Transfer jibba-jabba: wha' happened?

Mikael Silvestre to Arsenal? Seriously?

No, seriously? Can someone explain this to me, please?

Let's look at the historical record: Arsene Wenger's transfer policy has pretty much been buy young and buy, if not great necessarily, then at least promising. Silvestre is neither of those. He is old and he sucks, not to mention the fact that there hasn't been a true top-flight transfer between Arsenal and United in more than 20 years. This is a strange buy for Arsenal, to say the least. Silvestre's own teammates are shocked. I'm a Chelsea fan and I'm shocked.

You can't really say it enough: Mikael Silvestre is old and sucks. Whenever I've been at the pub and Silvestre came on the pitch I would say the same thing to my United friends: this guy is not good enough to play for this team. He doesn't even have the "versatility" of a John O'Shea, who can be mediocre at any position. Silvestre is a terrible defender and ONLY a terrible defender.

This is a guy who has not been good enough to hold down a place in the United first team in three years and was hardly exceptional when he did. So isn't Arsenal buying him - directly against their stated policy in the transfer market - a tacit admission that they aren't as good as United? I'd hate to think so, because I do enjoy watching Arsenal play, but buying (or trying to buy) a top-quality team's aging castoffs - defenders especially - isn't the way to cement your title intentions (c.f. Liverpool and Gabriel Heinze, Chelsea and Asier Del Horno, Chelsea and Khalid Boulahrouz, Chelsea and Juliano Belletti, Chelsea and really any fullback the last few years).