Squillaci Is Joining the Party, But Who’s His Plus One?

All I know about Sebastien Squillaci you could learn from a quick pootle around Wikipedia (guess how I learnt it?), but on the face of things he looks like a pretty decent signing.  He’s probably not going to be a world beater, but I’ve always maintained that our next centre back signing didn’t need to be.  As far as I’m concerned if he’s better than Silvestre he’s an improvement on last year, for what will presumably be a 4th choice defender.

His record is a pretty good one, including spells at Monaco, Lyon and Sevilla and enjoying success with each of them.  At Monaco he featured in the Champions League final the year that Mourinho’s Porto won the thing, then played a part in the Lyon team that pretty much dominated French football for most of the past decade.  He won Ligue 1 with them in 2006/07 and 2007/08 before moving on to Sevilla, with whom he lifted the Copa del Rey last season.  He’s also been capped 20 times for France, and played in their ill-fated world cup campaign this summer.

He hasn’t often been an automatic first choice in his career, but he seems to have proved himself a solid, dependable player wherever he’s gone.  So he won’t be expecting to walk in to Arsenal’s first team now, but he will be looking to push Djourou and Koscielny and prove himself again, perhaps for one last time in his career, at the biggest club of his career.

Detractors will point to his age (30), his nationality (French, boo!) and probably even his height (6’1″, taller than Vermaelen and Koscielny), and say that he isn’t the giant English heading-machine that we need.  To those people I say, just be bloody glad we’ve signed anyone, it is a sign that Wenger does indeed know as much as, if not a teeny-tiny bit more, than you.

Now, having got Squillaci in the bag, the manager’s post-match comments from the weekend are what interest me.  When asked about our transfer dealings he said:

I am confident we will add at least one, maybe one plus one. It is difficult to predict because the market is very quiet but I know that in the last five days it gets crazy and then it gets completely mad.

With 7 days still to go we’ve got the one he was confident of, so that leaves one deal that Wenger still believes is in the balance.  The more outlandish theories around the goal.coms and the caughtoffsides of this world have mentioned Ciani or Juan (another CB? unlikely now), Riccardo Montolivo (pur-lease), and Stekelenberg (too good to be true).

I’m pretty sure that we are talking about a goalkeeper here though, the smart money is obviously on Mark Schwarzer given the protracted on-off transfer borefest that has been playing out all summer with him.  If that’s the one fine, I’m underwhelmed, but again I suppose he’s an improvement on what we have.  Wenger has sprung surprises on us in the past though, maybe Given is the one, or maybe Stekelenberg isn’t too good to be true after all.  I can dream.