july 26th
“I have said it 100 times, there is nothing to talk about. He will not go to Real Madrid. If that was true it would have happened a long time ago.” – Arsene Wenger when asked about Patrick Vieira.
“I cannot speak. This is not the right moment. I cannot talk about Real Madrid. Leave me. Don’t do this.” – Patrick Vieira when asked by a Spanish reporter about his future.
Obviously the club hold most of the aces. Vieira still has three years of his contract to run, and Arsenal don’t have to accept any kind of bid if they don’t want to. The problem then is you’ve got a player who’s going to be unhappy at the club. Not just any player either, the captain. This whole thing gets more tiresome by the day. Paddy had a chance to say he wanted to stay at Arsenal, and he didn’t take it. Does he really need to say ‘I want to go to Madrid’ now?
The Sun is reporting that Luis Figo has told his team-mates at Madrid that Vieira will be joining them. You might remember reports that Figo’s agent was sent as an intermediary to help broker the deal, and it seems his people have spoken to Vieira’s people and now Figo is letting el gato out of the bolsa by telling his Merengue chums during pre-season training.
Away from the whole Vieira saga it was good news for Edu as Brazil won the Copa American after a penalty shoot-out against old rivals Argentina. Our man scored one of the penalties and here’s hoping he gets a well earned rest before coming back to join up with the squad. Arsene Wenger says there’s still a ‘chance’ of the Trabelsi deal going through. It seems to be an issue over the length of the contract and the boss has described the situation as ‘disappointing’. He did confirm we’re looking for a right back though, which casts more doubt over the future of Lauren as we mentioned the other day. It looks more probable that he’ll move back to Spain.
That’s about it. No doubt we’ll get more during the day and if anything big happens I’ll update here. How was your weekened then?
