Davor Suker, the 31-year-old Croatia striker who was the leading scorer in last summer's World Cup, arrived at Arsenal from Real Madrid yesterday as Nicolas Anelka prepared to complete his move from Highbury to the Bernabeu. Clearly Arsene Wenger is hoping that Suker's speed of thought near goal will partly compensate for the loss of Anelka's speed of foot.
Wenger's immediate foray into the European transfer market is unlikely to stop with Suker. He is still hoping to sign Thierry Henry from Juventus and has not forgotten another French international, Christian Karembeu, who is also with Real Madrid.
Compared to the summer-long saga of Anelka's disaffection with Arsenal the signing of Suker has been simplicity itself. The Croat cost Arsenal £3.5 million, nearly £20 million less than Real are paying for Anelka. The difference, of course, is that at 20 Anelka has an outstanding football career still ahead of him - provided his gold-digging brothers do not drag it further off course - whereas Suker's best days are behind him. Not that far behind, however, so far as Wenger is concerned.
"I thought he was outstanding in the last World Cup," the Arsenal manager said yesterday, "and it was difficult to understand why he did not play regularly for Real Madrid last season." In fact Suker had a disagreement with the Real coach, John Toshack, earlier that season.
Paradoxically, Wenger revealed that the striker had taken a pay cut to come to Arsenal. "He will fit into our wage structure. He could have got a better deal in Turkey or Greece but he wanted to play here. It's very unusual and it was refreshing for us to hear that."
Wenger insisted that Suker was taking a bigger gamble in coming to London than Arsenal were taking in signing a 30-plus striker to replace a 20-year-old of potential world class. Nevertheless, the swiftness of the transaction, which began only last Thursday, was an indication of how badly Arsenal needed to replenish their stock of goalscorers given Anelka's departure, Dennis Bergkamp's refusal to fly and the fact that Nwankwo Kanu will miss a month of the season playing in the African Nations Cup finals in Zimbabwe.
Not that Suker will play straight away. He needs to get fully match fit and should be ready to make his first appearance for Arsenal in three weeks. Wenger hopes Suker will give his attack the sort of sharpness in the penalty area that brought Ian Wright so many goals for Arsenal. "He has quick feet and he is a quick thinker," the Arsenal manager observed, "and he is always looking for goals."
Suker said he merely wanted to work very hard for Arsenal, play very well, win many, many trophies and score many, many goals. It was a familiar enough speech for a newcomer from overseas but still music to Highbury's ears after the vituperative outpourings of Anelka and his advisers.
Anelka should complete his move to Real Madrid tomorrow, following a medical. "I'm not sure who the winner is in all this," said David Dein, the Arsenal vicechairman yesterday. "We're receiving a lot of money but that is not what we're looking for. We've lost a talented player."
Dein hopes that Arsenal's differences with Real Madrid, whom they wanted to report to FIFA for an alleged illegal approach to Anelka, will be settled once the player has signed for the Spanish club.
"Anelka can never say that Arsenal were a bad thing in his career," said Wenger. "I want to see a headline reading from a sulker to a Suker," said Dein, who has clearly missed his vocation.
