april 4th
Not much happening this morning at this early stage.
The boss is convinced that Ashley Cole, who was reminded by some sections of the Highbury crowd on Saturday that his recent behaviour hasn’t been fully appreciated, will stay and sign a new deal with Arsenal. Arsene Wenger says “I’m convinced he will stay and I’ll try everything to keep him here. To extend his contract is the next step. I know we want to keep him, the board wants to keep him and we want him to stay here and be happy.”
Any new negotiations will have to wait until the inquiry into the Chelsea tapping-up affair is over and done with. Maybe this time Ashley will realise the contract and salary he was offered initially by Arsenal put him right up there with some of the club’s top earners and sign on the dotted line. Maybe he’ll get another heap of crappy advice from his agent about how to negotiate contracts. Who knows? It will be interesting to see if he plays against Chelsea in a couple of weeks time though.
After his hat-trick against Norwich, Thierry has taken time to give props to Gilberto who made his comeback on Saturday, saying “Gilberto is our Claude Makelele. Makelele is the key player for Chelsea and Gilberto is one of our key players. Thankfully he’s back for the end of the season and the most important thing is for us to try to get back on track.”
David Bentley will make his comeback from injury for Norwich reserves when they play Arsenal reserves this evening at Underhill.
And that’s about all there is to tell you right now. No doubt most of the entertainment this week will come from the North East as the Bowyer v Dyer thing rumbles on. The press conference where they were made apologise was nearly as hilarious as the fight itself. As someone on the forums pointed out, wasn’t it good that Dyer had time to put on his sparkling diamond earrings before presenting his contrite self to the public? I mean, for fuck’s sake. What a clueless twat he is – and has anyone else noticed how the bottom half of his mouth seems to work independently from the top. He’s like a South Park Canadian. Anyway, they made Shearer, Souness and Freddy Shepherd unspeakably grumpy which should put the rest of us in a decent mood.
So how was your weekend then?
