News round up – Arsecast 15, Boardroom Blitz…

Ok, let’s get straight down to business.

Jens Lehmann has hinted that his future lies away from Arsenal. His contract is up in the summer and while the club will only offer one year he’s probably getting longer contract offers elsewhere. He says Spain and a return to Germany are ‘possibilities’. Personally I think he’ll move on in the summer and we’ll bring in another keeper. What’s good about Jens is that he’s the consumate professional in terms of his preparation and performance so even if he’s leaving it’s not the same situation we had with Wiltord or like the one Beckham is undergoing at Real Madrid.

Theo Walcott says he’s not getting stressed at having not scored for Arsenal because he’d put too much pressure on himself if he started worrying about it. He’s happy just to be playing and says he’ll work hard in training to stay in the first team squad.

Gilberto has been very impressed with how quickly Denilson has adapted to English football and life at Arsenal. He says:

Denilson has adapted so quickly to the system of the team in the short time he’s been at the Club. It’s great to see. I have tried to help him as much as I can can to make him feel comfortable in the Club and he’s doing very well.

It is good that we have other Brazilians at the club. Silvinho helped Edu who helped Gilberto who is helping Denilson and Baptista. They seem to be enjoying themselves as well as that YouTube video that everyone in the world has seen shows (which you can search for yourself. The link I have doesn’t work anymore).

Promising young midfielder Mark Randall has turned 17 and has signed professional terms with the club. Meanwhile, Nicklas Bendtner (Danish article) has been interviewed in the Danish version of FHM and according to an email I got this is what he said:

He loves being a footballer, and also love to party. He thinks the best things in life are Football, Women and booze… and family comes after that! He also goes on about his life in Birmingham and the parties they throw and the trouble that is all part of every day training. His biggest ambitions are to play for the Danish National Team (achieved) and to play for either Real Madrid or Barcelona! Not a lot of mention about Arsenal.

Wonderful stuff and thanks to Lasse for the translation. Middlesboro chairman Steve Gibson has criticised Arsenal and Liverpool for not contributing anything to the English national side. Amazing that a man who has paid huge money for the likes of Maccarone, Yakubu and all the fucking dodgy Brazilians he brought in can criticise just because Stuart Downing gets a game because there’s nobody else to play on the left hand side of the English midfield. Anyway, being the best left footed English midfielder is like coming last in a Quasimodo lookalike contest. Moron.

Anyway, on to this week’s Arsecast.

Today’s Arsecast sees a brand new sponsor – Savile-Rogue.com – who make those fantastic cashmere football scarves. I’m delighted to have them on board and I’m sure we’ll be having some scarftacular competitions in the weeks ahead.

In a 45 minute epic episode there’s a blogchat with the man from East Lower in which we touch on the possibility of Arsenal being taken over like Liverpool and we talk about Thierry Henry and Theo Walcott, there’s your reaction to the idea of Arsenal being foreign owned and I talk to Nigel Phillips from the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust about that same subject and what exactly the Trust does. His information is very interesting and might put some people’s minds at ease.

As usual Arsene Wenger Hawkins is there, the Man in the Bar has a flame haired player history and there’s a bet of the week from www.bluesq.com. Don’t forget, if you haven’t got a bluesq.com account you can sign up from the link on the home page and it does help Arseblog out a bit – with the arsecasts eating up more and more bandwidth each week every bit helps!

To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (22.2mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here.

And that’s that for today. A proper preview of the Wigan game tomorrow.

I think we made it + thoughts on Arsenal takeover bids

Morning all. At this early stage it seems that all our players came through the internationals without injury and the only effect will be fatigue. Typically, Thierry Henry played the full 90 minutes for France but maybe this time 90 minutes might just be what he needs as he tries to get back into the groove.

Cesc played for about 20 minutes as England got beaten by Spain in a friendly. Other than that I’m in the dark and happy not to see ‘Injury mightmare for Arsenal as X, Y and Z miss the rest of the season’ headlines.

One man on his way back from injury is Freddie Ljungberg and he says the reason he’s stayed so long at Arsenal is because of a ‘special bond’ amongst everyone at the club. He also reveals his admiration for Arsene Wenger and that the pain of last year’s Champions League final is a big motivator this year. He says:

I think we played really well and it still really hurts that they scored the winning goal with just ten minutes to go. It’s hard to take and I can’t stop thinking about it. Pain is never good but this pain is good for us because we are hurting and we want to go one better this year and win the final. It makes me angry when see that goal, I would like us to play Barcelona again this season.

Quite. I’d like to play Barcelona too. I’d very much like to beat Barcelona. I would love it if we beat them, love it etc etc.

Arsene Wenger reveals his big obsessions:

I’m obsessed by things like retiring and death. What drives me on is that belief that tomorrow I’ll do things better and be a better person than I am today.

It’s quite an interesting interview in today’s Sun.

The Mirror suggest Juventus will launch a summer raid for Gilberto Silva. Can’t see it myself, I have to say.

In tomorrow’s Arsecast there’s a blogchat with the Man from East Lower in which we discuss the takeover of Liverpool and the likelihood and impact of such a thing happening to Arsenal. On that theme Safety has written a new article called ‘Celebrity sugar daddy on ice…get me out of here’. Read it here.

If you have thoughts about the fact that three of England’s top 4 clubs are now owned by foreign billionaires and what this might mean for Arsenal please drop a quick email so we can get some opinion for tomorrow’s Arsecast. Should Arsenal resist any takeover bid? Would we get left behind if we didn’t seek investment from the likes of Sheikh Mustapha Million? Emails to arsecast@[remove]arseblog.com

Update: I have a mountain of emails already so no more required! Thanks to everyone for getting in touch. A great cross section of opinion.

And that’s that. Quite cold and a little bit snowy here today. More sleet than snow which is absolute rubbish. Sleet is crap. More tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for no injuries tonight

An early blog this morning as I have to be somewhere soon. Having to be somewhere at specific times is such a drag. Oh well.

Tonight sees our lads play their internationals. As usual we keep fingers crossed that everyone comes back in good shape. There’ll be a lot of focus on England v Spain as Cesc Fabregas goes up against Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. The young Spaniard won’t shirk the physical side of it though, saying:

It will be tough because we know how England can play. It will be tough but we think we can beat them. If England try to rough us up, we can handle that. Definitely.

Well, as far as I’m concerned England can cripple the rest of the squad once Cesc comes out of it unscathed. I hope Lampard doesn’t land on him or anything. He’d be flattened like the Coyote after one of those ACME anvils fell on him from a great height. There are whole rake of other matches on, too many to go into.

Last night Justin Hoyte and Theo Walcott figured for England’s U21s as they came back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with their Spanish counterparts while Gilberto played for Brazil v Portugal at the Grove.

Congratulations to Tomas Rosicky who was named the Czech player of the year for the third time. He credits moving to Arsenal with improving him as a player and he’s happy with how things are going so far, promising to improve even more. He says:

I hoped I would do well and I am very happy that I play regularly, that I have gained ground there this quickly. The Premiership is very quick, but I believe I will be even better.

He does seem to have grown into the team since Christmas and the way we need to see him improve now is with goals. I know you can’t really call him a direct replacement for Robert Pires but the team certainly misses Pires’ goals. If Rosicky could get a half dozen between now and the end of the season it would set him up nicely for next year and certainly have a big impact on results.

Now, time to announce the t-shirt winner. The Random Number Generator did its thing and the Cooking with Fabregas shirt goes to Phil Webb. Well done to you. I’ll be in touch to get your address and shirt size. Thanks to everyone for you entries. Sorry there was only one to give away this time but we’ll have more to come soon, I promise. If you didn’t win you can always buy one though, just follow this link to my chums at goalhanger.

And really that’s all there is to tell you this early. If I were a bird I’d be catching the worm but worms taste like mud and I gave up eating them years ago.

No news really. Fancy a Cescy t-shirt?

I told you it was going to be a slow week, eh?

At least the Battleship tournaments will be free of cheating as Mathieu Flamini has won his first call up to the French squad to play Argentina. Well done to him.

Theo Walcott says Arsenal can’t give up on the title race and after years of signing the ‘new Vieira’ we’ve now signed the new Thierry Henry in Gilles Sunu, the 16 year old French prodigy who will come to the club in the summer. The Mirror says Fernando Torres would prefer to join Arsenal than Man United but I can’t see anything in the article that backs that up.

And that’s all the news there is. However, never let it be said that Arseblog doesn’t do its best to keep you entertained or mildly amused of a morning so I got in touch with my good friend at goalhanger.com and said “Hey, Goalhanger, got any t-shirts I can give away to my readers” and they said “Why, of course we do”.

So, before they unleash a range of new designs which will also be given away in competitions here they’ve given me a Cesc Fabregas t-shirt which you can see to your left. To win this top quality garment simply answer the following question:

Cesc is short for which name?

Is it a) Tony Cescarino – b) Francesc – c) Cescatchewan

Answers to tshirt@arseblog.com and I’ll announce the winner tomorrow.

Internationals are a pain in the arse, eh? How are we supposed to amuse ourselves today? Do I care about Joey Barton being given the cold shoulder by his England teammates because he called them spazzers for writing books? No, I do not.

Right, here’s hoping someone has some good stories to make today’s Arses interesting…