Transfer Rumors: Henry, Ribéry, Thuram, Abidal Not Going Anywhere. Yet.

I love getting multiple article links on one player when half of them say, “He’s going!!” and half of them say, “He’s staying!” What are you supposed to do, add them up and take an average? And if it’s 50-50 do you chop him up and send half to each club? (And which team gets the strong foot? And where the heck do these thoughts come from, anyway?)

Anyhow. Based on the “taking an average” theory, I’m pretty comfortable in saying these players aren’t going anywhere. Yet.

Thierry Henry is healed and whole and happy at Arsenal. Nary a rumor of his going anywhere anymore. Well, aside from the rumor from Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez, who before the Liverpool-Arsenal game said: “I even heard rumours this week that Henry was supposedly coming to Liverpool. All I can say is that he is coming tomorrow…but will be going back to London after the game.” Hahaha! A card, that Rafa.

Franck Ribéry is less happy at Marseille, but he’s swearing he’s not leaving until the season is over. Good news for those of us who want to see what kind of magic can happen now that both he and a smokin’ Djibril Cissé are all better now. (Thanks to brother-in-blog Sam at France Offside for finding the video.)
UPDATE: It didn’t even take a day for this to be outdated. The Mirror UK is now saying that Arsene Wenger is pulling out all stops (and sacrificing Calvin Klein underwear model Freddy Yumberg…er….Ljungberg) to bring in our Franck. We’ll see. (Thanks to brother-in-blog Trent for the scoop.)

Lilian Thuram is (probably) not particularly happy with life on the bench at Barcelona. (I always love it when reporters catch a player in an unguarded moment where he expresses his true thoughts, and it creates a huge buzz. And then a week or so later you see the same player saying, “Oh! No! That’s not what I meant!” and you know that the agents and PR people and others dependent on his salary happiness have started putting words in his mouth.) But for the moment both he and Marseille are quashing any talk that he’s headed back to France.

And Eric Abidal is talking about leaving Lyon, but not till summer. Eric has refused to extend his contract at Lyon and told the Spanish paper El Mundo Deportivo, “You can’t say no to a club like Barça.” But it looks like that will be a summer thing. Good news for those of us who want to see what the full Lyon team can do in Champions League this year. (Although it looks like our Eric was benched at Lyon last weekend? What’s up with that?)

And those are the French transfer rumors for the day. Stay tuned and watch them change tomorrow!