Eduardo Da Silva – Henry’s replacement? 2 July, 2007

Well I said a signing this week would be nice to see and Wenger has made one. We’ve got Eduardo da Silva from Dinamo Zagreb, the scorer of the first goal in the game at Ashburton Grove between the two sides.

The 24-year-old was born in Brazil but moved to Croatia as a teenager and has made 12 appearances for the Croatians, scoring 7 goals including this header against England.

He’s been signed for £16m so he is pretty much Henry’s replacement. Although I have technically seen him play twice (and might I add he scored both times I’ve seen him), I can’t really judge him at this point. He’s not going to be as good as Henry was straight away, but I think we must give this guy time. It might even take a season or two for him to really prove himself; he’s only 24 so he can afford to take his time to adapt.

I’m really exited about seeing him in action for us. That list of possible signings I gave you last week were all pretty well known names and we would’ve known what to expect from one of those strikers if they were to sign, but this guy is quite unknown. All the stats seem good on him though, 7 in 12 for Croatia, he scored 34 goals in 32 games last season which is fucking impressive and totalled 71 in exactly 100 games at Dinamo. As I say I’m very exited about seeing him in action and I’m not going to judge him at all at this early stage. £16m seems a hell of a lot of money for him so he must be good. I trust that Arsene has made a good choice.

I’ll talk more about our new signing as I see him play and hopefully he’ll feature against Barnet in a couple of weeks. As one striker joins the club, another one leaves; Arturo Lupoli has gone to Fiorentina. You can’t say we weren’t expecting that though, we all knew he was off. He formed a good partnership with Bendtner in the reserves but it seems Arturo was going to step up to the next level like Nicklas now has. He’s seen out his Arsenal contract and now I wish him the best of luck in Serie A.

So quite a busy Monday then. Thanks for reading.

Edit: I’ve been informed on the comments that there was a confusion in the fee and it’s actually something nearer £5m-£8m. Much better