december 21st
Oooh, only 4 days until Christmas, isn’t it exciting? All the tinsel and mince pies aside there’s a bit going on. The first thing I want to do is have a good laugh at Chelsea’s explanation, which they leaked to anyone who would listen, that Arsene Wenger snubbed Jose Mourinho’s personal Christmas card when the special one had merely signed all the ones to the other league managers. All that money and they couldn’t hire someone to come up with a better story than that. We all know that Mourinho is a poor loser, which is not unusual amongst football managers. What makes him so objectionable is that he’s a poor winner and that’s the sign of a proper cunt. Anyway, he’ll get his in time. The British sports minister has called on both men to ‘grow up’ whereas Arseblog calls on the British sports minister to ‘fuck off’ and concentrate on his job.
The next story is one we’ve all been waiting for. After months of speculation he has finally extended his contract with the club. We can rest easy. Mart Poom is ours until the end of the season!
Phew and phew again, my friends. As well as that we got the first tentative comments from the manager that he’s looking to bring in new players in January. He said “If it is possible I can make an addition to the team, I will.”
Excellent. Once that’s a pretty good player – and I know it’s difficult when people are cup tied for the CL but no matter what happens we’ll have more Premiership games than CL games – and not some 17 year old on loan from some a French club that just got relegated whose uncle was one of the most average players to ever play in England and whose main claim to fame was that Gerard Houllier said Robbie Fowler’s goal line sniffing celebration was taught to him by this player and that he was just pretending to eat the grass like a cow. Someone better than that please, Arsene. The boss revealed yesterday that he tried to buy Ronaldinho 5 years ago, going so far as to have talks with his brother who is also his agent, but was hampered because he wouldn’t have got a work permit. The boss says “Basically, the rule forces you to wait to buy the player — but by then you cannot afford him any more.”
The squad for tonight’s Carling Cup game against Doncaster was revealed yesterday. You can get the full list here, it’s the usual kids with some names like Senderos, van Persie,
Pascal Cygan and Gilberto thrown in. Again it’s a chance for some of them to impress and for some of them to show us that, despite fairly average performances whenever I’ve seen them, that they’re worth the hype. Not mentioning any Quincys in particular.
The Sun reports that Thierry Henry went to a private hospital to have scans on the achilles injury which has been troubling him all season. Obviously worrying if it’s true and if the injury has come back.
Given the state of things up the Arsenal at the moment when asked about spirit most of us would say ‘A large whiskey, please’ but not Kolo Toure. He reckons we’ll be all right, considering. Kolo says “We have big games coming up and we need to have a big response. The team spirit is still strong. We are family here at Arsenal and we care passionately about the team.”
There might be one or two or perhaps four players you might doubt the committment of this season but Kolo would never be one of them. In case you missed it on the news feeds yesterday Safety wrote a new article which is called Collateral. You can check out his, and the other columnists scribblings, on this page.
Right, it’s my last day in work today before I take my holidays. Woooo and indeed Hooooo.
