june 12th
So Arsenal got rid of a whole pile of players yesterday. To baffles the search engines a bit, here are their names: Alex Bailey, Stephen Bradley, Liam Chilvers, Craig Holloway, Kanu, Martin Keown, Nicky Nicolau, Michal Popalopadopalopalopalus, Paulinho, Ashley Probets, Rami Shaaban, Igors Stepanovs and Sylvain Wiltord. Some young scholars were also let go and you can find their names here.
It looks like Wiltord will go to Spurs, Igors will solve Real Madrid’s defensive problems after he shows the world he’s better than Beckenbauer in Euro2004, while the big man Kanu looks like he’s heading for Charlton. In particular I’d like to wish Kanu luck, he scored some big goals for us, some great goals – the dummy against Deportivo being my particular favourite – and he’s had a bit of a rough ride, especially when AW tried to justify the purchase of Jeffers by playing him ahead of the big Nigerian (notice how I did that without once mentioning the hat-trick against Chelsea?…oh). Anyway, adios to all of the above, we’ll see you all again sometime, I’m sure.
In other exciting transfer news St.Etienne want Pascal Cygan on loan to help record their new album bolster their defence as they go back up the top division in France. According to their sporting director, Jean Pierre le Fromage, “If Arsenal can give us help, we won’t refuse, even if there is no more official partnership between both clubs.”
Finally a word about Arsenal+ and Macintosh again. Like all the other Mac users that wrote to them, I received the standard PFO reply. On the 3rd of June I wrote back to them asking them if they wouldn’t mind just clarifying one or two small points for me. As yet I haven’t received anything. So as well as not providing any kind of tangible service to Mac users, it looks like they can’t be arsed providing even the most basic customer service (and I’m a current Arsenal+ subscriber too). When Arsenal.con wasn’t being run by Sky the customer service was always reasonably quick, if not always thorough. Glad to see moving to new providers has improved things so dramatically.
