A full list of those players affected by the Interlull was posted yesterday on the official site. While we have to accept that the French players and Arshavin have two games due to their play-off duties, it’s a bit disappointing to see that Cesc could potentially play for Spain and Robin van Persie twice for Holland in meaningless friendlies.
Still, there are enough players staying at home to make the Interlull reasonably interesting from Arsene Wenger’s point of view. Normally he’s left with Almunia, Denilson and the spirit of Nelson Vivas so that’ll make a nice change for him.
He can spend some time reflecting on the comments made by Man United’s Darren Fletcher who feels that our manager’s criticism of an un-named United player was responsible for their loss to Chelsea at the weekend. Fletcher said:
I think we are now seeing Mr Wenger’s comments starting to influence referees, which is a shame.
So it’s only ok when his manager’s comments influence referees? And here’s what Fletcher needs to realise. Firstly Wenger’s comments had no bearing whatsoever on the ref on Sunday giving a free kick against him. It’s mostly to do with the fact that Fletcher blunderbusses around a football pitch fouling as many people as he can while mysteriously being immune to yellow cards (unless, hilariously, they are for being blatantly fouled himself only for the ref to think he was diving).
Secondly, how can he possibly expect the referee not to give a free kick when he looks like a smackhead from Trainspotting who would rob his own granny for a fix? The ref is standing there, trying to make a split-second decision. ‘Did Fletcher kick that player illegally?’, and he looks at him and thinks ‘He looks like he’d suck off tramps under a bridge to get enough money to shoot up that sweet, sweet horse. Of course he kicked him’.
So for Fletcher to blame Arsene Wenger is not only ludicrous, it’s ignoring the real problem … himself. I mean, it’s not like he has to look like George Clooney. He can be peculiar looking but not sinister. He needs to go to a plastic surgeon, pay for a Bullardplasty and then, perhaps, referees might not treat him like a bloke with pus-filled sores between his toes who has a kitten with AIDS. Just saying.
Moving on and it appears that Nicklas Bendtner needs an operation on his dodgy groin. How this affects his absence in terms of time out remains to be seen but with modern techniques surgery isn’t as nasty an option as it used to be. They no longer have to slice you open with a rusty steak knife then stitch you back together with catgut. It’s all keyhole stuff and Bendtner will be hoping, given the region the surgery is in, that the keyhole is the only hole affected.
Cesc says the captaincy hasn’t changed him and says that the spirit in the dressing room is really great and nobody even thinks about the Gallas incident when one fateful day he made them turn off the communal Wii during a game of Mario Kart to give a teamtalk that nobody could understand. This vexed them very much because Cesc and Gael Clichy were playing online and everyone knows you never interrupt an online game.
Now Gallas sits alone on the bus reading Kurt Wallander novels translated from Swedish into French but without losing any of their Swedish charm, looking up now and again at his young and boistrous teammates and chuckling softly to himself as he realises that Wallander is a far grumpier grump than he could ever be – and who could blame him living in a land as cold as that?
It’s funny how literature can give one a different and invaluable perspective.
For those asking if the blatant dive from N’Gog last night to salvage a point for the Mugsmashers was going to get the same coverage as Eduardo’s against Celtic it does appear as if he’s been branded a cheat in pretty much every newspaper this morning. Which is fair enough because it was a blatant dive. I’ll stop short of campaigning for his execution and subsequent deportation though.
Not much else going on so that’ll have to do. Till tomorrow.
