So transfer deadline day has come and gone with seemingly no activity from Arsenal. I’m told that we were in negotiations with Liverpool over the signing of Xabi Alonso but as yet no announcement has been forthcoming and at this point it seems unlikely.
Had a deal been reached then we’d probably have heard about it by now. It was, by any standards, an extraordinary day yesterday. The image to your left shows the traffic to Arseblog over the past 7 days. You can see what sort of a spike there was yesterday. There were over 3,000 arses, a huge amount of comments from people all waiting to see if we’d make that transfer before the midnight deadline.
The non-stop Sky Sports hype drove people into frenzies. Honestly. I watched bits of it yesterday evening and had Berbatov and Man United not been so determined to consummate their union of cunts and Man City been bought by some people who apparently have ten times the wealth of Roman Abramovich then it would have been a very quiet day indeed. It wouldn’t have stopped the hype though.
Sky Sports News presenter – “Oh my God! I’m just hearing that Reading ARE NOT selling Stephen Hunt to Everton”
World – “Yaaaaaaaawn”
From an Arsenal perspective I have to say it is disappointing that we haven’t managed to bring anybody in. I think we’re weak in central midfield and I think a signing like Alonso would have really improved us. Last season there was a lot of hindsight going on when we lost the title. People were insistent that we should have bought in January which I always felt was slightly revisionist. In January we didn’t need signings. We had no idea Rosicky would be injured for that long (a few weeks here and there we expected), nobody could have foreseen the Eduardo injury and I’ve always said we’d have won the league if he’d stayed fit/Birmingham hadn’t happened.
So it was easy to turn around after the fact and say we should have bought. Now though there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that we should have strengthened the squad and the manager is going to have to live with the critics who will be more vociferous than ever should things not go right. I’m told that Alonso desperately wanted to join us but there was a difference in the valuations the two clubs had – to be honest if I was Liverpool I’d have been very reluctant to let Alonso join a rival team, especially when he would so obviously improve them. Of course you can suggest that Arsene should have tried to bring in somebody earlier than deadline day but it’s not going to change anything now, is it?
Last season not one of us would have predicted the emergence of Mathieu Flamini as Cesc’s midfield partner, I suppose now we have to hope that somebody within the squad takes their chance and blossoms in the same way. It’s hard to see who that might be though. Denilson has done quite well but is young and inconsistent. Diaby is always injured. Alex Song is a centre-half one week, a midfielder the next, and Aaron Ramsey is just 17. This is, without question, the weakest midfield we’ve ever had under Arsene Wenger and I’m worried about it. I find it hard to believe that Arsene wasn’t able to find anyone who might have improved our roster and the real worry for me is that Flamini’s emergence last season was based on competition for his place. He had Gilberto and Diarra vying for his place and one of the men we’re hoping can fill that gap wasn’t even considered for that role and ended up playing wide left when he got a game.
I dread an injury to Cesc, who must be wondering why the club hasn’t brought in the top quality player we all know we need alongside him, and talk of Eboue as a ‘pass master‘ is almost insulting. Yes, he’s done well enough this season but to even hint he might be the answer to our central midfield issue is beyond the pale. I think Arsene has taken a massive risk but at this point we have no option but to get behind the players we do have. They’re going to run out in our shirt every week, they deserve our support. So while it’s disappointing and frustrating the football still goes on and we’ll still put an Arsenal XI out every week. Whatever you might think about the manager’s reluctance to spend the players have to go out and win games and they need our support.
Overall though I thought it was a pretty weird day for football and not necessarily a good one. We’ve seen money talk yet again. Manchester United behaved despicably yet still landed their man Berbacunt in a £31m deal. And Manchester City? What the fuck? From being on the point of collapse a couple of weeks ago Arab investment has now seen them with ten times more spending power than Chelsea – and nothing illustrates just how powerful money is when a player like Robinho leaves Real Madrid for Man City. It’s just mad. I don’t suppose it’s any coincidence either that the two big deals, Robinho and Berbacunt, have involved two players who have behaved like complete and utter babies and despite my disappointment that we didn’t sign anybody there’s a big part of me that’s glad we weren’t involved in a scene like that.
It’s just so utterly distasteful. Footballing sugar daddies come in all flavours. You have the guy at Villa who seems relatively decent then the likes of Abramovich whose finances make most people uneasy to the new consortium at Citeh who you just know are going to try and make the club the gold plated Rolls Royce of English football. It’s obscene, grossly ostentatious and downright mercenary. It’s not something I can relate to at all and while I do wish Arsene had spent a bit of money I’d rather be aligned with Arsenal’s decency and temperance than that kind of thing.
I think yesterday will be the day people point to when football went completely crazy. Rules are ignored, ambition = money and bad behaviour and tantrums gets you what you want. It’s the sporting equivalent of the spoiled child. Toys are thrown out of the pram and soon that’s the way everyone will have to behave. In that case I’d rather not keep up with the Joneses, especially when the Joneses are such tawdry, vulgar cunts.
No doubt there’ll be plenty to discuss today. Have at it.
