games consistently.
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@Onkar: we don’t need a defender** Midfeilders**
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@Grognard: Maybe now you can agree that management has no vision? There was never a roadmap for life without Ronaldo. Hell, there was not even a roadmap for this is what we need and these are who we might target. I get the impression that our “talent scouts” pitch up at OT when their money runs dry, pitch some youngster thru some amazing marketing schemes, and management says, “That’s it! That’ the missing link, the missing piece to our puzzle. A guy like Tosic is exactly what we need. We need to sign him now in January”. And then he takes about 2 years getting into the team?
I’ve always rated Robben. In fact, I always dreamt of United signing him ever since his move from Chelsea. The fact that we might be going in for him now, just smacks of ideocracy. I seriously doubt Fergie will allow that perception to go through. Not only will it indicate that management has no clue wrt transfer, It will show a lack of confidence in the existing wingers. It will send the message that Fergie don’t trust any of them. Unfortunately, we will all fall for the resulting PR statements like, we’ve been monitoring the situation for a while now… we wanted to see what other clubs will do… we wanted to make sure we don’t get caught in a bidding war… excellent player for good value at these inflated prices… provide us a different option… etc.
Our management are not the most intelligent people, but I doubt they will make such a stupid move.
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@jos: Madrid would have given Robben away for free. THAT’s how desperate they were for Ronaldo. We had the biggest trump card in modern footballing history, and we screwed ourselves.
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@Grognard: You are 100% percent right, we could have fucked over Madrid so bad in the Ronaldo deal. We easily could have got 2-3 players plus £50m if we knew how to negotiate.
I think the real issue here is as Karl pointed out, United never had a plan for the summer. Which is shocking considering we knew for a year that the best player on the planet was leaving.
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@Onkar: I think you will find, that BECAUSE United have not had a good start in the 1st two games of the season, squeezing past Birmingham with the narrowest margins, and then the shite performance and panic against Burnley, SAF knew he had to steady the ship, with a MUST WIN game at Wigan. The press had been all over us, with the most vile reporting of our demise etc etc, and so it was OBVIOUS to most of us that he was going to play with his EXPERIENCED players, who had faced such media furore before, together with the stress and pressure they had going into the Wigan game. Get some wins on the board, and you will see the youngsters brought in again, when things are not so pressured. I personally think that was a smart move by SAF, regardless of what the naysayers believe
.
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Quite an unexpected number of people in here who want Robben!!
He’s a decent player no doubt, but his arrival could shunt the OT careers of Nani and/or Obertan and/or Tosic. That’s the single biggest reason we should not be buying him.
About the management and it’s vision.. of course the management has no vision. Even if it did.. it would take a divine intervention to derail Fergie from what he wants to do or buy. Selling Ronaldo was not a decision by the management (Gill/Glazers/Directors/whoever).. it was Fergie’s decision.. and I believe so was the asking price of 80 mil straight up. So the vision questions should be directed in Fergie’s direction.
As Karl said, we just had the biggest trump card in modern footballing history.. and fergie chose not to use it.
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@Rahul: Who the fuck cares – we are STILL going to win the league
.
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@Craig Mc: Amen! But i;d rather win it without Robben than with!!!
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@Craig Mc: I agree with you on the fact that fergie needed to steady the ship and fast, I can’t imagine what would be going on in the press and blogs if we had lost to wigan too. The burnley game was on wednesday and by friday fergie had heard it all, if we had lost to wigan this week would have been murder for fergie.
But that wigan win eased the pressure a lot and a decent performance against arsenal ought to quieten the critics and thus relieving pressure from the inexperienced youth, who will then be gradually eased in to the team. That said,no young player featured in the first two games.
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He is the best, even if he is injury prone, the few games he plays for Chelsea and Madrid he has been very useful. The problem is insecurity among players and Robben is not a player who will like to be in sub if he is fit. I still see manchester are missing something to replace Ronaldo’s goals
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Which ever star we bring,the problem is in the tactics not the players themselves. I do not see any one significantly better than what we have.Fergie has to check himself
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