Good day to you Arsefans, and a fine sunny but cloudy but cold and somewhat grey morning it is here in Dublin. A fair bit to get through so let’s start.
Arsene has paid the youngsters the highest compliment he can by saying they all have the quality to play in the first team. No reserves, just good players. That kind of thing.
One of them, Nicklas Bedntner, believes we can win the Carling Cup and after reports of his attitude being a bit dodgy it was nice to hear him talk about taking his chances when they come and being patient.
Lassana Diarra talks about his debut here and according to Arsene Wenger we got him for a snip at just £2m. Based on the way people have been raving about his performance against Newcastle you’d have to think that was a bargain. Meanwhile his fellow Frenchman William Gallas has no idea when he’ll be back. This is beginning to look like last year’s injury when he was out for months with no real clue as to when he might return. The only thing you can say is that we’re not missing him at the moment when it comes to results.
Gilberto would like a new contract apparently but last season’s real player of the season seems to have been frozen out a bit this time around. Perhaps it’s just a case of the boss giving him a bit more rest after the Copa America but with Flamini (new contract please) playing so well and Diarra adding competition to the defensive midfield role it’s going to be interesting to see what happens. Personally, I think he’s a player we need to keep, his experience is vital, he can play at centre-half too in an emergency – I think we might see more of him in Europe than in the league though.
Earlier in the week I gave you the chance to win a t-shirt from Goonershirts.com. The question I asked was ‘Invasive, dismal roundhead is an anagram of ‘David Dein Alisher Usmanov’. Is that a) True – ?
Now, this is probably the easiest competition there has ever been on Arseblog. And there have been easy ones before. Normally you pick the right answer when the other two options are just ludicrous. This was even easier. There was only one possible answer. I didn’t give you a choice.
So what has me scratching my head is the sheer number of entries from people who said ‘b – false. It is not an anagram’. What the hell is wrong with you people? It wasn’t a trick question, Invasive, dismal roundhead is actually an anagram of ‘David Dein Alisher Usmanov’ and even if it wasn’t the fact that there was only one option in the question given should have been enough of a clue that I only wanted one answer. I mean, there were dozens of people who answered ‘b – false.’
What b? What are you on about? Anyway, the vast majority got it right and the RNG did its thing and the winners are Kevin Lovegrove, Alistair “Joey” Deacon and Adrian Raffill. I’ll be in touch with you to get sizes and addresses and all that lark. Thanks to all of you who entered and if you fancy sporting one of those t-shirts you can get them at Goonershirts.com
That’s that then. Tomorrow’s Arsecast features a special guest, not from the world of football but from the world of completely awesome 80s tunes.
Talk to you then.
