january 6th
10.38 – Today is the last day of the festive season. Time to take down the tree, tuck away the tinsel, haul out the holly and …er….shite out the lights. Or something.
Good news for Dennis Bergkamp is that Oxford midfielder Bobby Ford says the elbowing incident was ‘..accidental’. Er…what elbowing incident is this then? It’s fairly typical that on the day he reaches a landmark 100 goals for Arsenal, some sections of the media will try and poo all over it by highlighting a nothing incident.
Anyway, after hinting a couple of months ago that this season might be his last, it looks as if Dennis is set to continue for another year at least. Good news if you ask me. Maybe a few years ago it was difficult for players of his age to make an impact, but when you look at what Zola has done at Chelsea this year, it shows age matters not a bit.
In the wake of Arsene Wenger’s comments yesterday, Arsenal have issued a statement to say they have no intention of quitting the Premier League. It says “There is categorically no truth that Arsenal has ever contemplated quitting the Premier League. We are the current champions of the best league in the world.”
Still though, there is bound to be unrest amongst managers about the demands placed on players by international football. Thinking about though, wouldn’t it be nice if we heard the players express a dissatisfaction about it? Imagine if senior French players like Zidane, Vieira, Barthez and Desailly said something along the lines of “We love playing for our country, but tournaments like the Confederations Cup are of no benefit to us after a long hard season. We need time off and should FIFA really care about the interests of the game, this tournament should be made optional for senior players so that younger players can get a chance to experience international football.”
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Unlikely to happen though, which is a shame.
