Ghana captain Stephen Appiah has claimed that he turned down summer moves to both Barcelona and Arsenal in favour of staying with Turkish side Fenerbahce. My question is: why?

The quality of the Turkish league has been poor for several years since Galatasaray’s glory days ended and surely it wasn’t based on the quality of life that Appiah has in Istanbul compared to that which he could be enjoying in either London or Barcelona?

I really am mystified as to why a player at his peak and after a good showing in the World Cup would turn down big money moves to either of the two clubs who had just contested the Champion’s League.

Answers on a postcard please. For the record, I do think in missing out on Appiah, Arsenal lost their best chance to replace Patrick Vieira like-for-like and it could be one of the main reasons that their title challenge is more mathematically than realistically feasible before we’ve even had our Christmas turkey in 2006.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 11:37 am and is filed under Arsenal. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.