He only had a year left on his contract and made it very clear he was going to leave and not sign a new one, having been poised to do so just days before...there is a reason Wenger said Bayern were involved. Basically they negotiated with him in secret while he was away at the summer tournament and not only convinced him to go back on his word re a contract renewal but then to spend a year at Bremen and negotiate a super low release clause that only they could trigger, because they knew Arsenal would never sell to Bayern so cheap, but also to ensure Arsenal's sell on clause meant nothing.

He became a German international and scored 11 goals in a struggling team and yet Bremen made a profit of only 2m for him. The entire thing stinks, but isn't illegal.

Just another reason to hate Bayern and the way they do business.

What's worse is that on top of using Bremen's financial difficulties to keep the fee down, Bayern then also screwed Bremen. Yes, they help out the teams going bust down the leagues who can never affect them (except providing youth players) but they are sharks with everyone else.

What a pathetic, childish post. Bayern have paid £8m for him, and Arsenal sold him to Bremen for £4.25m according to your link. So if my mental arithmetic isn't too unsound, that's a £3.75m difference. Big bloody deal. Aren't there slightly bigger or more important issues to get your knickers in a twist about, especially considering I suspect Arsenal would have bitten the hand off Bayern to get the £8m direct from them last season being a then unproven Gnabry had told us he would not renew his contract?

As you say, Bayern did nothing illegal, so what's the problem? If Gnabry had failed at Bremen last season, I don't suppose Bayern would be interested now. But he did well so they've signed him. It's called Bayern looking after their own interests. If Arsenal were half as good at looking after our own interests as them, I've little doubt we would be a stronger club. Try growing up and acting your age when you write about one of, if not the, greatest club(s) in the world. Bayern Munich are a credit to world football.

Dortmund being one of your little clubs down the leagues I suppose.

Id call Alexis bluff and force him to see out his contract if it's city. He'll be 29 next summer and wouldn't command the same wages. Would force him towards a new contract

Dive from Venezuela against England in u20 final. Ref gets advice from video ref, who give it. Tv replay shows clearly no contact at all. Bizarre. Goalie saves from the player who dived though. Instant karma.

England winning 1-0 did our boy Maitland-Niles score? It's on BBC2 if anyone wants to watch. 20 mins of the game left...................

And as soon as Dortmund became a threat the dirty tricks, exploiting every rule, started again relentlessly. Sure they did nothing wrong exploiting release clauses, but promising huge wages to players if they run their contracts down (Lewandowski) is technically against the rules. The one that did it for me was publicly releasing the information about Gotze's release clause activation they afternoon of Dortmunds CL semi-final to de-stabilise the club & make it difficult for Goetze to play.

That was really low. Purely to destabilise a rival in a game that didn't affect Bayern themselves.

The 8m was in Euros...do pay attention 007!

I can understand your point but are Arsenal really going to be competing with City for the title next season with Wenger staying? If we'd get £50m from City this summer, I can also understand why he would be sold there now rather than lose him to exactly the same club for zilch in a year. Especially if nobody at Arsenal thinks we can win the league, and despite Wenger's lying to placate fans I suspect that could be the case.

Cor, really. £8m is currently worth €7m. That makes all the difference, doesn't it?

Is this a bonafide story re Alexis agreeing to stay?. Does it come from a legitimate source?

https://shewore.com/2017/06/11/alexis-s ... -contract/

In this case as a %, yes it does. If you are going to ignore the point by quibbling over figures, get your figures right.

Dortmund were always a potential threat to Bayern, and Bayern enabled them to continue being a threat. Manchester United wanted Lewandowski when he was nearing the end of his contract at Dortmund, and I'm sure they'd have paid him more which shows how weak your point about him is. Regarding your point about Gotze, do you genuinely believe the garbage you come out with or is it simply a wind-up? Dortmund had Real Madrid in the semi-final. Considering that Bayern finished 25 points ahead of Dortmund in the Bundesliga that season so were way better than them, don't you think it might just be possible they'd rather have played Dortmund in the final than Real?

EDIT: By the way, Gotze did play against Real Madrid. So maybe it wasn't that difficult?

Reminiscent of the kind of cheating indulged in on Football Manager back in the day. Which they're able to I suppose because they rule the roost. I think we've had similar sort of occurrences but you never remember them because they don't cause the same outrage. I am SORT of with Bernard in that you wish Arsenal were able to garner the same sort of advantages within the rules. The last advantage we had was the knowledge of the potential of young French players which lasted for a time.

Okay, I was careless and put pounds instead of Euros. As a percentage it matters, you say? It's a practically meaningless amount in professional football at the upper level, and that's the important issue. If I lend someone a pound and they only give me 1p back, percentage wise that's an even bigger shortfall. But it's such a meaningless sum I wouldn't give a damn in terms of the difference it would make to my standard of living.

It's strange how Gnabry is now at Bayern when in the season before last he couldn't even get into WBA's matchday squad. I know he got injured the year before when he was with us but he did look decent in the few showings he had for us that season. He used the Olympics to his advantage very well and has risen quicker than most of us thought. Could be one that we regret. I remember Wenger saying that he wanted to keep him last summer and Gnabry saying similar, only to change his mind within weeks. It is a bit fishy but if he was coming to the end of his contract, it's his prerogative to negotiate the best possible deal for himself. I reckon if he did better at WBA we would have made more of an attempt to sign him up earlier.

Everyone wanted Lewandowski...Your point? The fact is Bayern had a contractual agreement a year in advance which was common knowledge among anyone paying attention and was widely reported. They tried to get him to force a move away before hand, but he wanted to try to win the ECL with Dortmund first. Either way, they broke the rules, but a la Barca and Madrid, got away with it because of who they are.

Re Goetze...why do you think they released the information on the afternoon of the ECL semi then? Was it just a coincidence? Was it also a coincidence that Goetze got booed by his own fans as a result, stunk the game out, and his form went down the toilet? Or was that another example of Bayern's generosity?

The majority of ex players love Wenger partly due to this loyalty which is a great quality. However if it costs the club money when selling players then that's not so great. And I'd say the loyalty is a bit missplaced if it potentially impacts on the team negatively, ie playing Ospina over Čech which weakened us in the final.

I certainly wish Arsenal were more like Bayern in their commercial competence and their youth scouting, but in the same way I look at Chelsea and others, there is doing what you can to be the best and then there is going beyond that, which seems unnecessary and slightly immoral. Of course 75% of the way Bayern operates is a fantastic model, same with Barca, but both have power which they abuse. Its utterly ruthless, and we could do with rather more of that, but for me, both take it too far. I know my romantic ideals may seem unrealistic, but they are where I stand.

There is no doubt that Arsenal pushed the rules a bit regarding poaching kids for a brief while a few years ago, but not nearly as much as Chelsea, Utd or Liverpool and certainly nowhere near the amount as teams they poached from like PSG and Barca, the latter of whom have a disgraceful record of doing so in dubious and sometimes illegal circumstances, but always get away with a slap on the wrist.

Its in part because in other European countries, the sporting authorities are more interested in the glory of the biggest teams, particularly in European competition than in the competitiveness of the league. At least German ownership structures provide some needed balance, and the TV money is nothing like as bent as it is in Spain, but despite the financial dominance of certain clubs in England, the league applies both rules and financial reward far more fairly than any other major league (which actually undermines English teams in European competition as we have more competitive weekly fixtures and no help from the fixture lists).

Spain is so bent as to be a joke. In Germany, part of the problem is that Bayern are stupendously rich compared to every other team, and are quite willing to, like Mourinho;s Chelsea, buy players they don't need simply to weaken domestic rivals. Dortmund have sorted themselves out a bit, but still are miles behind Bayern financially.

Italy suffers from the TV money differential for European games being so vast that Juve can outspend all but Milan and Inter at will (and those two clubs are appallingly run).

France is PSG's money plus the odd good year for someone else.

In England, the league has only been dominated by Fergies Utd (richer, better manager and a better youth set up than everyone else) and Liverpool in the 80s (similar advantages). Bar that its always been the most competitive of the leagues, and thus less open to abuse by the most powerful.

Tell that to the Bremen President who is hopping mad, and whose club is in a financial mess (probably partly his fault). To clubs like Arsenal, Bayern etc its chump change. But it matters to others.

Never loan a player to Pulis again. The WBA fans weren't happy he got so little time. I know Arsenal were trying to sign him on again since about Feb last year, but you know how these things work. Wenger had him in the first team squad at 17, but he missed over a year with an awful injury and then when he chose WBA as a loan destination that was a disaster.

Re Gnabry, I've not a massive problem with his actions. He got a better offer and is allowed to change his mind, no matter how it messes people around. Bayern on the other hand, appear to have used another club as a feeder team by agreeing something with a player that is against the rules but impossible to prove.

I just think you're overstating things. It's less than a million quid.

Also if there was a prior agreement with Bayern, I don't see what the Bremen president has to be hopping mad about as he was in post when it would have been agreed last year (Fischer has been the president since 2014).

I genuinely don't know. Perhaps the press had got hold of the story and were going to release it? But I very much doubt Bayern did it to lower Dortmund's chances against Real Madrid, as you claimed with next to no evidence, as I strongly suggest they would rather have played Dortmund in the final than Real. I don't remember how Gotze played in the game, do you? However, the other ten players must have been sensational if Gotze "stunk the game out", as you put it, considering the result.

And who do you think briefed the press? It was about to be released in Bild by the reporter known as Bayern's mouthpeice and the Dortmund manager and directors made it pretty clear how unhappy they were with Bayern's conduct through insinuation. In fact Bayern leaked it to the press before they even notified Dortmund, which was equally poor.

Of course, it may have been released at that time in part to deflect from Uli Hoeness's tax evasion trial the following week, but surely in that case they could have waited a day.

As for the game Goetze was pretty quiet. Lewandowski gave one of the best centre-forward performances I've ever seen and Reus was excellent too.

Previous agreement with the player, rather than the club is what I'm implying - others have implied that Bremen may have had the transfer funded by Bayern, but that would be very very damaging if they were caught out, so I don't see it as implausible. Here Bayern have circumnavigated the rules using a loophole where any illegality is impossible to prove, but it is clearly in dodgy territory. If Wenger knew (as he certainly suggested) Bayern were involved in the initial transfer, as many others speculated, then technically he'd be within his rights to report them, but getting into a legal battle with Bayern would be very dangerous, and wouldn't have been worth it in this case.

There is no doubt that Bayern have at best exploited a loophole to reduce their own risk and to do Arsenal out of some money, but its impossible to prove categorically that they broke the law in doing so unless they were very naive, which I don't believe they are.

I don't see "pretty quiet" being the same as stinking the game out. I still say Bayern would have preferred to play Dortmund instead of Real Madrid in the final, so I write off your accusation that they did it to undermine Dortmund's chances against Real as extremely far-fetched, to say the least.

Didn't Ospina make important saves in the final? So long ago now I've forgotten...

I always find that when there are unproven rumours supporting what you want to think happened you seem more than willing to accept them. But if unproven rumours contradict what you want to think happened you seem far more willing to question their reliability. Perhaps Wenger didn't know exactly what happened, whatever he chooses to suggest. Who knows how reliable the speculation of others is, as well?

To be honest, I think you're making too much fuss over very little. The money it cost Arsenal was pretty minimal considering the finances of the upper levels in modern football. Also, as I've heard rumours that Arsenal would much prefer to sell Sanchez to Bayern than a domestic rival (a rumour, but a highly logical one), even if there's truth in your accusations perhaps it hasn't annoyed Arsenal enough to make them unwilling to do business with them?

Ospina's time-wasting was pretty effective but I doubt Čech would have let Chelsea's goal in.

Fifa investigate transfers from time to time where illegality or breach of their own rules is suspected. I'd investigate the hell out of this one. You're falling into the opposite error that you're saying lomekian is, don't you think Bernard??

He did make important saves and we won so it vindicated Wenger's decision to stick with him. And loyalty is a great quality overall. My point is though we started the game weaker and sometimes this loyalty can be to our detriment. If you go back there have been examples where Wenger has no doubt stuck with players in big games because of his policy to play certain players and we've lost important games due to squad players being chosen ahead of our first choice. Several times we threw away top spot in Champions league by fielding youngsters in the penultimate group stage games only for the regulars coming back in the final game to try and salvage top spot. There was also the final against Chavski in 2007 and that embarrassment against Tottenham in the league cup. And when you look at the list of some of those players who were given a chance, many didn't even make it, yet we more or less sacrificed the cup a couple of times so that they could play.

If they want to investigate it, fine. Whether they will is, I suppose, dependent on whether they suspect any wrongdoing has been done, or is significant.

You don't recall Ospina's four excellent saves from Costa twice, Kante and Moses, but do the deflected goal he let in! That is the lot of the keeper I guess.

Thinking back though, were any of Ospina's saves in the final those you wouldn't have expected him to have kept out? I'm just trying to be fair. How many saves did he have to make, and were any of those he did keep out those where you wouldn't have expected him to save? That's why I mentioned his time-wasting, which was top notch.

Yes it happens, but every manager has to address the issue of keeping all the players in a squad match fit and motivated?

Do you really think any of those he kept out were really beyond the kind of shots any good keeper should have kept out? You use the word excellent. I think they were shots you would expect your keeper to save, much like the one he let in.

Of the four I mentioned I would say he did brilliantly to cut down Costa's space and stop his powerful first-half hit at a crucial stage of Chelsea pressure. Then in their dominant post-break period he made Kante's deflected shot look routine and also parried Moses drive very well. The other save from Costa at reasonably close range was all about his agility. OK you might say he was doing his job, but I think you rather damn him with faint praise by talking about his time wasting. I do prefer Čech in goal but in that final Ospina was no weak link at all.

Let us disagree!

At that point, Dortmund had a bloody good record against Bayern...and of course Bayern wanted to (and did) buy Dortmund's best players (bar Reus). It also possible that rather than to unsettle the team they may have just done it to urinate on the parade of a rival getting more media love...their intention isn't as important as the fact they did it...which cannot said to be entirely coincidental.