Morning all, this morning I will mostly be blogging about Arsenal.
Justin Hoyte has backed Arsene Wenger’s youth policy and said that if an English player is good enough then he’ll play. His quote:
When you score, you score for Arsenal, it doesn’t matter where you are from. When you put an Arsenal shirt on, we are all playing for Arsenal.
I like. Thierry Henry says he should have taken a rest sooner and is talking up the ‘team’ big time. He says it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t score once the team do well. Mabe that is something he lost sight of a little bit but his spell of recuperation has given him time to reflect and as I said yesterday let’s hope the team sees the benefit of it. And again he’s spoken about Robin van Persie and how good he can be and how much Arsenal means to him.
Ahead of Saturday’s game in the FA Cup against Liverpool Steven Gerrard says Arsenal should be scared. Certainly Liverpool’s home form is excellent, they’ve only conceded one goal in their last 8 games or something, and they’re playing well. From what I’m told at this early stage we’re likely to play a ‘weakened’ side for both cup games although given the players we have out I’m not sure how much weaker we can get. Anyway, we’ll see. This is the FA Cup and you never know what can happen in the FA Cup. On tomorrow’s Arsecast you can hear me and the Mug Smasher talk about this game, he’s confident that Liverpool will win, and some other crap too.
In other news Sheffiled United’s Chris Morgan has been charged by the FA for his sly punch on Robin van Persie. Good. You can be quite sure if it had been an Arsenal player they’d have shown countless replays of it until the FA did something. Meanwhile Charlton keeper Scott Carson, on loan from Liverpool, praised Arsenal for the football they play. We certainly kept him busy the other night and to me it’s odd that Liverpool have him out on loan while they play a dodgy bastard like Reina (who is long overdue a horrendous error. Just trying to jinx the cunt, boss).
Falkirk boss John Hughes is waiting to see if Anthony Stokes will return to Scotland for the second half of the season. There’s been no word from Arsenal about what’ll happen to the young Irishman but Adam emailed me this morning to say that the Metro freesheet in Dublin this morning says that Arsene Wenger has told Stokesy that there’s no future for him at Arsenal and that he’ll be sold. Hardly the most reliable of sources (the Metro, not Adam) and it does fly in the face of what the manager said the other week about him coming back next year and looking for his place in the team.
If we’re going to send players out on loan to get experience and they become the top scorer in the league they’re playing in then it makes little sense to make a decision that they’re not good enough for us at that stage. And let’s not forget Jeremie Aliadiere went to Scotland, flopped like a Floppy Mc Flop but still gets a game for Arsenal. Stokes’ 16 goals should count for something.
Transfer window madness all around as players and clubs scratch around looking for deals. Some papers this morning are reporting that Arsenal turned down a bid from West Ham to take Theo Walcott on loan till the end of the season. Doesn’t Curbishley know we only sell players to West Ham when they’re near the end of their career? Anyway, it looks like they’ve got themselves Shaun Wright-Phillips and, mad and all as this might be, they might try playing Tevez and Mascherano who are two class players instead of playing shite like Marlon Harewood and Nigel Reo-Coker (who certainly did not have a medical with Arsenal this month no matter what you read elsewhere).
And that’s about that. I have an Arsecast to record so keep it down, eh?
