Morning all. A few bits and bobs to give you this Saturday morning.
We’ll start with William Gallas who plans to hold a TV interview to give his side of the story about his split from Chelsea. The Russians claimed Gallas threatened to score an own goal, do a poo in the centre circle and kidnap Roman Abramovich’s family and make them listen to Phil Collins music for hours at a time. Gallas says:
I want people to know the truth and the only way to do that is to go on TV. That way nothing can be misconstrued.
He really shouldn’t bother, if you ask me. This is all in the past now and I don’t see the benefit to Gallas or Arsenal to drag it all up again. He’s started well at the club, his performances make a mockery of Chelsea’s claims and going on TV just appears a bit like sour grapes to me.
Another French international, Frank Ribery, was linked to us all summer long and reports emerged last night that we’ve struck a deal which gives us ‘first option‘ on him. The reports don’t say where that info came from so I’d take it with a very big pinch of salt.
Arsenal’s policy of offering players in their 30s short term contracts could be discriminatory according to some bloke. I do hate the way they try and make out that football players are exactly the same as other employees. Of course they should have some rights but their career is a short one and their salaries reflect that. Naturally it would be discriminatory to offer shorter contracts to a regular guy in a regular job but the fact is his performance levels do not decline as sharply as that of a footballer. A guy working in an office can do the same job at 60 as he did at 20, more or less. You can’t say the same about a footballer.
Jens Lehmann wants one more year at Arsenal. He says:
Playing for any other team would be a step backwards compared to the Arsenal team I’m in at the moment. I would like to spend another year here, but I also know that Arsenal wouldn’t hesitate to sign any other goalkeeper that they thought better than me.
I love Jens. Definitely my favourite ever Arsenal goalkeeper. Yes, even ahead of Alan Miller.
And to top it all off here’s a couple of stories about some young players. Defender Joe O’Cearuill – he’s got to be Irish – explains how he ended up playing for Arsenal while young Dutchman, Nacer Barazite – he sounds like some kind of metal coating for your golf clubs – says he models his game on Robin van Persie.
And that’s that. Fingers crossed all our players come through their internationals without injury. Hasta mañana.
