Hello and welcome to the final blog of 2008.
We’ll start with transfer news and both the Guardian and the Sun are linking us with a move for Everton’s Mikel Arteta. How much truth there is in this story is anybody’s guess but for me he would be the perfect player to replace the injurd Fabregas and he has enough quality to maintain a place in the team when the captain returns.
There’d be no settling in period as there would be with a foreign player, he’s good with set pieces, he scores goals and he’s got loads of experience. There’s no doubt he’d improve our squad and more importantly our team right away.
It would obviously take a serious bid for Everton to sell but I think in the current financial climate most clubs will sell, however reluctantly. I’m keeping my fingers well and truly crossed for this one.
Meanwhile Andrei Arshavin’s agent has said his client is aware of the financial doom that’s sweeping the planet and would be amenable to reassessing his salary demands in order to facilitate a move. In other words the daft cunt completely priced himself and the player out of a couple of feasible transfers in the summer and is now willing to do what it takes to get the fuck out of St Petersburg.
With the transfer window set to open tomorrow I expect the speculation regarding players linked with us to increase by a factor of at least 843,466,120.475. This is a scientific fact and it cannot be disputed. 31 days of pure madness lie ahead, in the middle of which are some football matches, but we’ll gloss over them as you would expect a quality blog to do.
Meanwhile Gael Clichy has said the boss has said that the players need to communicate more. Or betterer. Or something. There’s no question in my mind that the defence lacks proper organisation, we saw that with the Villa equaliser the other night. They’re too damn quiet. And unless they improve there’s only one solution … cocaine. People taking cocaine just don’t shut the fuck up, they love the sound of their own voice, so each game one of the players has to do a few dirty great lines before kick-off and then we’ll have that talker in defence that we need so badly. A little thinking outside the box is all that’s required, you know.
Kolo on his way because he hates William Gallas? That’s the news coming from a ‘source’ who told the Daily Star. You know, if I were one of those sources I think I would choose a more august publication that the Daily Star to tell my story to. If you want credibility why would you go to a newspaper whose readers can only count to two and that’s in tits?
So, 2008 is over and it has, all things considered, been a particularly frustrating year for the Arsenal. It started so well, we were playing great football, winning games, flying high in the league and then it seems to have just been one poxbottle of a disaster after another.
Injuries to key players which cost us dearly at the tail-end of last season. Eduardo, Sagna, Flamini, all injured and had they stayed fit I’m convinced we’d have won the title. The heartbreaking exit in the Champions League, seeing the league slip away from us, a summer in which players left and weren’t replaced really makes our position at the moment not too much of a surprise.
But the reality is the Arsenal team we see at the moment seems miles away from the one we saw just 12 months ago, in terms of quality, confidence and ability. It’s amazing how quickly things change in football. Which is why, despite Arsene’s bizarre and somewhat ludicrous statement about us being 1% or 2% away from ‘dominating’ the Premier League, it probably wouldn’t take too much to improve us considerably.
Some new faces, competition for places in the team, a bit of extra confidence, some slivers of luck along the way and an improvement in attitude and application from the team as a whole and who knows what might happen?
I know it’s easy to be pessimistic but when you’re about to turn the page on a new year I’d rather hope, pray, wish and sacrifice things/animals/people I don’t like for a positive future.
So on that note let me wish you and yours a very happy, peaceful and prosperous 2009 – and I’m sure all of us, no matter what our opinion on the state of play at the Arsenal, want nothing but the best for the club for the next 12 months too.
Until next year then. Have a good one.
