Monthly Archives: September 2007

Arsene tells the truth, Spurs preview + Arsecast 44

Another Friday, another morning coughing up lumps of radioactive green stuff that you could probably use to stick a person to a big white plank and then hang him upside down over shark infested waters. I never quite understood why anyone would need to do that but there you go.

We’ll start with Arsene talking about his new contract and life at Arsenal. He says he sees the rest of his football life at the club, comparing it to a marriage. Hopefully a good marriage like Paul Newman and his wife and not Fred and Rose West. We know what he means though. He also said that while he had to think about it there was ‘never really any doubt‘ in his mind about remaining at the club. That, coming from the horse’s mouth, is rather different to the scenario David Dein tried to paint last week when he suggested Arsene was ready to leave the club. It’s not the first time since the Orangeman’s arrival back on the scene, albeit hanging on the coat-tails of somebody else, that Arsene has openly contradicted statements made by his friend. Interesting.

All eyes now can focus on tomorrow’s game against Sp*rs and the only return to the squad is that of Bacary Sagna who will play at right back. That means Gallas misses out, Senderos we know is suspended while Eboue and Lehmann remain out. With centre-halves at a premium it looks like Gilberto will play there despite only arriving in London today after being away with Brazil. Under normal circumstances I think we’d see the Brazilian rested but when the manager talks about Alex Song being an option at centre-half then you have to hope that he gets over the jet lag quickly.

It’s always a tough game at the Lane, they’re as fired up as they ever get, and a draw is more often than not the result. How they used to hate the sight of Robert Pires who loved scoring against them. I know Adebayor has his critics but he seems to enjoy scoring against them as well. I have a sneaky feeling Eduardo could make the difference too. We know that they’ve got decent quality up front but at the back they’re suspect. Look at the recent game against Fulham. 3-1 up with just over 15 minutes to go and it ended up 3-3. They can concede at any moment and if we get about them then we could unsettle them. I don’t want to make any predictions, just keep fingers crossed for the right result.

For those of you in Dublin or surrounding area (Dublin stretches far and wide these days) there’s a group of us meeting to watch the game in the Wool Shed on Parnell Street tomorrow. Feel free to come along and join us.

Now, time for the Arsecast.

In this week’s Arsecast, brought to you by OleOle.com – whose Fantasy Football game begins today but there’s still time to get involved and win prizes like trips to football matches and PS3s – I chat with GilbertoSilver about the Sp*rs game and next Wednesday’s Champions League game with Sevilla, the Man in the Bar has a player history, there’s a funny story about Nicklas Bendtner and that’s about it.

To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (11mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here. And you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

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And there you go. Now, I’m off to work. See some of you tomorrow for the match, the rest of you will have to make do with my words on a screen in tomorrow’s blog. You’re the lucky ones.

Time for real football again

Morning all. Thanks to Tom for stepping in at the last minute yesterday when NTL decided I need to pay my bills to have internet. Selfish bastards.

So the internationals are over till October and we can concentrate on real football again. It looks, at this stage, like our lads have come through injury free as there are no reports of casualties. Eduardo was on target for Croatia again so hopefully he can transfer some of his international form to real life and crack in a couple against the Sp*rs.

There’ll be a proper preview of that game tomorrow or Saturday when we have a better idea of who’s available. The big question is who’ll play in defence. With Senderos suspended, Gallas still injured (he didn’t play for France so his leg must have been hanging off for Domenech not to play him) and Gilberto not back from tarting around the world with Brazil’s money making machine till tomorrow there’s a big decision to be made there. Justin Hoyte is the next option should Gallas and Gilberto not make it. The boss is confident that our ‘remarkable spirit‘ can bring about a good result and a title challenge. I wonder which spirit it is though. Holy or methylated.

With Jens Lehmann suffering from an elbow injury it looks like Manuel Almunia will continue in goal. That means a place on the bench for Lukasz Fabianski who Arsene Wenger says has impressed him a great deal since he joined the club. You wonder if Almunia keeps his place whether Fabianski will take over the role of Cup keeper and if he does where that leaves Lehmann who needs to play ahead of Euro 2008.

Stuart Pearce talks about Theo Walcott and reckons that a run of games will help him develop. Meanwhile the Mirror link Nicklas Bendtner with a loan move away from Arsenal in January. Obviously this is based on his recent comments but he really just needs to be patient. There’s a long season ahead and he’ll get his chances. He just needs to make sure he’s one of those young players who stands out because of what he does on the pitch and not what he says to the press.

The Guardian reports that Arsenal bloggers have been on the receiving end of legal threats from lawyers representing Alisher Usmanov. Arseblog was one of those sites.

And that’s really about it. Now I must make a cup of tea, have some breakfast and think about tomorrow’s Arsecast. Laters.

Injury during the warmup

I suspect that Blogger had a nice long post ready for today with all the tasty morcels of news for you, but since his ISP have decided that he shouldn’t have internet, I’ve just got a text message asking if I can stand in. Since I’m now in my new job which I’m taking (a bit) more seriously than the last, I’m afraid I’ll have to keep this brief, which won’t be a problem since being international week, there’s pretty much fuck all of anything to tell you anyway.

It’s an attention-grabbing-headline-fest today though.

Ahead of the derby at the weekend, Darren Bent has been opening his overpriced gob to say how much he can’t wait to “get at the Gunners” (according to the Daily Mail). I can’t wait for us to get to you either, cuntbag, hopefully with a machete but failing that, a zillion goals. And then a machete. Actually, to be fair to him, he was just saying that he was looking forward to playing again after he’d been out injured and the Daily Nazi sensationalised the headline. Which isn’t like them. I’m surprised they didn’t manage to get single mums or immigration in there somewhere.

It may or may not have been mentioned before, but Justin Hoyte “commits to Gunners”, saying:

That’s how football is. It just makes me more determined to work hard and get my place in the side. I am going to fight and work hard. I want to be at Arsenal all my life.

Yes the competition is tough but it is the same as last year with Emmanuel Eboue playing and Mathieu Flamini in there sometimes too. Competition is good for us and good for the team. Hopefully I can work hard in training and break into the team. I just want to play as much as I can.

Well good for him. Flamini has been doing really well at full back and I’m pretty comfortable with him there ahead of Hoyte, to be honest. Of course, real commitment from Hoyte would be to sign a deal keeping him with the club – literally – for life, maybe as Peter Hill-Wood’s personal bitch or something. I dunno about you, but that’s the sort of commitment I want from all our players. Except Song.

Cesc Fabregas has been talking about a ‘Cesc Boom’, which I can only assume means he’s a massive Tom Jones fan. Which is worrying. Someone needs to talk to him about that like they did about that mullet he had.

And finally, as noted by Blogger the other day and may well have already been commented on (really, I’m just trying to fill space now so I can get on with some work that I’m paid for), Danny Fiszman is not actually sitting with his finger over the big red (and possibly white) button that says “SELL ARSENAL SHARES”, as reported by The Times. Who knows, maybe they even got their story from here.

And that’s your lot. I’m told Blogger will return tomorrow.

25 years of Dein too much for PHW

Apologies for the slightly late blog but I have been feeling sick and needed the lie in. I still feel like I have been battered by a bunch of old ladies with rolling pins. Stupid old ladies.

We’ll start this morning with the Chairman who, in an interview with Mihir Bose (Oh, the irony), made it quite clear that the club is not for sale to Alisher Usmanov or anyone else. He says:

The major shareholders have no intention of selling and wouldn’t welcome an offer. But we will have a dialogue with any principal or major shareholder.

So that means they will talk to Usmanov as he’s a major shareholder. He doesn’t see any point in talking to David Dein though as Dein is not a major shareholder having cashed in his chips to the tune of £75m. When asked if he’d be speaking with Dein, he said:

I see no major point in that, I’ve had 25 years of listening to him.

Wonderfully dismissive and an instant classic. It’s like someone who’s been trapped in a hellish marriage and no longer has to listen to their nagging and annoying spouse. His thoughts about the influx of foreign investors are bang on the money too. None of them (Abramovich apart) are sugar daddies willing to just throw money at things without looking for a return on their investment. You only had to read the papers this weekend to see the financial strife the Glaziers are in at United and the stories about the Liverpool owners having to borrow huge amounts (on the club) to bring forward their new stadium etc.

The quick fix, while attractive, is often the worst long term option and I think we should be glad that we have a board who are willing to do things the right way.

Moving away from that we look at Emmanuel Adebayor who looks set to mend his fences with the Togo national team and will probably miss up to six games in January when he goes to the African Cup of Nations.

Meanwhile William Gallas is hopeful of being fit for the weekend’s game against Sp*rs and he says his recovery from injury is ‘going well’.

Apart from that there’s not much going on. There are more internationals this week so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for good results for our boys and no injuries. If you have Sky you can watch some classic Arsenal games on channel 442. At 11pm it’s Kanu v Chelsea from the 99/00 season while at 11.30 you get Arsenal v United from 01/02 and that Thierry Henry goal. Worth checking out. I don’t have Sky though. Gah.

Right, off to lie down again. Laters.