So welcome to a brand new looking Arseblog. Same old shite underneath the hood though.
We’ll start this morning with Ashley Cole who is set to start against Sunderland. In a lengthy interview on Sky Sports he talks about getting fit, making the World Cup squad and how well Mathieu Flamini has done in his absence. Speaking about the Champions League final he says:
He’s done well, I don’t think I could play in midfield like he’s played at left back so he’s done well, adapting centre midfield to left back has gone really well. The team as a unit has done well, the back four’s done well, so I can’t really complain to the manager that I want to come into the team because I don’t have the right.
Which is fair enough. He’s a bit coy about his own future though and while he dismissed those who say he’s going to Madrid or Chelsea it’s far from clear from his final comments that he sees his future at Arsenal. Although some reports have him saying he’s going to stay others suggest quite strongly he’s definitely going to leave. When you consider we are losing Bergkamp, Campbell looks likely to move on as does Pires and the Henry situation is far from clear it would be a huge loss, in playing terms, if he went as well, despite what some of us might think about his behaviour in the past. Anyway, the summer will be interesting, that’s for sure.
Simon Kuper on Dennis Bergkamp:
On Bergkamp’s first day at training his teammates had bowed before him and chanted, “We are not worthy!†They were right. Arsenal had never had a footballer like Bergkamp. In a decade he transformed the club. “Boring, boring, Arsenal†became, briefly, the most beautiful football team in English history.
Arsene Wenger has praised Thierry Henry’s ‘clean life’ and called him a role model for every striker after the captain won the Football Writers Player of the Year for a record third time. Here’s some background about his early life in Paris, nothing really very new to it, but interesting enough nonetheless. No doubt there’ll be plenty more pieces like this before May 17th. The boss also reveals very little about a scouting trip to see Barcelona other than to say they’re a good side.
Regular reader Rob emailed me to advise me of problems with registering interest for Champions League final tickets. The Online Gooner has a piece about it and a little workaround if you’re having issues. It does seem though as if the club might need to extend the deadline.
Ok, not much else going on. Feedback on the new look very welcome via email or in the arses. Hope you like it. Till tomorrow.
Update: There are some issues with Internet Explorer on PC not displaying the right hand sidebar with the links etc properly. This is because Internet Explorer is a load of shit and you should be using Firefox. Download now. We’ll try and get the IE problem sorted as soon as possible.
Update 2: And that should be fixed now. Thanks again to Peter.
