Arseblog meets Wang Chung – Usmanov now at 23%

A happy Friday to you all. Let’s get going because the sooner you finish this the sooner you can get on with your work and the sooner you finish your work the sooner the weekend begins.

Ahead of tomorrow’s game against West Ham the team news sees the usual suspects out (Gallas, Lehmann, Rosicky) with Alex Song joining them and Hleb still doubtful. The boss will have to make a decision about him tomorrow.

In the continued absence of Jens Lehmann, Manuel Almunia will continue in goal and the Spaniard is determined to hang on to the number 1 position. He reckons he’s a better keeper now than he was, I don’t think I’d argue with that, but let’s hope he doesn’t get too flighty like he did in the Sp*rs game. You also begin to wonder if the rest of the lads prefer to play with him rather than Jens.

Playing West Ham means coming up against Freddie Ljungberg who left the club in the summer. He admits it will be strange to play against his former teammates but that’s football for you. There’ll be a fuller preview with more team news in tomorrow’s blog.

Eduardo talks about his first couple of months at Arsenal. He seems to be enjoying it so far.

Alisher Usmanov is fuming, according to the Mirror, at the ‘slurs’ from the board over his ‘murky dealings’ and what he considers an ‘internet smear campaign’. He’s desperately trying to up his stake to 25% before the AGM next month, with another 2% purchase expected to be announced by Red & White Fat and Orange today. David Dein is apparently ‘hurt’ at the Chairman’s comments this week also. Poor Deino and Usmy. Perhaps they’re just misunderstood and they really do have the best interests of Arsenal at heart.

Nah, they don’t, they’re a pair of money hungry, power hungry pigs. And if you oppose Usmanov having any part of our club then I would urge you to sign this official government petition to enforce a more rigorous ‘fit and proper person’ criteria for owners of football clubs (as it’s official and governmenty it can only be signed by UK residents). I would also suggest to other Arsenal sites that the more publicity and coverage this gets the more chance it has of being taken seriously. I’ll leave the rest to you.

Update: It looks like they’re up to 23%, according to an email I just got. We should get more details as the morning progresses. And here’s confirmation of that.

Ok, well we’ll have to see how this all goes. A fat Uzbek bent on revenge – it’s like some kind of cheap horror movie. Do they realise just how unpopular they are? They remind me of Coldplay.

Again it’s quite uncanny how Arsene’s comments about the dangers of foreign ownership have coincided with another purchase by Fat & Orange.

Arsecast time.

This week’s Arsecast sees our very first pop-star guest and as you’ll have gathered from the blog title it’s Wang Chung. Not all of them, just Wang from Wang Chung who kindly agreed to appear and talk 80s pop and Arsenal. What more could you want? As well as that there’s a player history from the Man in the Bar and other crappy waffle too.

Don’t forget the Arsecast is brought to you by OleOle.com and you can still enter their fantasy football game and win great prizes including a trip to the final of Euro2008.

To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (14mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here. And you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.

And that’s that. More tomorrow.