Morning and welcome to a brand new pre-season filled week. At last the football has begun again and the countdown to the new season is well and truly on.
After seeing Tomas Rosicky return in Saturday’s game against Barnet Arsene Wenger admitted he had serious fears for his Czech mate’s future during his time out with injury. He said:
There was a time I feared Tomas could be out for good. Sometimes you think, ‘Will he ever come back to the level where we want him to be?’ But it looks like he has. He was confident – at some stages enough to go into a dangerous tackle. We have to manage him well and prepare him well. If we comes through pre-season well he could start the season.
The man himself said:
It was my first game and I know I have to improve. I have been training in Prague through my holidays and I do feel well. I have waited a long time for this moment and I am very happy
Seeing him crunch into a couple of challenges really was encouraging. You kind of forget that he’s always like a tackle, Rosicky, I remember being quite surprised when he first arrived at how willingly he’d throw himself in.
What’ll be interesting is where the manager is going to play him. The more I look at the squad the more I think we’re going to have to change things around slightly to best accomodate the players we have. Rosicky could easily play as one of the central midfielders in a 4-3-3 or on both wings in a more traditional 4-4-2. Anyway, wherever he ends up it’s good to have his experience and quality back in the mix.
The speculation about how we’re going to spend our money has thrown up a new name this morning. A report originating in the Mail links us with Toulouse striker Andre-Pierre Gignac (Daring, eager prince). He was top scorer in France last season but with a fee of around €18m being mentioned I don’t see there being too much to this story.
I suppose it’s easier to chuck out names of strikers, inventing central midfielders we might want to buy is a bit more difficult. The Mail also says somewhere that Man City are still keeping tabs on Kolo Toure as Mark Hughes has decided 14 strikers is enough. Weren’t they going to buy Sylvester last summer? Can’t we tempt them again? We could stick a spiky haired wig on him, make him go around the place stinking of Brut and slipping over at vital moments and fool them into thinking he’s John Terry. Hey, you’ve got to be creative in this crazy transfer world of ours.
The squad flies out to Austria today for their traditional training camp. There’s a game tomorrow evening against SC Colombia, as yet there’s been no squad announced for that but it’ll probably be quite similar to the one we saw against Barnet. Perhaps a few more senior players involved.
At this stage though it’s all about fitness and while long gone are the days of players coming back to work off the summer excesses they’ll be put through their paces in a serious way over the next 7-10 days. Hopefully there’ll be enough gossip from the training camp to keep us going while we digest the news we’re after St Etienne striker Jean-Claude L’kunt and Bastia forward Francois Nomarque.
Till tomorrow.
