Its time for another Pennant thread.

[TheStig]

He was ****e at Birmingham and he is ****e now. Sorry, but he was never good enough in the first place to play for us.

Well he was their best player, not that that's saying much .

[Rocket]

Well he was their best player, not that that's saying much .

we should have signed that heskey fella instead, his goal was top draw

[paulcooper4]

He was ****e at Birmingham and he is ****e now. Sorry, but he was never good enough in the first place to play for us.

If i hear one more person tell me he put in 497 crosses i will scream. They must have been good ****in crosses to send birmingham down

[Slim]

If i hear one more person tell me he put in 497 crosses i will scream. They must have been good ****in crosses to send birmingham down

Its just like when Houllier used to go on about how we had the most corners of any team in the league when we were playing ****e. Who ****ing cares if they are all crap & lead to no goals!!

[paulcooper4]

Its just like when Houllier used to go on about how we had the most corners of any team in the league when we were playing ****e. Who ****ing cares if they are all crap & lead to no goals!!

I know how **** emile is, trust me. But if even 5% of them crosses where half decent then he would have scored more than 4 friggin goals.

[alunevans]

Yeah, he's crap and a waste of money - but who do you blame for us buying him - the manager or the board?

The manager. If you were manager of a club would you buy someone **** just because you couldn't get who you ideally wanted. And for a stupidly inflated price too.

I wouldn't mind if he'd been a good player all his career but he's always been ****e. Even on loan to Bradford in a lower division he was ****e. What the hell were we doing buying him at all, let alone for that kind of money.

If he'd spent two million on him I wouldn't complain as I'd view him as just packing the squad. There are tons of 2 million quid right midfielders who are on a par with Pennant.

He's crap and always has been, and he comes with huge question marks about his professionalism to boot. Ridiculous buy. Ridiculous purchase.

And even if the board failed to make cash available for his first choice, it doesn't justify Rafa buying a player at this kind of fee that anyone with any judgement could see has been crap all his career and acts like he thinks he made it the day Arsenal bought him from Notts County.

[Slim]

On a general point on the state of the transfer market, you have wonder how a guy with his track record who has pretty much achieved nothing could be worth £6million quid and maybe more. It beggars belief.

[Rich]

Not that this helps at all - but one of the reasons for the inflated fee was the sell-on clause inserted by the ever astute Wenger.

So, we've paid over the odds for a mediocre (at best) player and some of the inflated fee has landed into Arsenal's accounts. Great work all round, I'd say.

[alunevans]

On a general point on the state of the transfer market, you have wonder how a guy with his track record who has pretty much achieved nothing could be worth £6million quid and maybe more. It beggars belief.

Like any market, someone is worth something if the seller can find some bonehead prepared to pay it....

Its frightening that a balloon like me would have saved this club over 40 million quid in the past few years if they'd have given me veto power over transfers.

Yet the people who make these "judgements" are meant to be geniuses.

[Slim]

When Steve Bruce started saying Pennant was worth at least £5m we should have run a bloody mile.

[Charlie_B]

Never rated Pennant. Couldn't believe we'd paid £8m for him. Euch.

[Resu]

I hope we have something like that on Barragan. Could get us some cash from a transfer, for once.

[Rocket]

When Steve Bruce started saying Pennant was worth at least £5m we should have run a bloody mile.

its only because he's ingerlish,

if he was any other nationality he would have been cheap as chips

[Slim]

its only because he's ingerlish,

if he was any other nationality he would have been cheap as chips

True and probably the reason Wenger for one hardly ever buys homegrown players.

[Dhav]

The manager. If you were manager of a club would you buy someone **** just because you couldn't get who you ideally wanted. And for a stupidly inflated price too.

I wouldn't mind if he'd been a good player all his career but he's always been ****e. Even on loan to Bradford in a lower division he was ****e. What the hell were we doing buying him at all, let alone for that kind of money.

If he'd spent two million on him I wouldn't complain as I'd view him as just packing the squad. There are tons of 2 million quid right midfielders who are on a par with Pennant.

He's crap and always has been, and he comes with huge question marks about his professionalism to boot. Ridiculous buy. Ridiculous purchase.

And even if the board failed to make cash available for his first choice, it doesn't justify Rafa buying a player at this kind of fee that anyone with any judgement could see has been crap all his career and acts like he thinks he made it the day Arsenal bought him from Notts County.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

Rafa has proved to be suspect in the transfer market (although by no means to the catastrophic extent of Houllier) and this is a case in point.

I was completely underwhelmed by the signing of Pennant, particularly at that price. Our initial bid of £3.5m (or whatever it was) was much nearer the mark. We keep on hearing from Rafa how he will not pay more than what he thinks a player is worth and assuming the board offered him the money, possibly this is why the Alves deal fell through - and why Rafa turned to Pennant. Yet Rafa clearly overspent on Pennant, unless he really thought the guy was worth nearly £7m, and if he did then he's more like Houllier than I thought.

I do think he was backed into a corner somewhat though - we needed a RW and he needed to strengthen up front as well. May be if we got the fee for Cisse Rafa might have been inclined to get Alves instead of Pennant.