Morning all, a quick Saturday round-up for you.
We’ve had plenty of signings this week, they’ve all been in-house though. Following on from his young colleagues Ramsey and Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs has been rewarded with a new long term deal. Arsene Wenger says:
Kieran made such a great impact last season and the progress he made throughout the year was fantastic. Kieran is an intelligent player with huge quality and he proved last season with his performances that he has great potential. We’re delighted that Kieran has committed his future to Arsenal and we’re all excited to watch his future development at the Club.
He’ll obviously provide competition to Gael Clichy for the left back position and that can only be a good thing for both those players. Clichy’s last season was not great, perhaps a young strapling like Gibbs will get him focussed again and get him to cut those unforced errors out of his game.
I know Gibbs is still very raw, especially from a defensive point of view, but certainly no more than Clichy or Mr X-Factor when they made their breakthroughs. What’s most promising about Gibbs is that he seems to have a bit more about him in the final third than Clichy. Gael has never really delivered once he gets into the final third. Anyway, it’s good to have the two of them, hopefully they can spur each other on.
As well as that the Independent this morning is saying that Robin van Persie has signed a new deal which will keep him at the club until 2014. Obviously we’ll have to wait for official confirmation on that but it’s good news if true.
Sunderland are after Chamakhattak, apparently. I’m trying to think of something to say which might hint how I feel either way but am failing miserably to do so.
Except some more Arshavin to Barcelona crap to hit the news feeds at some stage. This morning’s El Mundo has written a big article about how this is a good chance for Barcelona to sign him because he’s expressed his unhappiness about England and blah blah blah. Of course it’s all just some twat’s opinion but no doubt it will soon become stone-cold fact and spread itself like herpes on a rhino.
The signing of Thomas Vermaelen has obviously made Arsenal ever-so-fashionable amongst Belgians because a young Belgian winger by the name of Eden Haz says he wants to join us. He’s currently playing for Lille in France and I suspect he has as much chance of joining us this summer as I do of looking out the window right now and seeing a dragon fighting Maskatron with toy lightsabers.
*looks out window*
Told you. Those are real lightsabers. Remember during the week I expressed my dismay at the new third kit? And I mentioned these focus groups that Nike have where they get the opinion of Arsenal fans. Anyway, an anonymous participant in one of these focus groups engaged me in some correspondence during the week and some of the ideas are just hilarious.
Remember the first white kit with the ‘commemorative’ writing on it. Well, one of Nike’s suggestions was a kit with Arsene Wenger’s face embossed into it in the same way. Seriously. Can you imagine? As Johnny Whistleblower, for that is what I call him, said:
Opposition teams would be crying with laughter, maybe this is all part of the plan to help us win. Maybe we should be thanking Nike for the innovative strategy to help Arsenal be more successful.
Honestly though, if that’s the kind of stuff they’re coming up with maybe we should count our blessings that what we’ve got isn’t much, much worse.
Right, that’ll have to do. Until tomorrow.
