Monthly Archives: June 2012

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
June 14, 2012 posted by arseblog

And they called it …

And they called it …

It was an eventful day yesterday in Arseblog Towers. After saying goodbye to the Arseblog Basset so many months ago, we decided it was the right time to bring in a replacement, and the fuzzy thing in the picture above is him.

His name is Archer and so far, without any kind of exaggeration at all, he’s the best dog in the entire world. We were expecting some first night in a strange place whining and yelping. Not a bit of it. He slept right the way through. And we were also expecting something of a mess to be made in terms of his toilet needs, but he hung on all night (remember when you could do that chaps?). So far he has done all of his business in the back garden.

The cats have put him firmly in his place and unlike the Basset he realises his place in the pack is even lower than Blogette (although he did take a liking to her socks last night). The picture you see is him watching Germany playing Holland in the Euros last night and it was a good night for his ‘native’ country as they won 2-1, meaning elimination (essentially) for the Dutch.

To be fair, it’s hard to have any sympathy for them whatsoever, despite Robin van Persie’s fantastic goal. They’re clearly not a happy, cohesive camp with talk of ‘pathetic egos’ and that overrated Sp*rs fella bitching about how he wasn’t being picked. The thing to do there is when you come on make a difference and show the coach that he made a mistake, not something van der Vaart exactly managed. Sneijder did well, I thought, but I genuinely believe any manager who indulges the rotten, glory boy selfishness of Arjen Robben gets exactly what they deserve.

I know other players are thoroughly dislikeable for the way they act or they way they behave off the field or the way they have sex with their friends wives or the way they allegedly racially abuse the brother of an international teammate or the way they insist on being at the centre of celebrations in games they didn’t take part in even going so far as to put on shinpads, but Robben is utterly hateful because of the way he plays.

Sure, he is capable of some exciting moments but I’ve had my fill of seeing him cut in on his left foot and curling shots way over the bar when he could pass the ball to players in better positions. If I were Robin van Persie I would wait for him to get out of the shower then I would, still in my full kit and boots, kick him repeatedly in the balls until blood came out of his eyes. Then I would invite the rest of the team to do likewise. It’s the only way he’ll learn.

His cringe-worthy march around the outside of the pitch when he was taken off just shows you what kind of an ego he has and for him alone I’m kinda glad it went wrong for Holland (sorry, Dutch readers but he’s just an awful, awful person and player – and I still haven’t forgiven him for bottling the Champions League final, the bottling bottling twat).

That said, Germany were good. Gomez’s goals were outstanding (why couldn’t you have done that in the final against Chelsea?!), the turn for the first was sublime, and the clipped, pacy finish for the second was really brilliant. They pretty much controlled the whole game and even after Holland got the goal back through van Persie they never looked in any real danger. So they go through, Holland go out and it’ll make the final game of the group quite interesting indeed.

Portugal and Denmark are level on three points each after the former beat the latter 3-2. They went 2-0 up and probably thought that was enough but they did not count on The Greatest Striker That Ever Lived living up to his own billing. Two headers from Nicklas Bendtner brought them level but a late goal for the Portuguese sealed the deal.

As for Bendtner, I know he’s not exactly Mr Popular but he showed he’s not as bad a player as many suggested. It’s hard to see any way back for him at Arsenal, especially if the rumours regarding Giroud are true, but this tournament is a very excellent shop window and I’m sure clubs will be encouraged to take a punt on him which would be good for us. A few extra quid in the coffers – unless we manage to negotiate downwards or something. As if that could happen.

Today it’s Italy v Croatia (Eduardo!) while the minnows of Spain take on the mighty Repubalic of Ire-er-land. It’s hard to see how Spain could get anything at all from this one but football’s a funny old game and they may just surprise us. All to play for, at least.

Away from the Euros and onto Arsenal news and Ivan Gazidis told a Chinese web chat that there are arousing things afoot in terms of our transfer business. He said:

We are also talking to people in this summer’s transfer market, I think there will be something exciting for our fans to be happy about.

Hurrah, but then:

We want to do business carefully. We don’t have to add many players, but we have to be very selective. The players we add must bring something to the team

Awwwww, why must they always qualify things? Why couldn’t they just let us have the excitement bit which could fuel our imaginations. When I first heard it I pictured us signing Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man who would make that ‘jing-jing-jing-jing-jing-jing-jing’ sound every time he went up for a header. And to make life interesting, we’d also sign his action figure nemesis ‘Maskatron’ who could take the shape of any player with his special masks that he keeps in the cavity in his back. Way to spoil my fun, Ivan.

That said, it does seem as if we’re more active this June than last, even with the Euros going on. Wenger is doing his best wry smile face every time anyone mentions Giroud and that’s a deal expected to be wrapped up soon, so perhaps the lessons of the summer past have been learned. The proof will be in the pudding, however, not in the rumour of the creation of the pudding, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

And finally, Harry Redknapp has been sacked by Sp*rs. I know this will make my good old friend Harry Hotspur (he was the original Harry) very happy as he reckons that any manager that blows the kind of lead Redknapp did under the circumstances he blew it deserves the sack (at least). I just think his ever dwindling ambition last season was one of the funniest things football has ever seen.

“Yeah, we can win the title, why not?”

“Title’s a bit far away, but we can finish top 3.”

“Fourth would be a real achievement for Sp*rs.”

Hahaha. And to think they had an ‘as it stands’ 13 point lead when they were 2-0 up at our place (update: and an actual 13 point lead on Jan 31st – thanks @joshJjames78). People can point to all the beautiful goals Robin scored last season but the more I think about it, the more I reckon Bacary Sagna’s header was my favourite Arsenal goal in years. It started the comeback and it started the end of Harry.

Oh, the Twitching starts now. Till tomorrow.

Arseblog, the arsenal blog
June 13, 2012 posted by arseblog

Well hello …

Well hello …

Good morning, after 10 days out of the saddle I’m straight back in the game and off the bench to mix my metaphors.

I am slightly browner than when we last spoke, due to the fact they have this amazing thing in Spain called summer. The sun shines, it’s warm and the sea isn’t as cold as a football agent’s heart. Me and Mrs Blogs had a fantastic time revisiting old haunts in Barcelona. My Barça DNA kicked right in and the eating and drinking was good. Especially when we discovered the most fantastic cocktail bar in El Born where the owner makes Mojitos that would knock your socks off. If you were wearing any. Which we weren’t because it was flip-flop hot.

My sincere thanks to Tom for holding the fort here in fine style. It’s always great waking up to Arseblog as a reader, and the ability to write lots about nothing at all is a much underrated gift, let me tell you. There’s a case of Buckfast and some Marco Pierre White deep fried Mars Bars on the way to him as we speak. Or maybe something that will actually make him want to do the blog again when I next go away. Cheers also to Andrew Allen and Sul for holding the fort over on Arseblog News.

And speaking of being away, I pretty much stayed away from Twitter throughout. I checked in every now and again at the apartment where we had WIFI but because data roaming is such a colossal rip-off I wasn’t connected all the time, like at home. And blimey, it’s kinda nice, let me tell you. I was able to gather that certain things were flying around and causing people to chat and what-not, but as most of these things turned out to be complete bollocks it’s hard not to think it’s an awful lot of energy wasted.

Not just on the part of the feckless halfwits who use Twitter as a launchpad for lies and nonsense (The French stock exchange? Really?!), but also for the decent people who counter that poppycock with common sense and the truth. If it continues I foresee a future in which Twitter spoofers become more and more elaborate and need a special police force to control them, lest journalists and people who ought to know better spread their drivel even further. Hopefully this special police force will have the power to punch these people repeatedly in the face. A lot.

It’s simple to make Twitter a good place. Don’t follow idiots, don’t waste your time fighting with people on the Internet, accept that other people have other opinions which if you don’t like don’t follow them, and turn off your phone from time to time and go outside. Even if it is raining there’s good stuff to do out there. Oh, and remember that pretty much every bit of transfer news that doesn’t come from an established account is about as true as me saying I love the work of Phil Collins and I dream of John Terry being crowned King of the Universe. It’s just funny what perspective a few days away can give you.

Anyway, the Euros have been on and seeing as Tom made it a thing I might as well continue. I watched England v France in this strange little Spanglish bar the other day and thought Oxlade-Chamberlain did really well, considering. It wasn’t much of a game and Nasri’s goal was annoying because he’s such an odious little twerp. As for Ireland, well, there’s offside and there’s offside while Shay Given’s finish was top class. I’m sure we’ll turn Spain over no problems though, they’re all small and stuff.

Yesterday saw the Czech Republic beat Greece. I didn’t see it but highlights seemed to suggest the two goalkeepers had a crap-off. The Greek fella out-crapped Cech 2-1. Poland v Russia was a good game though, perhaps the best one in the tournament thus far, and we saw Andrei Arshavin looking lively and threatening, which provokes wistful thoughts in Arsenal fans. ‘Why can’t he play like this for us?’, I saw people ask. And then you get to the second half and he’s puffing and blowing like a 60 a day smoker and that’s pretty much the reason why he can’t play like that for us.

He is, and has been for some time, criminally unfit for a professional football player. I remember one of the first games he played for us and he took his shirt off after the game. Not since the days of Jan Molby has a player sported a finer pair of love handles and he was never bothered to get fit enough to produce on a consistent basis. Perhaps he was indulged at Zenit because he was who he was, but maybe he was indulged at Arsenal too long. He’s a fantastic character and a very likeable person, but the laziness was apparent from the start and we never got on top of that.

There’s Arsenal interest later today as TGSTEL and Denmark take on Portugal, while Robin van Persie’s Holland come up against Germany. Lukasz Podolski will certainly start while Per Mertesacker might be asked to use his knowledge of our captain to try and stop him from scoring. In which case he’ll be whispering ‘You don’t want to score tonight. You don’t want to score tonight’ as the game goes on. Should be an interesting one though.

In terms of ‘Arsenal’ Arsenal news, there’s little enough to tell you, although the chatter, from decent sources, about Olivier Giroud seems to be growing. This morning L’Equipe are reporting a deal could be done by the end of the week (via @mattspiro), which follows quotes from the Montpellier president that we’re interested. He’s left-footed, apparently, which means we’d be left-tacular next season with him, Podolski and Robin in the team [insert speculation about signing left-footed players here, mince it and feed it to swine]. I can’t say I know much about him but we’ve had a brilliant time when it comes to signing strikers from France in recent times so I’m sure this will be just fine! Or third time lucky, who knows.

Other than that it seems as quiet as you’d expect it to be in terms of transfer news when there’s a big international tournament on. No doubt things will progress over the course of this month and separating the wheat from the enormous amounts of chaff is something we’ll strive for.

For stats fans, 7amkickoff has taken a look at Arsenal at the Euros thus far in one of his trademark By The Numbers posts on Arseblog News.

And that’s just about it. Now, I’ve got to change the flip-flops for wellies, the sunshine for rainfall and the sea for great big puddles. Summer, eh?

Interlull
June 12, 2012 posted by Tom

And it’s goodnight from me…

And it’s goodnight from me…

This morning I was woken up by a cat, who decided that Mrs Tom’s head was the ideal location for him to sit until it was breakfast time. This isn’t terribly unusual – he quite often decides the best time to be at his most friendly is when you’re at your most docile (i.e. asleep). What was unusual was the fact that he was quite so noisy about it – miaow this, and miaow that. Anyone would’ve thought he was hungry and wanted someone to get up and feed him. Naturally enough, despite it being her head he was sitting on, Mrs Tom quite happily slept through it as he purred like a maniac, drilling to the centre of the earth. Some people might suggest simply chucking him off the bed, or shutting them out of the bedroom, but this fails to understand the nature of cat ownership, or more accurately, being owned by a cat – or the size of the cat in question. He’s not to be fucked with.

This all started at about 4am (or that’s when it woke me up, at least), so I’m feeling somewhat jaded today, and I have an audit tomorrow for which I need to spend today preparing instead of doing actual work. Fun times.

Onto less feline news now, and it looks like I picked the wrong fixture again at Euro 2012 as I watched England – France play out a 1-1 draw. I say it was the wrong game; Roy Hodgson’s selection was both refreshing and interesting for an England manager, picking players to fit a system that brought the best from them as well as countered the strengths of the opposition rather than picking players based on their reputations, and I was surprised they weren’t as poor as I expected them to be – but it wasn’t a particularly fun game to watch.

Patrice Evra likened England’s tactics to Chelsea’s in the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona, which I don’t suppose he really meant as a compliment, but it worked for England in a similar way – although it should be said that the other half of that comparison, France as Barcelona, doesn’t really hold up. England, however, were certainly disciplined and held their shape well, even if they did defend awfully deep at times. While I’m never, ever going to be able to support an England team – any team – that contains such despicable excuses for human beings as John Terry, it’d be nice to see Roy Hodgson be able shove some of the nonsense and disrespect he received upon his appointment right down the throats of those dishing it out. One competitive game, of course, is a bit early to be suggesting that’s on the cards, however.

The stand out selection from both an England and Arsenal point of view was that of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. I have to say I thought there was a danger his inclusion in the squad was a little reminiscent of Theo Walcott’s in the 2006 World Cup, but the young man has obviously shown Hodgson enough in training, and acquitted himself well in a bright start, demonstrating purpose and intent, as well as not inconsiderable technique, and although he tailed off in the second half (as did all the players), he should be proud of his efforts.

A draw was probably the right result. England took the lead after a needless foul from Evra gave Gerrard the opportunity to put an excellent free kick onto the head of Joleon Lescott who nodded past Hugo Lloris, but our good friend Samir Nasri scored from distance a few minutes later with a shot I thought the goalie might’ve dealt with better, but he must’ve seen late.

In the other game, Sweden were beaten 2-1 by co-hosts Ukraine in their first outing in the competition. By all accounts it was an entertaining match, and I’ve seen the goals, but again it sounds like that should’ve been the one I watched. 35 year old Andriy Shevchenko was the hero for Ukraine, getting two goals in six minutes to turn the game on its head after Sweden had taken the lead through Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Seeing how I’m obviously completely failing to choose the right games to watch, and I have neither the time nor inclination to watch every single one, I’d welcome recommendations for the rest of the tournament please. Say hello in the arses.

Onto other things now, and there’s nothing really new to the Giroud to Arsenal rumours, but they are being reported by increasingly credible sources, Philippe Auclair going so far as to stick his neck out on Twitter, suggesting that there’s a £10m release clause we might activate. Gunnerblog has a more in-depth look at the situation.

In what I’m not sure are new quotes, Bacary Sagna is reported to have said that he expects Robin van Persie to still be at the club next season:

I’m looking forward to starting the season with him. I know there is a lot of speculation about his future but he’ll just want to focus on the European Championship and then afterwards he’ll focus on Arsenal.

He was our best player [last year] and the best player in the Premier League. He was magnificent and it was his best season for Arsenal so far.

I hope he’s going to score even more goals next year.

Fingers crossed for both us, and those Premier League defences he terrorised so effectively last season.

And finally for today, one of the heroes of Old Trafford, Sylvain Wiltord has announced his retirement from football. I have to say I didn’t know he was still playing, but he’s been at Nantes. Wiltord scored the goal that won us the league at Old Trafford in 2002, of course, and won a further league title with the club in 2004. He then left to go to Lyon, where he won the French title three years in a row, before moving to Rennes, Marseille, and Metz, before ending up at current club Nantes. And before he joined us, he’d already won the French league at Bordeaux. Quite the collection of medals to show his kids and grandkids, and I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him all the very best for his retirement.

And that’s it from me. Arseblogger’s swap deal with Barcelona comes to an end today, Dublin preparing the jubilee style street party and river flotilla for his return as we speak. The poor chap emailed me just after 6am this morning, so he’s either  up late having been drinking all night, up early drinking trying to forget his imminent return, or, you know, is just up early. You can choose which scenario you feel most likely, but again, I’m sure you’ll want to join me in hoping he had a very well deserved and relaxing holiday, and that it won’t take him five years to book another one – even if that means you have to put up with my company again!

It’s been real, folks, and I look forward to talking to you again some time in the not too distant future.  Thanks for all your comments, compliments, and criticism too. There’ll hopefully be some updates to the arses, liveblog, and other parts of the site over the summer, depending on various commitments I can’t possibly all keep, but you can keep up with me and what’s happening with that and other stuff over on Twitter at @arseblog_tom.

Cheers for now.

Interlull
June 11, 2012 posted by Tom

Monday musings

Monday musings

Hello and welcome to a shiny, brand new week on Arseblog. Aren’t you reinvigorated and ready for five more days of work? I know I am, which is lucky because I’m off on my own short break at the end of this week so won’t be doing five days of work. I probably won’t be doing four days of work either, but that’s another story.

Yesterday’s Euro2012 matches didn’t really hold much of an Arsenal interest with none of our players in action for their countries. Spain and Italy played out a technically adept, although not terribly entertaining, 1-1 draw that should leave both of them relatively happy. Di Natale opened the scoring for the Italians with a fine finish, Cesc Fabregas getting a neat equaliser a few minutes later with one of those late diagonal runs into the box Freddie (and Cesc, in fairness) used to do so well for Arsenal. Spain probably should’ve won it late on when Fernando Torres twice had chances with only the goalkeeper to beat, but displayed the kind of form he has done for Chelsea all season. The chance where he tried to go round the keeper, when the square pass to an unmarked team mate seemed particularly poor decision making, but he’s a player low on confidence. That said, Spain did look much better when they actually had a striker on the pitch, something they were missing in the first half.

In the day’s other game, Ireland lost 3-1 to Croatia. I didn’t watch that one at all so can’t comment except to say it’s a bit of a shame for the Irish – it’s a very tough group for the minnows, but on the other hand they do have a bunch of cunts playing for them. Sorry Ireland – I bear you no ill-will – but your players are largely as bastardly as England’s.

Which brings me onto my next point, sort of. While I’m glad there’s lots of football on the TV, and I have the option, the only game I’ve found remotely entertaining has been the Russia – Czech Republic one – and I’m still not sufficiently interested to be supporting anyone. This is either the cumulative effect of being angry at international football for the rest of the season, or the fact that the quality of football on offer so far has been fairly dire – because it’s international football. I don’t know whether it’s just me, but the standard seems well below what’s on offer in the Champions League. It’s hard to imagine Barcelona vs Milan ever being nearly as poor as yesterday’s Spain vs Italy game. I wonder if Platini, the wooly haired cunthound, can see that too. Or maybe it’s just me being overly negative.

Today’s fixtures see France play England in the earlier game, then Ukraine take on Sweden this evening.

Speaking of France, Laurent Blanc has told Laurent Koscielny that he needs to be patient and fight for his place:

We’ve got two big players in central defence and I hope they play very well tomorrow. Koscielny has had a very good season with Arsenal but, as you know, you need experience at centre-back and players that work together in terms of instinct.

While fairly uncontroversial comments in themselves, whomever is playing ahead of Koscielny must be playing well indeed. As I said the other day, Blanc is quite right – Koscielny had a great season for us – and in my opinion can consider himself unlucky not to be first pick.

Onto tenuous transfer tittle tattle now, and reports began swirling around Twitter yesterday that Arsenal have agreed a fee with Montpelier for their striker Olivier Giroud. I can’t comment on the accuracy of these stories, except to say he’s a player in whom we’ve certainly been rumoured to be interested, and it’s a position we need to strengthen regardless of the signing of Lucas Podolski and whatever Robin van Persie ends up doing. There are various versions of the story; that we’ve offered £6.4m plus Marouane Chamakh, or that Giroud has a £12m release clause, but what I will say is that Twitter rumours should be taken with a large pinch of salt, and I’ll be surprised if anything happens during Euro 2012.

Stories of Johann Djourou’s exit from the club appear to be either picking up pace, or to be more accurate, are being picked up by more news outlets, which is perhaps a reflection of the volume of Arsenal-related news out there. I can’t see any new quotes, but Italy is still being touted as his destination of choice, and as I said the other day, with Mertesacker, Vermaelen, and Koscielny all ahead of him at Arsenal, it’d be unsurprising were he to choose to move on.

Pantomime villain Samir Nasri has either repeated his quotes from last month about how Arsenal “only dream of winning trophies”, or the aforementioned dearth of Arsenal news has led to the same quotes being rehashed. I’m not sure who it serves to get worked up about Samir Nasri; whatever he says, while I’m sure it’s certainly nice for him to have won the league with all the other mercenaries, there isn’t a sane person alive that doesn’t understand he went to City for the money. Honestly though, who cares what he does, says, or thinks? He really is a non-entity as far as I’m concerned, and getting wound up by the likes of him is like getting wound up by reading the Daily Mail’s political commentary. Don’t do it.

Arsenal chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, has stated what can only be described as the bleedin’ obvious, by saying that Arsenal can’t compete with the likes of City when it comes to wages:

He is vital to us and has been an extremely good captain. But if somebody comes along and offers Robin £250,000 a week then I am afraid we cannot compete with that.

With players, you never know what they are going to do

As has been said here before, I don’t think Robin’s primary motivation will be money, but as PHW says, you never know what players are going to do.

And that’s about it. Have a good opening day to this week’s festival of fun, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.