Reports earlier in the week suggested Cesc Fabregas had broken off from his long-time agent Joseba Diaz. Some people speculated that this was because Diaz was angling to get him to move to Real Madrid or Barcleona all the time.

Now it has emerged that Darren Dein is Cesc's new agent (Spanish link). The same Darren Dein that rang up Barcelona last summer and said 'Do you still want Thierry Henry?'.

Given the links between Dein and Henry, and Henry being at Barcelona, it would hardly be a surprise if there was an increase in the amount of speculation regarding Cesc's future this summer. It's tiresome enough anyway, it's bound to get worse.

It may be that Dein, as part of the SEM group, can open up new doors in terms of commercial deals and sponsorships for Cesc, but the article also says he'll be handling all his contract negotiations as well.

John Harris has the enviable position of being a music writer for the Manchester Guardian. Writing in the G2 supplement on Tuesday he took exception to the Conservative party - in particular David Cameron personally - co-opting music that he considered to be left wing. The catalyst for this was a photo op that Tory Boy asked for outside Salford Boys Club. The local Labour party picketed this event in the usual Student Union way and Cameron had to go in the back entrance (one pun in ten that made it). Lovely Hazel, MP for Salford, was triumphant that she could have her own pic taken in from of the building unmolested. Bully for her. What animated Harris was the idea that Cameron can like The Smiths, The Jam and The Clash and even has a particular fondness for Kirsty Macolls version of Billy Braggs, “A New England”. That’s just wrong, says Harris.

What? They’re all great, you twat. What right thinking person couldn’t pick any of those out of a line-up and say to a chum “here have a listen to this, classic!”. I got quite animated about this article because it brings to mind directly the kind of mindlessly loyal tribalism that has been the bane of anyone trying to think for themselves, unshackled, in the United Yeah Right Kingdom since the year puff. What really captures the attention of the media, more than anything else, is conflict: Afghanistan, Iraq, Heather Mills. And in any conflict it is important to know which - or whose - side you are on. [As an aside, no one is on the side of Heather Mills. As you were]. Tribalism is a part of being British. English, I mean. Yeah, you fuck off as well. And I quite like some aspects of it. That I can tell you to fuck off for instance and probably buy you a pint and forget about the whole thing later. “I might break your leg, but I’ll visit you in hospital”. That kind of thing. But a tribal stance in no way stands up to intellectual examination. It falls over because it is one-eyed and doesn’t have a leg to stand on (that’s not knocking Heather, you understand, she has a leg. It’s now worth £8m). In almost all conflicts both the most naïve and the most partisan feed the cannons. The cynics are at the back directing operations. And the critics are even further back telling us all just where we've gone wrong. A recent study of criticism indicated that the majority of people focus on negatives. I think this is because to accentuate the one positive, say, in response to a diatribe from an ardent critic about one's general shoddiness, might add to the mind of that critic the impression that not only were you shoddy, but you were also an over-optimistic simpleton with a distressing lack of self-awareness to boot.

I drive a Vauxhall Zafira. It lugs seven people (or five plus luggage) economically enough. The new one is over priced, but the old one is good value. I have an 03 plate that cost me shy of ten grand at six months old and has (apart from a spectacular exhaust explosion on the M25) given sterling service. But when you assess the worth of something it must be as the sum of its parts. I hate the stupidly low first gear that makes every Zafira driver leaving a T junction look like he’s auditioning as a Top Gear presenter. I hate the ridiculously thick corner pillars that can block a whole car from your vision at a roundabout. And I hate the frankly laughable design of the rear wheel holder that allows some scally with strong fingers just to lift it straight from the underside of the rear and flog it down the market, perhaps whilst you are still driving it.

Is unquestioning loyalty very helpful to me when I decide to buy a new car? I would say not. In fact I would go so far as to say that anyone who is brand loyal, in modern times, is a fucking ignoramus. As an illustration take the story of three generations of distribution managers at the opening of a new multi million pound cannery line. Whilst marvelling at the increased efficiency of the machinery they discuss scheduling and the incumbent manager bemoans the fact that all long distance work takes place on a Friday. It’s so hard to get drivers willing to encroach on their weekend with a long tiring run. His predecessor from the sixties adds to the weight of the complaint by pointing out how bad it was in those days when haulage was a good deal more onerous an occupation than it is now. His pre-war predecessor then indicates that their travils were a mere bagatelle compared to his time; when drivers used to rest their horses at the weekend and do deliveries locally mid-week, in order to keep their Drays fresh for the Friday run, and by so doing keep the shops well stocked for the Saturday rush. Does a little light go off in your head hearing this story? I hope so. “Because we’ve always done it that way” is a shit reason for almost everything it has ever explained. The sad fact is that many of the people who always do it that way like to always do it that way. But too much missionary and someday someone runs off into the jungle.

Why is David Cameron allowed to like the Smiths (the lead singer of whom famously said what he would really, really like was for the handbag swinging prime minister of the day to be dispatched in the way revolutionary France reserved for the worst criminals, and the aristocracy)? Because eclecticism is something to be cherished, I feel. I would go so far as to say that I distrust the opinions - on any kind of art - of any person who fails to have broad, varied, inconsistent, contrary and quixotic tastes. Those who espouse commitment to a cause, or a tribe, or a viewpoint often use it as a filter through which they sieve the worlds offerings. And then they sup the consommé which that produces, whilst happily dumping the chunky, dirty, vital, ill-fitting lumps that get left behind into the bin.

Music is not all about anarchy, sticking it to the man, style, attitude or belonging. Before all that it’s a noise that you like having in your ear. There is a visceral quality to the best music. I don’t mean the connotation whereby one is eviscerated by music (although a download single by Celldweller that my 10 year old son suggested I listen to recently made me think twice about that). I mean when you feel it strongly in your mind and your body and your soul (and not because you are standing too near the speakers at British Sea Power either). I stopped liking music because someone I admired liked it when I was 14. I stopped liking music because it espoused a certain idealised lifestyle when I was 19. I am enormously nostalgic for music that I never understood the first time round. Example: I like Ian Dury and the Blockheads all the more because, like a blockhead, I never noticed he was disabled at the time. I get it now. But I liked it…then.

Whilst I’m on a roll here, I also object most heartily to the crap way that RE is taught (if at all) in schools. Belonging to a religion is no box ticking exercise any more than supporting a football team or choosing a political party (at least not for the real believers). Whether you put religious studies in either the box marked "bonkers outmoded ideas" or the one marked "important tools for to get to know your local community by understanding their weird ways", both do a massive disservice to a central part of the human experience - namely what people think and believe and what they think about what they believe, and what people learned by thinking about what they believe now, and since people first started to think. Imagine doing a law degree and spending three years on court procedure and no time at all on the fundamental philosophy of law. Imagine being ignorant, at the end of your LLB, of the basic tenets of why people need governance, why the executive, legislature and judiciary are separate, and why it’s wrong to stab someone hard in the eye with a pen. But that is how it is with the teaching of the major religions though. The last century’s worth of really quite mediocre thought in the humanist tradition apparently overrules centuries of hard yakka at the coalface of metaphysics, social and moral philosophy and semantics by people quite prepared to suffer all kinds of hardship and indignity in search of the truth (albeit their truth). The best educated of us (by that I mean privately educated at personal expense, the ungrateful little twots that they are) learn the classics. Who for a minute thinks the benefit of this is in the allegorical nature of myth? No, those people really believed that shit. And it had meaning, and relevance and power and the western world was shaped by them and the generations after them who believed all kinds of other different shit. Teach kids that some people set great store in the importance of the right way to wash out the inside of your nose before prayer and you polarise them into two camps: one saying “nutters”, and the other saying “yeah my dad’s one of those nutters”. Teach people about why hygiene became a central aspect of liturgical practice in many of the worlds major religions and you might actually learn something. A digression, yes, but it has been getting on my tits for a while.

Anyone still reading is probably a veteran rambler on the gorse furnished bridleway that is my very occasional Arseblog column. I mean, of course, to put all of this in the context of the “club that can do no wrong.” My loyalty to Arsenal (and this has been remarked upon questoningly more than once and so is worth restating) is utter. I am generally not taken seriously by some of the Arsenal hardcore because I do not know, like it were my own life, enough about the inner workings of the club and the machinations of its various actors. I am always looking on the bright side of reversal in our rather substantial fortunes (see I did it again) as well. And that is plastic like polyethyelene. You might first consider, perhaps, that the levity with which this “person” approaches the business of Arsenal’s fortunes in the league suggests a certain laxity in other areas where one would demand probity of a correspondent. What, you therefore may be curious enough to be lead to ask, are his views on promiscuous bottom sex with the wild ponies of the New Forest? (I can assure you that I have the upmost respect for the preservation of their virginity, vis-a-vis surprise coition instigated by any other non-equine species including mankind, and most specifically including my own self).

I have of late (and I know exactly from where) been disposed towards melancholy. After our exploits at the San Siro, the return to the drab premiership of witless draws (which are reminiscent, in their abject futility, of the quest of the moth to navigate its way to the embrace of a well fit lady moth by means of a 60W bulb) has got me really fucking down. I even had a type of flu (Thai flu, I’m told by the barrack room doctor; lot of it about) that I think can only have got me because I weakened my own immune system with a tendancy to fatalism and weeping. End-of-season exasperation is, of course, the sign that ones disposition towards Arsenal is in rude health. But I have actually lost faith. I think we may not win anything this year. I have now said it (and those of you who have met me know that I am someone who gets his round in, tells it like it is, and couldn’t pick a winner if Curlin was entered in a Donkey Derby and the jockey was my brother-in-law). So despair not, it is not a preditction of any worth. I just wanted to share it with you. Feels good to say it out loud. But I am English, so this was an aberation. I will now bottle it up tight.

The point I think I am trying to make (I hope there is one) is that those of us who chose to support Arsenal by saying, for instance, that we could do a darn sight better if we “dropped Hleb”, “put Senderos up top”, “sack the lot of them and buy big in the next transfer window” etc., are completely entitled to that view. They are no less of an Arsenal fan for saying so (whatever you think of their ideas). I love Arsenal because of the broad college of our support. There is no Arsenal equivalent of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” that you can play that will make everyone together forget that they are not a persecuted epileptic boy in a cardigan from a grimy industrial shithole with no prospects, but actually seated in the head office of a thriving multimillion dollar franchise (and actually from Surrey as well). We don’t need it.

There is no need for anyone to feel left out when supporting Arsenal. If players are good enough, regardless of their various nationalities, that is a matter of pride for me. That is a meritocracy I can get behind. The “more Arsenal than thou” cadre can kiss the rest of our arses when we win the league because playing in front of all 5,000 (an estimate, but not an unfair one I don’t think) of them on their own just don’t pay the bills.

You can like Arsenal and like jazz. You can like Arsenal and love cross-stitch. You can love Arsenal and choose not to love New Forest ponies so much, when they finally let you out. The important thing is not your blind loyalty. The important thing is that those 11 players lucky enough to wear your hearts on their sleeves know that you really think they can do it (whatever your anxious demons tell you). Please don’t bother going if you don’t plan to let the Arsenal players know you love them, no matter what.

Okay the important thing IS blind loyalty, of course, regardless of how we appear to be fucking it up recently. But blind loyalty in a worthy cause. We have a league to win.

So say your piece. Goodness knows it’s better out than in. And let your fellow gooner say his piece to. He’s wrong (as you and I know), but let’s not judge his loyalty on that. Lets judge it solely on the only criteria one must take to be decisive in this matter: how much noise you make when the match is on.

P.S. Tony Blair likes Oasis (which Harris failed to mention). Nuff said!

Eduardo has just given his first interview to Croatian TV since his horrific injury. Arseblog forumer Kesky has provided the bullet points:

• He'll be going to Brazil soon, probably this week, and he'll begin his rehabilitation there.


• News of The World interview was made up. He never spoke to them.


• He feels fine, and hasn't watched the pictures or the video of the injury. He is very calm, and thinks his family suffered more than he did, and that he spent the last few days reassuring his wife and kid that everything will be okay, and that they need not worry.


• Before the interview, the reporter had to agree not to ask anything about Martin Taylor. The only thing Dudu said was that Taylor did not visit him in the hospital to offer an apology, like some papers reported (note - this is what the TV anchor said despite Eduardo's wishes that no questions about Taylor be asked).


• It's too early to say when will he be back, and whether he'll be better or worse than he was before. There is a long way to go, and he stressed that it will be important to be mentally prepared to get back in to the game, and not just physically.


• Eduardo thanked all of the Croatian and Arsenal fans for the support they have given him, and reiterated how important it was for him. He also thanked his teammates, and all the people at Arsenal.

Update: Here's a transcript of the interview:

Q: First, tell us how you feel right now, eleven, twelve days after the injury?

A: Well, it is much easier now, at this moment. I feel much better, in my head, now it's time to forget what happened. I will spend the near future without football, but I will have more time for my family.

Q: Could you please describe what happened? The tackle?

A: In that moment, lying on the floor, I looked at my leg, couldn't believe what I was seeing, and turned my head the other way. I felt nervous, very scared, and spent all the way to the hospital in great pain.

Q: We have heard that the Arsenal medical staff, and especially the physio Gary Lewin reacted greatly, and that Gilberto also helped a lot.

A: Yeah, they immobilized my foot, and Gilberto came over to translalte and tell me what to do. I could barely understand even him, my head was everywhere, I was barely holding on. I think it all went the way it should have, now.

Q: The pain? Was it unbearable?

A: I can't really tell. Sure, the pain was huge, but it's the panic, fear, and nervousness that I felt the most. I can't really recall the pain itself.

Q: Some players have said that you were just too quick, and that you moved the ball too fast for the other player to catch it?

A: I touched the ball away, but didn't have the time to move my foot away, and his studs were already there. I definitely didn't expect what happened to actually happen that way. Everybody says it looked really ugly, and they tell me not to watch it — so I don't watch it. I wish I had my leg in the air, and not planted on the ground. It would have been a foul, but not an injury.

Q: The pictures have been printed in most newspapers around the world. Have you seen any of them?

A: No, I haven't really. I've seen one picture of me lying on the ground, but all you could see is my back, and my head turned the other way. Generally, I don't really watch football as much as i should. I just watch Arsenal games.

Q: Have you read what Kaka said? He asked for more protection from the referees, and claimed that the top players are constantly handled with dangerous tackles.

A: Yes, I heard that, and I think he's absolutely right. If that tackle happened to somebody else, I'd still feel very sorry for the player. We'll see what will happen in the future.

Q: Do you think that football has become such a rough sport, and how much responsibility lies with the managers, and club officials, who stress the importance of winning?

A: Well, everybody wants to win, that's normal, and things like this happen.

Q: What are you plans now? Rehabilitation? How long will you be wearing the plaster cast?

A: Four weeks, probably. The club will organize something concerning my physical rehabilitation, and it should all start in about month and ten days. I'll start the rehabilitation process in Brazil, with the doctor who worked wit Ronaldo, Ronaldinho,, and Roberto Carlos.

Q: I see you're in a rather good mood.

A: well, yes. I've been spending a lot of time with my family and friends, and that has helped me a lot. Things like this happen, this time it happened to me. I have to move on.

Q: The NoTW interview with you? Is it real?

A: I guarantee you that it's completely made up. This here is my first interview after the injury. I asked them to clarify that it was not an interview with me, and they did, so it's okay now.

Q: Here, in Croatia, your injury was the most important news. Have you been harassed by the media while you were in the hospital?

A: Well, it was difficult sometimes, because i needed peace and quiet most of all. I understand them, but it was difficult for me, because something bad had happened. You have to understand me, as well.

Q: What's the prognosis?

A: It depends. Could be six, months, could be nine, could be a whole year. There is a long way to go, and it will be important to be mentally prepared to get back in to the game, and not just physically.