It’s an Adebayor special this morning. The lanky striker has been talking and he reckons the team have learned to cope with the ‘difficult moments‘ better than they used to you. He thinks the team is maturing and will be better next season and says of Sunday’s game against Chelsea,
We all remember what happened in Cardiff and it is very important for ourselves and for our supporters to beat Chelsea this time. Of course the Carling Cup final still hurts. We were the better team for most of that game. I don’t want to say this game on Sunday is all about revenge but we will give everything to win.
Chelsea at the Grove also means, on paper at least, the return of Ashley Cole. Now, Emmanuel Adebayor is a nice bloke and I can see where he’s coming from when he says the crowd might be better off cheering an Arsenal player rather than barracking Ashley but if Cole plays then he deserves the full ire of the fans and that’s what he’ll get because he is a despicable little cunt. That’s if he plays and it’s a big if. Wayne Bridge has started the last 4 or 5 league games so I suspect Cole won’t play on Sunday, especially if Chelsea beat Liverpool tonight. I guess it all depends on Mourinho’s mood. If he’s looking to create the kind of bad atmosphere that he’s so capable of then Cole will play. If Chelsea are through the Champions League final and he’s looking to make sure his players don’t get kicked off the park then he won’t. Anyway, something to look forward to either way.
Midfielder Fabrice Muamba will have talks with Arsene Wenger this week to decide his future. He’s done well at Birmingham and they want to keep him now that they’ve gained promotion so there’s a decision to be made. With Flamini leaving perhaps there’s some room in the squad for him but that space could be filled by the return of Alex Song.
Gunnerblog has some very interesting quotes from Cesc which are taken from an interview with 442 magazine. The main thing you’d take from it is the lack of someone to give the players a bit of a bollocking when things haven’t gone right. How much could this team improve with a Tony Adams or Roy Keane style player in the dressing room? A lot, I think, but then it’s easy to say. Those kinds of players don’t just grow on trees. That said it doesn’t necessarily have to be a player, does it? What strikes me is that Arsene seems to use the same technique with young players as older player. While the older player can mull over what’s gone wrong perhaps the younger ones need a bit more guidance. I dunno.
Our old friend Mihir Bose is speculating again about our football club. You might remember that he was the man (Spurs fan lest we forget) who wrote consistently in the Telegraph about how Ashburton Grove would never get built because the club couldn’t get the money/planning permissions/builders, whatever. Then when it was being built he wrote scaremongering stuff about how work was due to stop because we couldn’t get money/planning permissions/builders etc. That current article is on his BBC ‘blog’ and allows comments. I left a comment yesterday which so far has not been published and it looks like nobody’s comments have been published.
Word to the BBC – if you’re going to get in on the whole blog thing at least allow your readers the chance to provide feedback on the posts whether it’s positive or negative. Your comment policy is so convoluted it allows you to abitrarily pick and choose the comments and given the fact Bose posted his article yesterday afternoon and you haven’t allowed a single comment yet you’re not really getting your head around this very well, are you? The point about blogs is that you can have your say, you can have it published and people can respond to that. That’s the beauty of it – it sparks conversation between people. Anyone can come to Arseblog and comment on the Arses. Anyone can go to Gunnerblog or East Lower or Goodplaya or any of the Arsenal blogs and comment immediately. If you want an example of how it’s done on a bigger scale then look at the Guardian. A simple registration procedure allows you to comment on any of the blogs they publish every day. Why does the BBC need 18-24 hours to moderate comments? If that’s the way you’re going to go then stop calling them blogs because they’re not.
Sorry, rant over. And that’s it for today. More mañana.
