Morning all, it’s a beautiful sunny day in Dublin and it is the final day of the 07-08 Premier League season. Despite everything it really does seem to have flown by, eh?
With the summer months usually full of speculation and fans desperate for news on signings – actually, the months of June, July and August are usually the busiest on Arseblog due to the amount people looking for that exclusive on who we might bring in – the manager has spelt out, somewhat, his plans for bringing new players to the club. He says:
I know what I want and I am very confident. I hope to turn that around in the next two or three weeks. They (fans) should be re-assured by what they see.
He’s not usually so up front when it comes to this kind of stuff so you have to imagine a certain amount of contact with clubs for players has been made. At this point the names of Ben Affleck and Niko Kranjcar are the ones most widely touted but it wouldn’t be unlike the boss to bring in somebody completely different.
The Sunday Mirror links us with Stuttgart striker Mario Gomez (£10m), Valencia’s centre-half Raul Albiol (£7m) and Cardiff kid Aaron Ramsey, while The People links us with Atletico Madrid’s 18 year old midfielder Ignacio Camacho and a move for Yaya Toure from Barcelona. Silly season has well and truly begun.
Today’s opposing manager, Roy Keane, admires Arsene’s touch in the transfer market talking about how good he is at moving on players as well as bringing them in at the right price. He must look at the £2m he spent on Anthony Stokes and think ‘You canny Wenger’.
Arsene is also going to rethink his policy of loaning out young players, especially if they don’t play. Kieran Gibbs, a boy who may well be involved today, went on loan to Norwich this season but hardly played. Mark Randall suffered the same kind of fate at Burnley. While I can see where the boss is coming from you have wonder is the reason they didn’t play because they’re not good enough or because they’re not quite grown up enough for the rough and tumble of the Championship.
Mathieu Flamini says he wanted to re-sign for Arsenal last July and that the pain of the title loss was a factor in his decision to move. I’m quite sure the millions of euros from AC Milan are helping to ease that pain somewhat but I’m not quite sure I buy the part about him wanting to sign last July – especially as he knew a good season could see his value increase a lot. Anyway, it’s water under the bridge at this stage.
And that’s about it. Let’s hope we can sign off the season with a good win today. Didn’t we have a final day at Sunderland some years back? I think Freddie Ljungberg got a hat-trick. The same again today would be nice. Without the Freddie hat-trick of course.
Finally, don’t forget that from tomorrow Arseblog’s URL will be changing. You can still go to ‘arseblog.com’ but you should update your bookmarks to ‘arseblog.oleole.com’, the link won’t be live until tomorrow though.
Until then, have a good Sunday.
