august 13th
The main news this morning is that reports from Spain suggest that Real Madrid have broken off negotiations regarding Patrick Vieira. The reasons seem to vary from Vieira not being able to agree personal terms (unlikely) to Arsenal suddenly hiking the price up after already agreeing a fee. I doubt that story too. Dein is a shrewd negotiator, he’s not just going to ask for another €5m after supposedly reaching an agreement with them. Some reports say that Arsenal have even offered Vieira a huge pay increase and a contract extension to entice him to stay at the club.
In the Spanish press AS say that this whole story is reminiscent of the Ronaldo signing when Real broke off negotiations with Inter only for the player to end up at the Bernabeu. And would it be beyond the realms of possibility that this is another Madrid tactic to force the price down? Not at all.
Arsene Wenger is quoted as saying “I wouldn’t say I am genuinely optimistic Patrick will stay. Today I would bet he would go rather than stay. But the deal with Real isn’t done and if it’s not done by this weekend, he is staying at Arsenal.”
Whatever the truth of it this story has had more twists and turns than the Monaco Grand Prix, I’m utterly bored of it now and I just wish we’d get a definite conclusion to it one way or another.
In other news Freddie Ljungberg is hungry for silverware this season. He says “We’re not thinking about remaining undefeated now, we’re thinking about winning the Premiership again.”
Harry Redknapp has had a pop at Arsenal for our half-hearted attempts to sign Michael Carrick from West Ham. He was on the verge of joining Portsmouth but Arsenal’s supposed interest messed with his head, now the lad doesn’t know what to do. It appears he’s so confused he might even join West Brom.
Norwich boss Nigel Worthington has tipped David Bentley to be a big star in the future. Our new DB is currently on loan in Alan Patridge country and Worhthington says “I can say, first and foremost, that I have been very impressed by the young man himself, you can see the ability he has got. He’s has got lots of it.”
So that’s that. It’s bound to be a busy day today, keep an eye on NewsNow and if anything big happens I’ll update here. Unless I’m lying around in the sun drinking, natch.
Note: Sorry for the server problems. It appears the rush for first arse each morning is making the database unstable and overload the server. I’m looking into a solution. At the moment we’re without arses though. Sorry.
