I just had the weirdest dream. I was out in some woods with McNulty from The Wire and we were searching for bodies by sticking curtain rails into the soil. We found a dog and Susan Sarandon wrapped in plastic bags. When we called it into the police station they told us to put her back where we found her as John McCain was the one who killed her and it might disturb his election campaign. Then I woke up. Most odd.
Not yet a great deal happening ahead of the game on Saturday. I’m not sure where to start exactly. We could begin with former Gunner Lauren talking about his old club and he feels we lacked that little bit of experience this season. He says:
It is just a shame players such as myself and some of the others were not still at the club to help the young players to win things. If you look at Manchester United they have some great young players but they also have men who have been there for many years to help them through.
There was a video released last year called Arsene’s XI where they ran down the eleven players with the most appearances under Arsene Wenger. Lauren was the right back and Arsene described him as ‘a warrior’ and someone you could go to war with. There’s no doubt we missed a bit of that this season. And just for a bit of good times this morning here he is kicking Ronaldo up in the air.
Ahhh, good times indeed and while I don’t condone dirty play at all you do need players who will get stuck in like that. Perhaps he could come back in the summer and give some of the younger players an intensive two-day Laurening. It’d work wonders.
Moving on we might have to say goodbye to Armand Traore’s chances of being an Arsenal legend. According to this Arsenal.com ‘Why I can follow in Eboue’s footsteps ‘, it seems the young man hasn’t set his sights very high. If repeated cheating, diving, rolling, cheating, putting your hand up to claim for penalties against your own team, scoring no goals and generally being completely rubbish is the path he wants to follow then someone needs to take him aside and have a word or two. Clichy, those are footsteps to follow in, Eboue’s are footsteps to filled in with polyfilla and covered with leaves and top soil.
I realise the article is about the move from full back to ‘winger’ (in name only) but still. It’d be like a kid really into music saying they want to follow in the footsteps of S Club 7 or something. Someone needs to hand Traore the footballing Led Zep albums. One man he could learn a lot from is Bacary Sagna who says he could stay at Arsenal for life. I’m always a bit dubious about those kinds of statements but with Sagna I’d be quite happy for it to be true. What a find he’s been, definitely one of the players of the season, and when Arsene goes shopping this summer this is the calibre of player he needs to bring in. Not necessarily a big name but someone with real quality.
Arsene hopes that Thierry Henry will win the Champions League with Barcelona but isn’t too confident this will happen. Barcelona are really suspect defensively but with Messi back they have the kind of quality up front that United haven’t faced anywhere else this season. With Messi, Eto’o, Henry and Bojan they have a fantastic mix of youth and experience and I quite fancy TH to get a goal or two. He’s had a fairly average season by his standards, so much so that there was speculation he might move to the MLS, so some United beating goals would be just the ticket.
Right, that’s about the size of it. Tune in tomorrow for the Arsecast in which I’ll be talking to Goodplaya about all that Arsenal stuff, plus the usual bits and pieces.
Until then.
