Good Sunday morning to you,
a feast of football lies ahead. Cardiff v Arsenal, then the Merseyside derby, then a game of 5-a-side. It’s a good job Mrs Blogs doesn’t read this religiously each morning so she won’t know just how exciting her Sunday is going to be … *cough* …
Anyway, Cardiff v Arsenal. The FA Cup. I wonder if the FA Cup is the competition which has provided the most shocks in football history. Yesterday saw the holders Portsmouth go out, at home, to Swansea. Poor Tony Adams. You just get the feeling he’s not particularly good at this football management thing. On the other hand I reckon Roberto Martinez, the Swansea manager, will find himself a big club soon enough.
But I digress. Today’s game is going to be a tough one – Cardiff are a decent outfit and Ninian Park is certainly an atmospheric ground. Although this is the competition we’re most likely to get silverware from this season I suspect there’ll be some rotation of the squad with Wednesday’s league game against Everton coming up.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Robin van Persie start on the bench and maybe Nasri too. This could mean Diaby starting on the left with Ramsey in the middle or maybe Vela on the left. But they’ll be little changes, nothing wholesale.
It’s a game we’re certainly capable of winning but, of course, the attitude has to be right. We’ve ground out some results in the last few weeks and I’d be happy enough to see us do that again. There’s been no lack of effort or application and it has shown. Same again today and we should see ourselves through to the 5th round.
Looking around the Sunday papers the News of the World is the one with a couple of Arsenal stories. The first claims that we’re going to make a £7m move for Micah Richards from Man City. Seems odd to me that at a time when their defence is in serious need of reinforcement they’d sell one of their best players – despite his form being so poor. And £7m seems a bit cheap in the current climate for a 20 year old England international. When Wilson Palacios is ‘worth’ £14m you have to wonder why City would sell Richards for £7m.
Plus you’d have to wonder if City would even sell to us, unhappy as they were after the whole Kolo Toure thing. It all sounds a bit madey-up to me. And by ‘a bit’ I mean ‘completely’.
Also in the NotW is a story about Robin van Persie wants £80,000 a week to sign a new contract with Arsenal but he’d be willing to accept less. Well there’s some fascinating insight, all right. They also claim contract talks with Theo Walcott are ‘imminent’.
Amy Lawrence writes about Aaraon Ramsey in the Observer. The Arsenal connection of Terry Burton was obviously a big factor in us signing him. I just love the way Burton refers to ‘the Arsenal’.
The People links us with a player called Mohamed Diame. Their website appears to be bollixed at the moment though so a quick Google turns up a 21 year-old French defensive midfielder playing for Rayo Vallecano in the Spanish 2nd division. So it’s obvious he’s going to be our big transfer window signing – all this talk of Arshavin was just a smokescreen.
Dammit, I nearly got through a whole blog without mentioning him.
And that’s about your lot. Here’s to a decent game and a good result later on. More tomorrow.
