Herzlich Wilcommen Lukas Podolski « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Walter Broeckx

What has been whispered for a while now has become official now. Lukas Podolski is joining Arsenal from next season.  The official website from FC Köln has made it public on their website. For those who can understand German you can read it here. http://www.fc-koeln.de/news/detailansicht/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=4813&cHash=798324b1a22697bd2852832f171c8384

And after writing it down and going to the bank (no, not to pay for the Lukas Podolski deal) it is also made public in arsenal. com

So what do we get with Podolski? Well if you talk about a top German player this is one of them. But let us start with the start of his career.

He started playing his career for FC Köln in 2003 and in the first 3 seasons he played 81 games and scored 46 goals in those games. Not a bad return. He then went to Bayern Munich and he played 71 games and scored 15 goals. He suffered a bad injury in his Bayern career if I remember and was out for a while.

He then went back to the town and the club he loves most: FC Köln.  And in the 87 games since then he scored another 33 goals.

His career for the German national team is even more impressive. In 95 games he scored 43 goals. That is almost 1 goal in 2 games. A great average I would say. He was named best young player of the world cup in 2006 when Germany reached the semi finals and Podolski scored 3 goals in the world cup.

However it could have happened that Podolski would have played for Poland. As he was born in Poland in Gliwice. But his parents moved to Germany. This was made possible because of the grandparents of Podolski had the German nationality before the second world war. And so he got the German nationality and thus played for Germany. His German team mate Miroslave Klose has the same thing with moving from Poland to Germany.

Now Podolski is a left footed player and I would say he is a bit of a Van Persie type of player. A very good long distance shot is one of his trademarks. I remember from the games from Germany that he can play on the left hand side of attack or midfield or in the central striker role. And looking at his goal statistics he is always producing for Germany.

What we also get is a hard working player. A player who also is a bit tempered at times. So Wenger will have to make sure he keeps him in control. But this bad temper can also mean that he is a winner and wants to win. Nothing bad with that I would say.

Where he will play is something I leave up to Wenger and to the people in the comment section. But I think we will see a player that is willing to work hard and wants to succeed for Arsenal. Leaving Cologne is not an easy thing for him. It is his town and the place where he is the most popular player of the team and the whole city. But the fact that he wants to play at the top level for a top club shows that he is still very ambitious. He is 26 years old  and will be 27 when he joins Arsenal. So a rather untypical Arsène buy one could say. The ones who have been saying that we only buy young and unproven can crawl back a bit under whatever stone they came from.

Podolski is a top player from a top league and from one of the best national teams in the world. I great player for a great team.  So great news I would say.

I also wonder how much the influence has been of our other German player Per Mertesacker in this transfer. There has been rumours in the pats months where Podolski said that he asked Per about life at Arsenal and life in London. And as Per is a lifelong Gooner and supporter of Arsenal and doing a rather tidy job when he had to play he will have told nothing but good things about Arsenal.  So I feel good about this transfer. I think he will be a 15 goal striker a season (wouldn’t mind more though) and also a player who will be in his strongest period of his career. So I just would want to write these welcome words to Lukas in German so he can feel at home at Arsenal.

Lukas, herzlich willkommen zum FC Arsenal. Die Arsenal fans und die ganze Untold Arsenal Gemeinschaft wünschen sie das allerbeste bei unsere Verein.