Monthly Archives: July 2010

Cesc's future is at Arsenal – now for some football

So the first press conference of the new season took place yesterday and it was a chance for the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate to get some clarity on a number of issues. Top of the agenda though was the future of Cesc Fabregas.

If there was any doubt up until now then it’s been well and truly put to bed. Arsene said of Arsenal’s unwillingness to deal with Barcelona:

We do not negotiate. If I want to buy your house and you don’t want to sell, you don’t negotiate with me, that’s completely normal.

Even Barcelona seem to be getting the message, another sporting vice-president of sporting sport, said:

We talked to the club and they told us that Fabregas was non-transferable. And there are no imminent negotiations in place because they do not want to sell. We would like very much that the relationship between Fabregas and his manager, Arsene Wenger, return to normal. And we respect Arsenal’s decision not to sell.

Arsene continued:

I always said Cesc Fabregas will be our captain next year and that we want to keep him. Despite all the speculation last season and the whole summer, nothing has changed.

And that is about as crystal clear as we can make it. Hopefully it’ll put an end to the absolute nonsense being peddled in the Spanish press who claimed a ‘secret deal’ was in place and that Cesc would be a Barcelona player … erm … when was that? … oh yeah … yesterday. Ooops, quite the epic fail there and entirely illustrative of the pure fiction they create on a daily basis, aided and abetted by the sports pages here who still, somehow, attribute some measure of credibility to them.

And it’s fantastic news for us. There are the usual tosspots who are all mouth and no trousers who want ‘cesc shud fuk off!!’, but anyone who thinks we’d be better off with a wad of cash and not one of the finest midfield players any of us is ever likely to see in red and white is quite mad indeed.

Regardless of his wishes Cesc is a consumate professional who has never given anything less than 100% every time he’s pulled on our shirt. I don’t see any reason why that would change. He was always aware that any potential deal depended entirely on Arsenal. If Arsenal didn’t want to sell then that was it. There was no agitating, no trouble making from him, and despite the efforts of others to taint his relationship with the club, the fans and the manager, he remains our captain and will lead the team this season.

It’s a measure of our class that the manager played down criticisms of Barcelona, for their constant talking, for the shirt ‘prank’ and everything else. He knows there’s little to be had from public point scoring but if I were in his position I’d have been tempted to have a good sneer.

What I would say though is that there’s an onus on Arsene to give him a team that is capable of winning something this season. I see the stories this morning about him believing we can win it with the players we have right now. I really think that’s just his usual way of being positive and trying to transmit that to the players.

If Cesc was uneasy about his Arsenal future it was because he looked around the dressing room and saw players who were happy to go through the motions. The arrival of Sol Campbell in January put into sharp contrast some of the non-performers in terms of quality and attitude. This is a squad that needs strengthening and despite the usual non-commital quote about how ‘we’re not close’ to signing anyone, I don’t think our purchasing is done for the summer.

He’s acknowledged we’re after ‘at least one’ centre-half and I think we know there’s a keeper somewhere on the shopping list. There are also rumours of players moving on to make room for other arrivals further up the pitch but whether anything comes of them or not, I don’t know.

So we’ve won the battle to keep Cesc but a player of his drive, ambition and quality deserves to play in a team that can challenge for titles. It’s down to the manager to improve the players he currently has and augment the squad with some real quality so we don’t finish our season in the same pathetic way we did last time. Regardless of how long we stayed in the chase that’s what people remember about our last campaign and why fans are so uneasy right now.

Speaking of squads, Arsene hit out at the new rules about a 25 man squad, calling them ‘disastrous‘ for football and he does make a lot of sense. I suppose the idea was to encourage clubs to produce more of their own players but how, if you do that, can you move on players to other clubs who have no room in their squads. I predict this could get quite messy.

He also said Sol Campbell’s move to Newcastle was not a surprise, so you can only imagine we’ve been planning for his departure.

Ahead of the Emirates Cup we’ve got some injury issues, as you’d imagine. Denilson, Song, Diaby and Bendtner all miss out. The latter could be out for a few weeks yet, the others should be fit for next weekend’s game in Poland. Of course there’s no Cesc or Robin van Persie who return for training during the week.

Still, it should be interesting to see who takes their chance this weekend. Our game against Milan kicks off this afternoon at 4.20, preceding that there’s Celtic v Lyon.

And seeing as it’s a nice warm summer Saturday, football is back and the evil that is Barcelona has been defeated, for now, how about a competition.

My old pals at Classic Football Shirts (@classicshirts on Twitter) have given me this genuine, match issue shirt worn by one of Arsenal’s most legendary Norwegians called Pal. Click the image to have a closer look.

To be in with a chance to win this shirt – or, if you’d prefer £150 worth of credit on their website – simply answer the following question:

Name three players that have played for Arsenal and Celtic. Simples.

Send your answers to competition@arseblog.com and I’ll give you winner early next week.

Right, that’ll be about that. There’s things, such as bacon and more coffee to attend to, and football this afternoon. Splendid.

Friday flooterings

Morning all, from a soggy Dublin.

First things first, the Cesc stuff from yesterday was recycled. The quotes were apparently given to a magazine called DIR Emotion. DIR is a chain of gyms in Barcelona. Me and Mrs Blogs used to be members of one near c/Mallorca, if I remember correctly. I stole some towels from them as I felt I wasn’t getting value for money. Having kept his counsel throughout the summer I do not believe Cesc decided to open up to a magazine run by a gym whose towels are threadbare and don’t really dry you off properly.

Once again though these quotes have been lifted straight from the AS site, who collated them to make it look like new stuff, and belched far and wide across the internet without so much as a bit of fact checking.

As for the continual nonsense from Captain Caveman, well, I would sincerely like for him to punched repeatedly in the face .. by Goliath. Let’s see Puyol eat meat then. The man really has no concept of respect for others, and that includes Cesc.

Onto football and Arsene Wenger says he’s confident we’ll do better this season than last. He says:

I am very confident. We know in England that the Premier League is the biggest league in the world and everybody invests a lot of money. We invest in our work, in our beliefs, in the quality of our behaviour and I am confident that will pay off.

A lot of people have taken that quote to signify he won’t buy anyone else but I don’t see it. It’s the usual pre-season quote about nothing much, however I do understand people’s frustration at the same time. We have two very large gaps in the squad which we all want to see filled as quickly as possible, so we’d like Arsene to invest in players as well as the beliefs, behaviour and such.

There’s still no word about a central defender. Loads of names have been thrown up but most of them appear to be agent led. As for the goalkeeping situation lots of papers this morning are running with the story about how Mark Hughes’ first job as Fulham manager is to keep Mark Schwarzer. The Australian wants to come to us, according to the Mail, and Fulham have lined up Rob Green to replace him, but apparently Mohammed Al-Fayed is in love with Schwarzer and doesn’t want him to go. These love triangle thingies are always complicated.

None of which does our situation any good whatsoever. The longer it goes the more it looks like the classic ‘internal solution’. Is Wojscez©® ready? He spent last season on loan at Brentford and their manager has ruled out a return saying the young Pole’s ambitions lie at Arsenal. Perhaps though, it’s a measure of how desperate we are, and our current options, that we’re hoping a 20 year old kid with one season’s experience in League One will make the rather large step up and solve all our problems.

Friday funny? How about Sam Allardyce complaining about a team being too physical. Vital Arsenal has the good, good stuff, while Gingers for Limpar writes to the Mail

Not much else going on really. The Emirates Cup begins tomorrow and it’s live on TV so we get our first look at the team at full size rather than a 500px wide box. Is Koscielny that small in HD? Let’s hope not. We play AC Milan at 4.20, while previous to that Celtic play Lyon.

It also gives us a chance to hear from Arsene about his plans. I know he rarely gives anything away but even without specifics it would be nice to get some reassurance that what we hope is going on behind the scenes is actually going on.

Watch out tomorrow for a competition in which you can win a classic Arsenal shirt, with thanks to my old pals at Classic Football Shirts.

And finally, if you fancy a game of 5-a-side before the Emirates Cup, they’re still looking for a couple of teams here. There is a team there representing Arseblog. You will know them by their uncanny similarity to the Invincibles side. Athletes whose torsos look like they were hewn from the 6-pack of Hercules himself, the silky skills of Bergkamp, the finishing of Henry and Pires combined, the midfield athleticism of Vieira and a goalkeeper mentaller than Lehmann. One part of this is actually true. Come on Arseblog!

Until then, have yourselves a good Friday.

My kingdom for a centre-half (and a functional web server)

*taps mic*

“Is this thing on?”

Looks like it is. No thanks to Amazon’s hosting. This cloud bollocks is not all it’s cracked up to be. 12 hours+ of downtime in one day. As someone who used to have a crappy little hosting business myself that’s remarkable. And by remarkable I mean remarkably shite. Useless cunts.

Anyway, sincere apologies to everyone for the inconvenience. I suppose it’s a good time to remind people that you can always subscribe to the Mailing List so you get the blog rammed into your box first thing in the morning. There are also apps for the iPhone and Android (hopefully a Blackberry one coming soon too) which should download it for offline reading. Anyway, while it’s nice to have options it shouldn’t have been so necessary yesterday. Apologies again.

So, what news of Arsenal? Well, we’re down another centre-half as Sol Campbell decided to join Newcastle. Good luck to him up there. His half-season cameo was good for us and good for him. It allowed for a certain amount of redemption considering the way he left the club and he played his part in keeping us going as all around him dropped like flies – and we suffered a load of injuries.

As I’ve said for a while I think his primary motivation is to play football and given Arsenal’s need to spend money on the defence his chances might well have been very limited. It does make our need for new players all the more pressing, something Arsene is aware of, saying:

We are still on the search for centre-halves. We have three and we need at least four.

Interesting to note he doesn’t consider Nordtveit yet part of the first team squad but with one good purchase the Norwegian could certainly be the man to back up the back up. You have to hope they’re working hard behind the scenes because time marches on. Still there are whispers about Mertesacker while this morning’s Sun links us with another Germanian, Serdar Tasci, who currently plays for Stuttgart. I realise transfers are complicated things but even though Djourou’s injury was described as ‘little’ by Arsene Wenger we have to ensure our squad is complete and new players have time to settle in.

Already it looks as if some players might miss the opening game of the season. Arsene is doubtful about the involvement of Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie who apparently only return to training on August 5th. He thinks they might be short for the opener against Liverpool which, despite their recent difficulties, is never an easy game. They’ll want to put the horror of last season behind them and with a new manager you can be sure they’ll be right up for it. Going there without two of our best players isn’t ideal.

As well as that Nicklas Bendtner will miss the start of the season with his groin injury, which is another World Cup hangover. He came back from South Africa and said he thought it was bad, Arsene Wenger said it wasn’t big. Already there’s confusion and misinformation about our injury situation and while he’s not everybody’s cup of tea I’d rather we had as many fit and healthy players at the start of the season as possible.

So at the moment Bendtner’s out for the start, Cesc and van Persie could well be short, there’s been no sighting of the lesser-spotted Denilson in pre-season at all, Rosicky picked up knock before the game the other night and wasn’t risked (and there are rumours that his withdrawal was so as not exacerbate any problems for a player we’re willing to sell), and there’s no sign of Diaby yet either. You do wonder if a 25 man squad is going to be enough, perhaps we should lobby for special dispensation to double that. It would be only fair.

Quick Spanish press update? They haven’t stopped talking about Cesc, making more noise I guess you’d call it. Apparently a load of the Barcelona officials have taken, or will take, a plane to London today (Easyjet, I hope, don’t want to weaken the finances any further, chaps) to talk to Arsenal. I hope we sit them down in a conference room and every time they try and say something Ivan Gazidis makes a noise like a startled giraffe gnu with a sore throat. And keeps doing it until they go away.

Fulham have appointed a new manager which might, ordinarily, give you some hope that a deal could be done over Mark Schwarzer. However, Fulham have appointed Mark Hughes, a man with the manners and touchline deportment of a coked-up gibbon with whom Arsene Wenger really has no relationship whatsoever. Whether this affects a potential transfer or not remains to be seen but I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I sincerely hope we’ve got other targets than the Australian. There are still whispers about the Italian, Marchetti, but it would surprise me if we were serious about him.

And that’s it from a news point of view. Time to give you the winners of the Emirates Cup competition.

Thank you for all your entries and the RNG has selected the following lucky winners: Dave Ricklesford and Steve Adams. Well done to you both. You get 2 tickets for each day of the Emirates Cup as well as an exclusive stadium tour on one of those days. I’ll be in touch this morning to get your details.

Thanks again to Emirates for the prizes, commiserations to those who didn’t win, better luck next time.

Emirates currently operates 14 daily flights from 6 UK airports via Dubai to over 100 destinations on six continents.

Emirates is pleased to offer Arsenal members very special fares worldwide. For more information and to book, visit www.emirates.com/arsenalmembers

And that’s about that. I’m off to ensure Amazon have enough peat to keep their servers going for the full day. Till tomorrow.

Another pre-season win + goal.com are filth

So yesterday evening’s 4-0 win over SC Strudel’s collection of postmen, trainee architects and bus drivers really didn’t tell us a great deal we didn’t already know.

Stand out players on the evening for me were Nasri, who’s contuining a fine pre-season, Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs at left back in the first half. Two two Emmanuel’s looked good in parts. Frimpong looks to have the makings of a tenacious defensive midfielder with solid distribution. Jay Emmanuel-Thomas got a goal, might have had a couple more, might have set up a couple (but they’re linked to the couple of might have had), and showed some nice touches.

I can’t help thinking that a season out on loan would be the best thing for both. Frimpong can get a season’s competitive football under his belt, JET can go and learn that the game is about doing the simple things first. Too often he looks for the trick or the showboat and if he cuts most of that out of his game, because it won’t work at the highest level, he’ll make rapid progress.

Theo Walcott got a goal, Marouane Chamakh scored a penalty, Don Vito saved one, and we got our first look at some of the World Cup players as Vela (who got a goal), Eboue, Sagna and Clichy all got a run in the second half.

Manuel Almunia started the game in goal and as captain, he’s been thawed having been so thoroughly frozen out last week. The only slight worry was the fact that John Djourou came off after about half an hour. His ability to withstand injury is always going to be a concern and while we don’t have any news on how serious it might be it’s still most untimely. It looks as if Sol Campbell has decided to go and join Newcastle and good luck to him up there but it means our defensive options are running very thin.

There’s talk this morning of a move for Per Mertesacker but I don’t know how much truth there is in it. A photo was circulated of him yesterday, supposedly in a North London pub, but a quick look at the photo’s EXIF data showed it was taken in 2009, not yesterday. Sure, the camera’s clock could be wrong but I suspect shenanigans and I hope it’s not the basis of any of today’s stories. Signing an experienced German international who is 6’4 or whatever he is sounds rather too good to be true. Maybe I’ve just lowered my expectations.

Whatever about that though, the fact is we need at least one centre-half and we need him asap. Hopefully Djourou’s withdrawal was precautionary but the precarious nature of his fitness really illustrates the need for a top class player who can come in and play first team football straight away. Unusually there was no interview post-game with Arsene, and no quotes either, so what exactly is going on is anybody’s guess. The squad will now return to London to continue pre-season training and for the Emirates Cup, more on which anon.

Now, yesterday further financial revelations regarding Barcelona showed the Catalan club lost €77m last year, amazing when you think how successful they’ve been on the pitch. Remembering as well they had to borrow €150m last week just to keep going it makes their pursuit of Cesc Fabregas all the more ludicrous. It is quite beyond me how any accountants, bankers, financial advisors and even club officials can believe spending another €50m, at least, for a player they don’t really need is good business. Arsene Wenger says:

There are still noises from Barcelona, but that is all it is.

Clearly dismissing their ability to do a deal that would even come close to what Arsenal would require to sell a player like Cesc. And that’s assuming we’d even talk to them. Which, at the moment, we wont. Barcelona’s assistant sporting-director’s lover’s personal secretary, Toni Freixa, says:

Arsenal don’t want to sit down and negotiate with us. It’s not a problem with the wishes of Cesc or of Barca – they simply don’t want to negotiate.

It seems, at last, the message might be getting through. Will it stop their constant blather? I doubt it. Talk is all they’ve got left and making so much ‘noise’, as Arsene puts it, takes the focus away from the fact they’re footballing hobos, out with the begging bowl just to stay afloat. More than a club? Not for long unless they sort their money issues out. They need to go to Ocean Finance and consolidate all their loans into one, simple, easy to manage payment. The cunts.

In case you missed it yesterday I posted an interview with former Gunner Edu. The lads from Arsenal Brasil very kindly offered me the English translation as an exclusive and a tip of the hat to all the Arsenal sites and blogs who have linked to it.

However, once again the despicable fuckers at goal.com, who I refuse to link to, have done what they do best, and that is steal other people’s content. They took a part of what Edu said, made it into a story, and ‘credited’ it as follows:

Now, I know the chaps at 101 Great Goals somewhat, not 101 Goals, and they’re always very careful to give proper credit and links when they use content from other blogs. In this case, however, goal.com has simply taken the content Arsenal Brasil worked hard to produce, between getting the interview, the editing, the sub-titling etc, and ripped it off. And they don’t even have the decency to provide a link to them or to Arseblog, from where they ripped it off. And I know this because they’ve embedded the video at the bottom of their story.

So, just another illustration of why goal.com is one of the worst football websites in the world. Ever. If you’re tired of seeing other bloggers, writers, journalists and media outlets stories passed off as their own, simply go to NewsNow, click on the name of the site and choose ‘hide publication’. They are purveyors of baseless rumours, bottom feeding, hit-whoring click parasites of the worst kind. Don’t give them what they want. Just ignore. In no other industry is it acceptable to so blatantly profit off the work of others, I don’t know why it’s deemed acceptable on the web.

Moving on and to the Arseblog Mailing List. It looks as if Gmail have done something to their spam filters which has meant a lot of people haven’t had their daily edition. If you’ve noticed a lack of Arseblog in your box, log into Gmail via the web (even if you’re using it in a client like Outlook or Apple Mail), click in the spam folder and highlight the Arseblog emails. Then, at the top, click ‘not spam’ and that should sort the problem out. Gmail will remember that from now on. To be doubly sure, add Arseblog as a contact in Gmail – thanks to @engkiat for that.

Finally for now, today is your last chance to win tickets to the Emirates Cup as well as that exclusive stadium tour, with thanks to Emirates Airline. Just click here for the competition, answer the question and you’re in the draw which will take place tomorrow.

And that’s just about that for today. Watch out for further Emirates Cup based competitions later in the week.

Till tomorrow.