Morning all, hope you had a fine weekend.
It’s a busy start to the week as Chairman PHW has been talking about Adebayor and Hleb. The two have dominated Arsenal news in the last month or so. Speaking about Adebayor firstly he says:
We want him to stay, definitely. Adebayor still has a long time left on his contract, and we have absolutely no intention of releasing him from that contract. You want to keep your best players and Adebayor is one of those.
At the same time though he admits that the situation has been created by Adebayor’s demands for more money after one good season. He says:
It’s annoying, but it is modern football. The idea that you are going to have a number of your team playing for you for 15 years, as one used to have, has disappeared. It makes it harder for the manager, but he is fully aware of what is happening.
And let’s not forget that the reason there’s speculation around Adebayor is because of Adebayor’s agent and the player himself with his statement last week about the board needing to meet his demands.
Of Hleb the Chairman said:
Hleb has made it clear he wants to go. I think maybe he will go.
I’m told there was a very real feeling that Hleb would do a Webster at the end of the season but for whatever reason that didn’t happen. However, his desire to leave the club has been well known for some time.
It’s interesting to read what he’s saying here though. For the player in which there is genuine interest (Adebayor) he’s saying we don’t want to sell. And there’s probably some truth in that despite the fact that if he stays he’s going to find himself rather unpopular with a lot of fans. But it strikes me that there’s a certain amount of poker-face going on here. Say we’re not interested in selling and get the best possible price we can.
With Hleb it’s different. Had Mourinho not taken over at Inter Milan I suspect Hleb would be gone by now. But the Special Cunt’s arrival in Italy put paid to the that transfer and while there has been talk of Barcelona I’ve always found it a bit odd that they’d be interested in him. That we’re openly admitting that Hleb wants to leave suggests, to me at least, that we’re making as many clubs as possible aware that he’s up for sale.
Arsene Wenger says the transfer system is making ‘mercenaries’ out of players and while players have always been out for the best deal possible the new regulations make moving and picking up more cash easier than ever. To me the increase in football media plays its part too. Not so long ago the news sources around football were limited to the traditional newspapers and tv/radio stations. Now the internet has brought websites, blogs, fans forums, and the the more information there is out there the more people want.
It’s easier than ever to hype a player, for a player to become the next superstar when he’s actually no such thing. Agents, horrendous cunts that they are, generally aren’t stupid and have become adept at striking while the iron is hot. We can see this with Adebayor. A player who, on the back of a fairly mediocre season, was given a new contract because the club had some faith in him and his ability. After one good season he makes extortionate demands for a new contract and threatens to leave if he doesn’t get what he wants.
How can you deal with that? If it were any other business, any other kind of employee, you’d tell them to go fuck themselves and get on with their work on the contract you just gave them a year ago. But football isn’t any other business and the devious machinations of agents and other clubs will ensure that the player, despite acting like a spoilt cunt, will generally have a way out. It’s kind of depressing really. As much as I love football and as much as I love Arsenal I find it more and more difficult to connect with footballers the way I did in the past. Maybe it’s me just getting older and more cynical, maybe it’s players being more cunty than they were.
Adebayor was your archetypal badge-kissing, hard-working, say-the-right-things player who really did win over a lot of fans who doubted his ability as a player and his character. Then he did an absolute about-face and got ideas above his station. Some from himself, no doubt, but I suspect mainly driven by an agent or advisors who knew that after a 30 goal season they could get silly money for him in today’s crazy football climate.
I have no doubt that Arsenal will do the best thing for Arsenal and ultimately that’s the most important thing. What Adebayor does, or Hleb does, I no longer really care about because I don’t care about these players. The whole thing is just so distasteful. The way they behave and/or have people behave for them is just unsavoury.
Anyway, the point is they’re all fucking cunts, really. With a few exceptions, and thankfully we have some of those on our team at the moment, most footballers are greedy twats living in a different world from the rest of us. It’s a difficult job for any manager to keep a squad together but I hope AW manages to weed the cunts out as much as possible. Adebayor – sell him. Hleb – sell him. Move on. Quickly, please. I’ve had enough.
Not much else going on bar a spurious link to Real Madrid’s Ruben de la Red, a Flamini style midfielder who we could probably do with.
Justin Hoyte says he wants £100,000 a day to stay with Arsenal or he’ll leave and take some towels from the training ground with him. No, he doesn’t. He says he wants to stay and fight for a place and good luck to the lad.
I think the players are back for pre-season training today. Not 100% sure on that yet but generally there’s a feature on the official website showing them running around trying to shed the summer pounds they put on eating fish and chips and drinking pints of ale while on holiday in Santa Ponza. We’ll see.
More tomorrow.
