Apologies for the delay this morning. You can rest assured that alcohol had nothing to do with it. It’s Tom, today, by the way, not Arseblogger.
Cunting Ntl is fucked, won’t be fixed till Monday. Can you do the blog whenever you get the chance?
That’s the text message I got, a while back now. It seems to me that NTL are a pack of useless fuckers. My broadband never breaks (I have cable internet from Virgin – I don’t work for them, honest, and I can only speak for the Edinburgh area, but I find their internet service is really very good). Anyway, until some lazy cunt has done their job, you’re stuck with me. Let’s both hope they get cracking.
There’s a few things floating around this morning ahead of the trip to Craven Cottage, mostly things the boss has had to say. In no particular order…
Arsene Wenger has admitted publicly what we’ve all suspected for years – that he hates the transfer window. Sort of. During a transfer window in which a record £96m has been spent so far, he’s suggested it gives clubs with money an unfair advantage. I can see where he’s coming from, and I don’t think bringing in first team players in the middle of the season is a great idea, but we all know he’s simply justifying the fact that he very rarely spends at this time of year. I do kinda agree with the sentiment though. I think part of the reason Almunia has kept his place is because he’s come in, done well, why chop and change? Which isn’t to take anything away from how well he’s done, of course.
Someone the boss doesn’t think is doing so well is Theo Walcott, of whom he said:
[Theo] will get where I expect him to be, at the moment he is not…The expectation level is very high because he is very young and he has been projected early in the spotlight.
To be fair to Theo, he’s not got many chances playing in his preferred position, with AW seemingly trying to mould him into a more complete player, aware of defence and attack, by playing him out on the wing. He’s done okay when he’s played as a proper forward, and he’s obviously got loads of potential, but he seems to have trouble expressing it. Wenger points out that Walcott’s absurd call up to the World Cup was, well, absurd, and I don’t see how it could possibly have contributed to his development. People will talk about the calibre of players he was training with, but that’s irrelevant when you’re hailed as the messiah, come to score goals for a very average team. Anyway, I find it hard to disregard the calibre of cunts he would’ve trained with, regardless of their quality.
The manager apparently regrets Lasanna Diarra’s departure. I – very apparently – am fucking sick of hearing about the silly cunt, so I’m not even going to link to the story. However, I will link to this story, which points out how insane economics are in football; we bought the weird-headed one from Chelsea for £3.5m in August, he plays 8 games for us (or so), and then we flog him on for £2m profit. Not a bad bit of business when you think about it like that.
Arsene Wenger has admitted to bringing Robin Van Persie back from injury too quickly. I expect he just wanted his team mates to see him once in a while. They probably forget who he is, they see him so infrequently. I’m a huge fan of Van Persie’s, but the boy’s got to do something about his injuries. It’s not like with Aliadiere when he needed fitness to show what he can do – we call know exactly what Robin can do. Apparently he’s going back to Holland for a few days which Arsene Wenger hopes will ease his frustration at not being able to play.
Speaking Aliadiere, he’s said he’s glad he left Arsenal. Yep. I think we’re all on the same page there, Jeremie.
The Online Gooner has some pictures of what it suggests might be next season’s home and away strip. Is The Online Gooner credible? I’ve no idea. How credible do you think half the nonsense written here is?
Team news for today’s game at Fulham is as yesterday. Djourou’s groin remains a problem (fnar-fnar), loads of people are off at the ANC (that’s the African Nations Cup; they haven’t all decided to become politicians and join the other ANC). Tomas Rosicky will return to the squad, which is good news. The team needs a performance today to bounce back from the disappointment of Birmingham, a game I must say I missed and was then too pissed off to watch the ‘highlights’ of.
Finally, in what seems to be a somewhat rarer display of insanity these days, our old chum Roy Keane up at Sunderland reckons striker Kenwyne Jones is worth £40m, and that there’s no one he’d rather have. A bold statement from the less-obviously-frothing Irishman.
And that’s your lot. Phew, that must be the latest blog in some time.
