Ok, let’s get straight down to business.
Jens Lehmann has hinted that his future lies away from Arsenal. His contract is up in the summer and while the club will only offer one year he’s probably getting longer contract offers elsewhere. He says Spain and a return to Germany are ‘possibilities’. Personally I think he’ll move on in the summer and we’ll bring in another keeper. What’s good about Jens is that he’s the consumate professional in terms of his preparation and performance so even if he’s leaving it’s not the same situation we had with Wiltord or like the one Beckham is undergoing at Real Madrid.
Theo Walcott says he’s not getting stressed at having not scored for Arsenal because he’d put too much pressure on himself if he started worrying about it. He’s happy just to be playing and says he’ll work hard in training to stay in the first team squad.
Gilberto has been very impressed with how quickly Denilson has adapted to English football and life at Arsenal. He says:
Denilson has adapted so quickly to the system of the team in the short time he’s been at the Club. It’s great to see. I have tried to help him as much as I can can to make him feel comfortable in the Club and he’s doing very well.
It is good that we have other Brazilians at the club. Silvinho helped Edu who helped Gilberto who is helping Denilson and Baptista. They seem to be enjoying themselves as well as that YouTube video that everyone in the world has seen shows (which you can search for yourself. The link I have doesn’t work anymore).
Promising young midfielder Mark Randall has turned 17 and has signed professional terms with the club. Meanwhile, Nicklas Bendtner (Danish article) has been interviewed in the Danish version of FHM and according to an email I got this is what he said:
He loves being a footballer, and also love to party. He thinks the best things in life are Football, Women and booze… and family comes after that! He also goes on about his life in Birmingham and the parties they throw and the trouble that is all part of every day training. His biggest ambitions are to play for the Danish National Team (achieved) and to play for either Real Madrid or Barcelona! Not a lot of mention about Arsenal.
Wonderful stuff and thanks to Lasse for the translation. Middlesboro chairman Steve Gibson has criticised Arsenal and Liverpool for not contributing anything to the English national side. Amazing that a man who has paid huge money for the likes of Maccarone, Yakubu and all the fucking dodgy Brazilians he brought in can criticise just because Stuart Downing gets a game because there’s nobody else to play on the left hand side of the English midfield. Anyway, being the best left footed English midfielder is like coming last in a Quasimodo lookalike contest. Moron.
Anyway, on to this week’s Arsecast.
Today’s Arsecast sees a brand new sponsor – Savile-Rogue.com – who make those fantastic cashmere football scarves. I’m delighted to have them on board and I’m sure we’ll be having some scarftacular competitions in the weeks ahead.
In a 45 minute epic episode there’s a blogchat with the man from East Lower in which we touch on the possibility of Arsenal being taken over like Liverpool and we talk about Thierry Henry and Theo Walcott, there’s your reaction to the idea of Arsenal being foreign owned and I talk to Nigel Phillips from the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust about that same subject and what exactly the Trust does. His information is very interesting and might put some people’s minds at ease.
As usual Arsene Wenger Hawkins is there, the Man in the Bar has a flame haired player history and there’s a bet of the week from www.bluesq.com. Don’t forget, if you haven’t got a bluesq.com account you can sign up from the link on the home page and it does help Arseblog out a bit – with the arsecasts eating up more and more bandwidth each week every bit helps!
To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (22.2mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here.
And that’s that for today. A proper preview of the Wigan game tomorrow.