Morning all,
another week has flown by, here we are on Friday looking ahead to the weekend’s game against Blackburn. There’s mixed news regarding the team. Eduardo is out having aggravated his thigh muscle in his cameo against Olympiacos on Tuesday night. It’s a bit of a worry as, according to the manager, it’s a recurring problem so fingers crossed we can get that sorted sooner rather than later.
Manuel Almunia is back in training but is ‘unlikely’ to play, meaning Don Vito continues, but Nicklas Bendtner returns after his car crash (he explains what happened here) and Theo Walcott is likely to make the squad for the first time this season. It’ll be good to have Theo back but he’s obviously going to have work his way to proper match fitness. When he does though I think his pace is going to be a real weapon in this new system.
Arsene meets the press today so we’ll get a bit more info and possibly some clues as to how we’re going to line up against the dark forces of Allardyce.
Cesc has been talking about the boss in the wake of him becoming the club’s longest serving manager. There’s obviously a good relationship between the two. Cesc has been at the club since he was 16, he’s been in the first team since not long after that, and now he’s the captain. Obviously that has a lot to do with his ability but also the manager’s trust and belief in him.
And speaking about the latest, tiresome, ‘Cesc has Barcelona DNA’ comments from Xavi, the captain says:
It is very flattering from a great player like Xavi. But I am the captain of Arsenal and I have a job to do here. Everyone has their own life and you do what you feel is better for you. Being at Arsenal is the best thing for me at the moment. I want to win things here and I’m very comfortable with Arsenal.
If you want to jump on the ‘at the moment’ part of that, please get on the mong bus and go right ahead, but reading the longer article you can sense how much winning things at Arsenal would mean to him. And I’d get a little wet in my pants seeing Cesc hold up a trophy at the end of the season. I would.
Thierry Henry has also had some nice words to say about the boss and says he might return to the club one day in some capacity. As a ‘waterboy’, he says. If Henry returns as waterboy there’d be some whose return to the club would be as meat.
Speaking of which, Emmanuel Adebayor escaped a further ban yesterday for his celebrations after his goal against us last month. Now, the only reason I mention it is the fact that the FA said he had been ‘seriously provoked’. This is nonsense of the highest order. Yes, he got a bit of stick from the Arsenal fans but not a great deal.
Certainly not the ‘abuse’ from first whistle to last that cretins like Harry Redknapp, who wasn’t even at the game, like to perpetrate in their deliberate wind-up columns. The Arsenal fans were singing about Arshavin, it was the Man City song which referenced ‘elephants’. I know there was a YouTube video showing it but I can’t find it at the moment.
Update: Here it is via Goodplaya. That’s where the confusion comes from and that’s why they’ve been able to point the finger of blame at the travelling Arsenal fans, the ones who supported Adebayor most vociferously last season.
Personally I couldn’t care less that he wasn’t banned any further. I said at the time the celebration was stupid but we should just live with it. What I do have a problem with is that Adebayor and Man City’s spin about Arsenal fans abusing him for the entire game seems to now be reported as fact when it’s far from true.
The reason Adebayor ran and celebrated in front of the Arsenal fans is not because he got stick, every player gets stick, he got stick at grounds when he was our player and didn’t respond like that. He behaved the way he did because he is a cunt. Not terribly scientific, I know, but that’s the bottom line. And if he thinks what happened at Middle Eastlands was abuse, wait till City visit the Grove in April. Then he’ll know.
I’m not suggesting Arsenal fans are whiter than white, or anything like it, but I won’t have us being dragged through the mud over that cunt.
Right then, time for today’s Arsecast. On the show I chat finances and shareholdings with Tim Payton from the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust, Goonerholic looks at the football and 13 years of Arsene Wenger, Talkshite Radio have their own tribute to the longest serving Arsenal manager ever, Den Nielsen is in there and there’s some poetry too.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (23mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Right then, busy morning. Must away. Enjoy. More tomorrow.
