Morning all, it’s a fairly quiet one with our game not till Monday. I assume Arsene’s usual press conference will take place today so we should get more news about our injury situation then. Mathieu Flamini reckons he’ll be ok but I’ll wait to hear it from AW.
Arsenal will have a representative in the ACN final. The smart money was on both Ghana and the Ivory Coast winning their semi-finals but Cameroon and Egypt caused the upsets. This means Alex Song will play for the final for Cameroon and it seems he’s rather come of age during the tournament. It’s disappointment for Kolo and Eboue though but there’s still the 3rd-4th place playoff game to contend with. Hopefully the Ivory Coach will decide to play some players who haven’t had a chance during the tournament and give our lads a rest.
Jens Lehmann has found himself on the end of some rather barbed criticism from the German coach and the German press after a less than convincing performance against Austria in the week. It seems a bit churlish of them to criticise him after being so quick to praise him when he did play despite being out of the Arsenal team.
Robert Pires says he’d like to end his career at Arsenal but knows that’s probably not going to happen. He says he’d love to come back and work for Arsenal in the future though. I really love Bob Pires. What a player he was. And what an icon of facial hair too.
I’m sure you’ve read that all 20 Premier League clubs have unanimously agreed to explore the possibility of a ‘foreign round’ of top flight games. This would mean adding a fixture to the calendar, having cities bid for them, then the clubs go and play. Frankly, they should explore the depths of my anus, the fucking cunts.
To say this is the most ill-conceived, badly thought-out, preposterous notion in the history of English football is not going quite far enough. I hate this idea. The obvious problem is that 20 teams = 38 games per season, not 39. How do they fairly decide who plays who? Imagine relegation or the title being decided by this one round of games which has no sporting value whatsoever. It’s a money making machine. Honestly, if Arsenal fans abroad want to see Arsenal play either wait for a pre/post season tour or save up and come to London. Simple as that. Making the league a travelling circus is a fucking disaster, if you ask me, and while we’re only at the proposal stage it’s a shame not one club had the balls to stand up against it.
It’s a shameful way to behave. Somebody is waving a carrot and all the clubs are like donkeys, addicted to carrot donkeys. Carrotoholics. I realise there’s a lot of money to be made but there really is more to football than money. Wait, that’s stupid. There obviously isn’t these days and it’s very, very sad. More thoughts in today’s Arsecast and more thoughts here on Left Back.
Don’t forget there’s still a copy of the Arsenal Opus to be win. There are 11 finalists to be voted for in the O2 competition but each person who votes is entered into a draw for a copy of the Opus for themselves. There are other prizes like match tickets and merchandise too, so for more info on the competition and how to vote click here.
So, Arsecast.
In this week’s Arsecast, sponsored by OleOle.com, I chat with Goonerholic about Arsenal TV, there are some thoughts on the ‘foreign round’ proposal, the Man in the Bar has a player history, Eboue is in there, there’s more culture in the Culture Corner and other stuff too.
To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (17mb MP3). You can find the arsecast archives here. And you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
[audio:http://arseblog.com/podcasts/arsecast_episode63.mp3]That’s it. Have a good Friday, more tomorrow.
