Alex Song transfer to Barcelona is official

The Arsenal club website announces this morning that defensive midfielder Alex Song has officially completed his transfer move to Barcelona. The club did not disclose a fee, which shocks exactly nobody who's ever read Arsenal transfer news, but most sources have the deal somewhere in the vicinity of £15million or £17million.

EDIT: Barcelona say that the fee is €19million, or around £14.8million. So that's probably accurate-ish.

As Ted said when it was announced the two clubs had agreed a fee, "overall, this is a blow to Arsenal, but not one from which it will be impossible to recover from in either this window or the first few months of the season."

Unnamed sources in the Song camp are disputing claims that the player was moved out due to poor attitude (and other similar things), claiming that he was desperate to sign a new long-term deal at Arsenal but the club pushed him aside again and again when requests for negotiations were made. Considering the fact that Song was not long into a five year deal, I can understand a lack of interest in re-opening negotiations - considering the source, though, and the fact that there were reports in March that Song was to be offered a contract close to what he's getting from Barcelona, I'm not sure I trust it. It's certainly possible, but I'm going to hold off on excoriating Arsenal for failing to keep this player, even though I was a fan.

All in all, it appears that the most important thing we get out of this is the picture on the dot-com's post announcing the move, which leads me to believe the Arsenal website and this one have the same photo policy.