Arsenal transfer legends XI captained by Benzema with collapsed £92m Sanchez replacement on wing

The Karim Benzema to Arsenal transfer rumour had us thinking of the alternate reality in which he finishes a move created by Trabelsi, Draxler and Gourcuff.

GOALKEEPER: Sebastian Frey

As the good folks over at Arseblog put it when the Italian keeper swapped Genoa for Bursaspor in July 2013: ‘For the 15th successive summer, Arsenal have missed out on the signing of Sebastien Frey.’

Club and player might actually have somehow spent longer in one another’s transfer orbit. They first accommodated the same column space in May 1997, when The Guardian reckoned Arsenal were sniffing around the 17-year-old Cannes keeper.

Those dormant links intensified over the years, often with regards to replacing David Seaman but most notably in 2004 when Frey publicly declared that “Wenger has already called me and told me to wait for a little bit because they are concentrating on the Champions League”, with a £5m deal in the works.

Jens Lehmann kept the gloves instead, but that did not stop Frey being referred to as an Arsenal target up to around 2011. The ship might sadly have sailed with his retirement four years later.

CENTRE-HALF: Hatem Trabelsi

The story is well-told by now: of how video game developers Konami were so taken by the transfer speculation machine in summer 2004 that they included Ajax defender Hatem Trabelsi in Arsenal’s squad for Pro Evolution Soccer 4.

An Ajax director at the time said that “a few minor details” had to be sorted between player and club, but a £4m deal had been arranged and was expected to go through with little resistance.

The details are a little murky as to why it collapsed but the official line was a failed medical which led to Arsenal trying to restructure the deal and, ultimately, everything falling apart.

Trabelsi would become a Premier League player for a single season, drawing his career to a close at 30 with Manchester City. Arsenal had reportedly offered him a contract again but the pull of Stuart Pearce inevitably proved too powerful.

Sure this Aouar thing is a saga but it still doesn’t beat the time Arsenal tried to buy Hatem Trabelsi all summer and he was so close to joining he was included in the Arsenal squad on Pro Evolution Soccer, only for the deal to fall through. pic.twitter.com/DtIdMRkYlI

— Daley (@DaleyAFC) October 3, 2020

CENTRE-HALF: Christopher Samba

There was a time when Christopher Samba was legitimately one of the best centre-halves in the Premier League. A bargain signing by Mark Hughes, the defender was effective at both ends of the pitch for Blackburn a staple of the Football Manager corner exploit tactic.

But the captaincy was torn from Samba’s arm when Steve Kean deemed the Congo international to have had his head turned by both the rumours and the questionable sacking of Sam Allardyce.

Samba was not short of suitors but it was Arsenal he had his personal sights set on, declaring a move to have been “very close” in January 2011 before constantly flirting with the idea of playing Champions League football for the Gunners. Wenger was said to be interested but never passed public comment on the matter and the affection did not seem entirely requited.

Arsenal signed Per Mertesacker instead that summer; Samba stayed another season before being traded back and forth by QPR and Anzhi Makhachkala. His 12 games for Aston Villa in the Championship before retirement in 2018 almost definitely didn’t actually happen.

CENTRE-HALF: Ashley Williams

Arsenal’s 2013 summer window was transformational. Giddy supporters gathered outside the Emirates to celebrate as Yaya Sanogo and Mathieu Flamini were brought in to herald the club’s new dawn; Mesut Ozil arrived a little later in an oft-forgotten move.

The leader Wenger wanted at one stage was Swansea captain Ashley Williams, whose interest was sufficiently piqued to declare himself publicly “flattered” and privately tempted by the prospect.

Up until 2016, Williams was regarded as a possible Arsenal target as the price gradually inflated beyond the sort of range the Gunners would be willing to engage at. The Welshman joined Everton instead, quite predictably scoring a winner against Arsenal at Goodison that December when the visitors would have gone top with a win.

RIGHT WING: Thomas Lemar

Every Premier League club has at least one failed record bid, the scars of which will never heal. Arsenal can at least console themselves with the subsequent plight of Thomas Lemar, who found there to be no justice in the world at Atletico Madrid.

Attempting a ludicrously delicate game of dominoes in summer 2017, Arsenal waited until the final days of the window to pursue Lemar after receiving a belated green light from selling club Monaco. Sensing an opportunity to offload an unhappy Alexis Sanchez while bringing in an immediate replacement, the Gunners raced against time.

They lost quite thoroughly, Lemar first agreeing terms and then reneging after feeling rushed. The Frenchman was a reported option for Arsenal again in January 2020 and summer 2022 but his career has stalled somewhat as a bit-part player in Spain.

CENTRAL MIDFIELD: Yann M’Vila

Some say Yann M’Vila is still undergoing his Arsenal medical. The Gunners offered £22m to Rennes in August 2011, with further moves plotted for one of Phil Jagielka, Gary Cahill or Scott Dann.

While that failed to materialise, things seemed far more concrete 12 months later. The Daily Telegraph reported Arsenal as ‘seriously considering’ signing the midfielder; Le Parisien went as far as to say they had ‘agreed a deal in principle’. Junior Hoilett was also in the frame at this point; it was a weird time.

But again, Arsenal could never seal the deal. It was not for a lack of trying on M’Vila’s part, although his arrest for punching a 17-year-old might have been something of an obstacle.

CENTRAL MIDFIELD: William Carvalho

Few have ever done it consistently at the same level as William Carvalho. Some transfer gossip column lynchpins burn bright for a window before fizzling out, while others tick away nicely in the background for a few years. But the Portuguese midfielder might be unmatched for elite longevity.

Despite technicalities such as his zero career Premier League appearances, Carvalho qualifies as one of the competition’s finest ever imports. His rise coincided with that of social media’s proper embedding into the sport’s very fabric, and thus the proliferation of rumour and speculation. You weren’t an English top-flight club worthy of the title if you weren’t named in a spurious Calciomercato story about the Patrick Vieira regen.

That was never a particularly apt comparison for a variety of reasons, the link almost entirely isolated to both being central midfielders. But that did inevitably pull Arsenal into an equation which began in 2014, included part-exchange offers with Joel Campbell and resurfaced as recently as November 2022.

LEFT WING: Julian Draxler

An undoubtedly close rival to Carvalho on that front, Draxler was more of a specific Arsenal target. The former’s magic was in his ubiquity: Norwich and Nottingham Forest were among his potential suitors at one point, while West Ham were caught in the dildo-based crossfire. The latter was almost always courted by Arsene Wenger alone.

The first proper mention was in summer 2013, when the Schalke teenager was already a three-season Bundesliga veteran. The Arsenal talk cropped up intermittently thereafter, with Draxler confirming he turned down a January 2014 approach. Three years later, the Gunners were in the mix again before the Germany international chose Paris Saint-Germain.

PSG tried a few times to flog off a player who never particularly established himself in France, with Arsenal most often their choice of mark. Draxler is in Qatar at 30 and still picking up injuries frequently so there should not be too much regret.

ATTACKING MIDFIELD: Yoann Gourcuff

‘Yoann Gourcuff | Welcome To Arsenal | The New Gunner || 2010’ was uploaded to YouTube in May of that year, with the backing track of seminal hit Let U Go (Rock Wit U) by the inimitable DJ Derezon.

A couple of months later, Wenger described the alleged Zinedine Zidane successor as “a player I like a lot” while simultaneously distancing Arsenal from a deal; Gourcuff would subsequently join Lyon as a French champion.

That did little to douse the transfer flames. Jean-Michel Aulas, that sod of a club president, said Gourcuff “was ready to lower his salary to go to Arsenal” in 2013, before the Gunners and Watford – a stunning transfer combination – were touted as possible destinations two years later upon the Frenchman’s free agency.

‘Arsenal are to make a £15 million move for AC Milan midfielder Yoann Gourcuff,’ the Daily Telegraph reported in December 2007. They might need to hurry up; he retired five years ago.

CENTRE-FORWARD: Gonzalo Higuain

It’s not often the prestige and respect demanded by the Emirates Cup is threatened, but so it came to pass in 2013. The sight of Gonzalo Higuain stepping onto the pitch for new club Napoli elicited a chorus of actual boos from Arsenal fans after the Argentinean striker’s move to north London broke down just months earlier.

Arsenal had been heavily linked with Higuain since his spell at Real Madrid in 2009, but talk intensified to the point of near completion four years later. The Guardian reported that Higuain was planning to fly into London to complete a £23million deal, while The Independent claimed the striker would become Arsenal’s highest-paid player.

“They said I was too expensive,” was Higuain’s explanation for the move’s collapse, with Wenger simply saying “it didn’t come off in the end”. Even those Emirates boos did no lasting damage to an amicable relationship as Arsenal came sniffing around again a few more times, most recently in summer 2016 before he joined Juventus. Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis said at the time that the Gunners lost out because “they didn’t put enough money on the table”. T’was ever thus.

The Arsenal shirt really fits Gonzalo Higuain

CENTRE-FORWARD: Karim Benzema

The earliest Benzema to Arsenal rumour cropped up in late 2007, when the teenaged Lyon forward said it was “nice to know of interest” before insisting he had “no intention of leaving this club”.

There was an inevitable and understandable change of heart when Real Madrid came calling in summer 2009, but Arsenal were said to be interested in replacing Emmanuel Adebayor with Benzema 12 months prior before being linked with a £27m bid in 2011 and another move a year later.

An Ornstein seal of approval arrived by that ridiculous month of August 2013, when he reported Benzema and Angel di Maria as targets at a time the Higuain negotiations were rumbling on and Ozil was lurking in the background.

Intermittent chatter in the decade since ensured the speculation never truly died; all it needed was a little Saudi resuscitation to get the blood pumping again.

READ MORE: Arsenal join Chelsea in ‘considering’ loan move for Benzema as Al-Ittihad ‘pariah’ ponders options

Subs: Jerzy Dudek, Lars Bender, Yohan Cabaye, Sami Khedira, Morgan Schneiderlin, Wilfried Zaha, Salomon Kalou