Morning all. Did you wake up with aches and pains and a skinned knee? You didn’t? Lucky you. Astro pitches and knees and slow moving central defenders and zippy forwards who push the slow moving central defenders over just do not mix.
What shall we talk about this morning as the international break gets well and truly into its stride. The back pages are dominated by Steve McClaren and Paul Robinson with the England manager saying how much faith he has in his goalkeeper who has conceded a whopping 18 league goals in 9 games this season. To think he once had trials at Arsenal. The story goes that he did a series of reflex tests and put in the worst set of results of any keeper we’d ever given a trial to, including Arthur Blind, an 80 year old alcoholic who is paralysed from the nose down.
And speaking of goalkeepers there are stories this morning suggesting that the boss is looking at West Ham’s Robert Green but the Sun reports the only sticking point to the deal might be the fact that Green would demand first team football. I’m not terribly convinced by Green, he just seems to be one of those keepers that always has a great game against us. I remember Brad Friedel doing similar for years but we didn’t buy him. With Lehmann and Almunia currently battling away from the position and Fabianski snapping at their heels like a little Polish goalkeeping dog then I think we probably have enough cover.
Yesterday’s Mirror linked us with a €20m move for Sporting Lisbon’s Miguel Veloso. An anagram of his name is ‘Elusive Gloom’ and frankly it’s a far better name than Miguel Veloso.
Bacary Sagna, away on international duty with France, says the critics have inspired Arsenal this season. I’m not one to miss a trick so I think it’s fair to say Sagna is the worst right back I have ever seen, this current Arsenal team is a load of bollocks and the manager is a complete chancer. They’ve got no chance of winning anything and frankly I’ll eat my hat* if they win the league this season. Meanwhile Mathieu Flamini is hoping his club form will get him a start for France.
Emmanuel Adebayor has spoken of his partnership with Robin van Persie calling their understanding ‘magnificent’. Sometimes it’s hard to see on the pitch but if they’re enjoying it then that’s all we can ask for. With 6 and 7 goals respectively they’re certainly doing something right and with youth on their side they’ve got a real chance to become a fearsome strike duo. It seems ages since teams have had their two main strikers, doesn’t it? With rotation these days you don’t get the partnerships like Bergkamp and Henry, Yorke and Cole, Shearer and Sutton or Hall and Oates.
Martin Samuel in the Times writes about takeover stuff:
Still, if Arsenal’s sugar daddy did contrive to lose the man whose football intellect has made his investment viable, he could always sling on a replica shirt and tell a meeting of season ticket-holders about the time he watched Tony Henry beat Newcastle Athletic in the FA Cup Final. They’ll like that.
Haha, I like it. Around some of the other blogs now and Le-Grove sat up all night copying a Perry Groves interview from Teletext while Arsenalfcblog has produced a monthly e-magazine called ‘The gooner gazette‘ which rounds up all the news and stuff from the previous month. Nice idea. Goodplaya takes advantage of the international break to remind us all what a big old cunt Sam Allardyce is. It’s something we should all be reminded of as often as possible.
Interesting to read about Arsenal’s new Chinese language site. I wonder if it will be subject to the draconian censorship that many other sites and particularly blogs have to put up from the Chinese authorities. While many websites were blocked in China people had the chance to read them via RSS feeds but it seems they’ve wised up to that and blocked them too. Boooo China, I say. Booo.
Finally for today, a call to the many of you who use NewsNow to find out the latest Arsenal news. Please, please, please ignore blogs like The Soccer Blog (not linking to it because it doesn’t deserve it) but when you see a headline that looks like bollocks it is 99.999999% guaranteed to be bollocks. Like many others The Soccer Blog takes content from other sites, literally stealing it, does not credit that site in any way, then wraps the content in as many ads as it possibly can then uses those headlines to draw people in, get clicks on the ads and make money. That is all those sites exist for and because there are so many of them it makes it more and more difficult to find good content on Newsnow.
If people stop clicking then they become useless. And don’t think it’s just big football news sites they rip off. Not long ago TribalFootball stole a story from Gunnerblog without so much as a nod in their direction. I know we all want news and stories and exclusives but you will not get them at those kind of sites. All you do when you click on them is give them the oxygen they need to survive. Come on Arsenal fans, kill them. Don’t click. You know the headlines are rubbish, you know the story is rubbish, so treat them like rubbish.
That is all.
Update: Please add Sportingo to that list as well, the witless tarts.
* Hat is made from steak and kidney pie.
