I am somewhat perturbed this morning having woken from a dream in which Emmanuel Eboue was my dad and he was teaching me to a drive in an old Ford Capri which had a distressed piglet in the back seat. Honestly, you don’t need dreams like that.
We’ll start this morning with the latest regarding transfers. And the latest is there is no latest. There was a video interview with AW on the official site, recorded as far as I can tell after the Valencia game. When the boss was asked if was going to make any signings before the season started, he said:
Not at the moment, no. We work always, but it would be pretentious to say that we signed anybody now before the season starts.
I should point out that after he said ‘not at the moment’ there was a large grin on his face. This may have been a ‘Oh, I so am gonna sign someone but I’m not telling you’ type grin or a ‘Oh, I am so grinning to make it look like I am so gonna sign someone but I’m not actually signing anyone at all – haha!’ type grin.
Of course the question is somewhat loaded. The chances of signing anyone this week are pretty slim what with players being away on international duty so a better question might have been to ask if we were ever signing anyone ever again. Or at least before the transfer window closes. It’s still amazingly quiet in the market, nobody is doing any business at all, and while we might well get a flurry of activity towards the end of the month I suspect we’re going to see the unbusiest transfer window of all time.
Speaking about the squad in general and how he felt the pre-season preparations had gone, AW said:
I am very optimistic about the season and I am very positive about this team. Overall it was very positive preparation, and I believe we have shown quality in every game. It is unfortunate that now everybody goes away on international games, which is why we have to cross our fingers that everybody comes back in good shape. But overall, physically, everybody is ready to start.
He confirmed that our precious new signing Thomas Vermaelen would be fit to take part this weekend against Everton after missing out on the last few games with a slight hamstring strain. Whether he starts remains to be seen but I don’t see Wenger spending £10m on a centre-half and then leaving him on the bench. He’ll be like an expensive pair of new jeans, worn at every opportunity to make yourself feel like you look a bit better than normal when you go out to the pub. Or something.
The Sun is reporting that we’ve made an £8m bid for Marouane Chamakh and Bordeaux are feeling great because Arsenal ‘blinked first’ and this gives them the upper hand. Stupid blinking.
The Guardian claims Patrick Vieira is still open to a move to Arsenal but everything appears to have gone very quiet on that front at the moment.
Expect more Cesc/Barcelona guff today as El Mundo flesh out the story, Xavi says Cesc would be great at Barcelona and the newspaper plays up the links between Thierry Henry, Cesc and Darren Dein who, as we all know, is Cesc’s agent. It seems they rang up Cesc’s people, I wonder who that might have been, and also rang up Arsenal offering us Eidur Gudjohnsen as part of a deal.
I know I said yesterday we should send them a turd in a tupperware box but I think we need to ensure that turd is covered in swine flu and SARS beforehand. Of course it’s all just newspaper copy, Cesc is going nowhere, but it’s quiet and there’s NewsNow clicks to be had. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.
Manuel Almunia talks to the Guardian and comes across very well, I think. He makes it quite clear the players are aware of the pressure on them to win something this season, saying:
People want celebrations and street parties. As players we need that too, to have us touching medals, to have something in our hands we can always remember. Semi-finals will not be very well remembered in a few years. People need something more.
However, ahead of the new season he’s sure we’ll be competitive, tellingly speaking about a change of attitude as much as a change of personnel to bring success:
I have expectation we will win something. People say this is a young squad but I look around the dressing room and everybody – except for me and a few others – is an international. We can be competitive in every competition. We don’t need to worry. We just have to care about the attitude. Maybe last season, mentally, we did not prepare well.
It’s an interesting piece and as much as anything it was our attitude which cost us in games in the early part of last season. The players admitted as much themselves. If that has changed, and I think the second part of last season was the beginning of that, then there’s no reason why we won’t be as difficult to beat as we were back then. Leaving aside the semi-final defeats I think we lost one of our last 20-odd league games, so let’s see how we go.
Now, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t sign anybody just because we’re hungrier and more determined but until we do it’s something to hang on to.
Congratulations to Jack Wilshere who has been called up to the England U21 squad for the first time.
Finally for today don’t forget the competition to win a copy of Arsènal: The making of a modern superclub by Kevin Witcher and Alex Fynn. The question and email address are in yesterday’s blog and you have until tonight to get your entries in, the winners will be announced tomorrow.
Till then.
