september 5th
07.35 – Patrick Vieira has been speaking about Arsenal and how we didn’t spend much money this summer. The captain says “We have banked on stability, the club did not recruit, but it does not mean we are not ambitious. We have the means to go far in the Champions League.”
He also spoke about the great spirit at the club, and how it has carried on despite the loss of senior players like Adams, Seaman, Winterburn, Dixon and Bould. More in the Guardian.
Thierry Henry on Chelsea. “I couldn’t care less about the recruitment they made. It’s not my problem.”
I was watching Sky Sports the other night and commentator Gerry Armstrong was going on about how Claude Makelele said Chelsea were now a bigger club than Real Madrid. Gerry says “Yeah, well when Chelsea have won their league 29 times and won 9 European cups, then they can start calling themselves a big club.”
He’s right too. Chelsea have spent a fortune, and are now just about as strong as Arsenal or Man United. I just think there’s going to some noses put out of joint and clashes of egos at Stamford Bridge that will be more a hinderance than a help.
AW says Jens Lehmann could be Germany’s number 1 goalkeeper. Personally, I couldn’t care less what number he is in Germany as long as he does well for us. The last thing we need is another keeper with an unhealthy fixation for international football. Steve Bould has returned to Arsenal to become a coach at Liam Brady’s academy.
I’ve been running a competition all week with two copies of Wenger – the making of a legend by Jasper Rees to give away. Thank you all for taking part, and thanks to all of you who had kind words for the site. Sorry I can’t reply to all of them, there were over 500 entries in the end.
The correct answer was c) On horseback. Lots of people chose b). Lots of people made a funny comment about Ruud van Nistelrooy when choosing c). So, to decide the winners I put all the correct entries into a spreadsheet, numbered them, then went to this random number generator to pick two numbers. The corresponding people in the spreadsheet were Kate Mackay and Will in Bangkok. I’ll be in touch with you both to get addresses and stuff like that. Thanks again to Rebecca at Shortbooks for donating the prizes.
I will of course try and blag lots more free stuff in the future, and if there’s anyone out there who has free stuff to give away, please get in touch.
Praise be to Jebus that it’s Friday. This seems to have been a really long week.
