Good morning. The main news is that I am sick. Forget the football. I am sick. I have luminous snots, only one of my ears is working as an actual ear, the other appears to be just a thing sticking onto the side of my head with no eartastic function whatsoever, and I have lost my voice to the extent that I sound like Bonnie Tyler when I try and speak.
Every now and then I feel a little bit better but it’s just my sickness teasing me with wellness. I’m holding out for a hero. Or large doses of industrial strength paracetemol. God bless Spanish pharmacies. So, as you can imagine, everything else pales into insignificance compared to this but I’ll try and add a little Arsenal to my abject misery … just for you.
Abou Diaby. He is tall and sometimes very good at football. Against Hull was one of those times when he was very good for 45 minutes. The main problem with him is that sometimes he’s not very good and the game passes him by. We need him to be more good than not good, to impose himself more on stuff and that etc and what have you, and thankfully he seems to realise this. He says:
I think I need to improve my side of the game on that, and be more aggressive. I need to have more presence in the midfield and if I can do that it will be good for me and good for the team.
I could not possibly agree with him more. Not even if he said “Poor ‘blogger. He is sick and therefore deserving of sympathy and Heinz tomato soup with lots of white pepper on top of it”. If he can do what he did against Hull on a consistent basis then I will be most pleased with him indeed. Unfortunately the only thing he’s consistent at is getting injured but in my fever induced delirium (did I mention I’m sick?), I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
One thing I have noticed though is the plethora, and that is a much underused word, of articles about how Diaby is not like Vieira. There must have been at least 569 of them on the official site alone. There’s another one up there at the moment. Can we stop now, please? Or, if it’s such a struggle to post new stuff, how about one which says ‘Andrei Arshavin is not like a wombat’ or ‘Emmanuel Eboue is not the new Viv Anderson even though both of them both have kind of unisex names’? Just throwing it out there.
There’s been more activity regarding Arsenal shares with Yosemite Stan Kroenke buying another clutch to take him ever closer to the point where he’d have to make a bid for all the shares. This appears to have bothered Alisher Usmanov who, speaking from his dank Uzbeki lair, called on the American to come clean and make clear his intentions. He’s a bit stupid, isn’t he? It’s obvious his intentions are to buy some, or possibly all, of Arsenal shares. Even I know that.
I suspect he’ll buy them all and in the great tradition of American TV there’ll be all kinds of changes. You know the way they show an ad break just after the show’s opening titles? Well, we’ll change our name to Arse-WalMart-nal FC and our stadium announcer will be sacked and replaced by Casey Kasem or Rick Dees. It’s just the way football is going.
The Mirror reports that we could be re-negotiating our shirt sponsorship deal with Emirates. They got themselves a very good deal by paying up front when we needed to buy breeze blocks and bags of concrete for the new stadium. As such it’s not as lucrative as it could be compared to other clubs. The article seems to suggest a new sponsor but I’m not sure how realistic that is. We did a deal which was good for us at the time, so while it might not generate as much money as we’d like, maybe we just have to live with it.
Shay Given wants to quit Man City according to The Sun. He’s a bit good really and could be just the keeper we need to replace our keeper who isn’t as good but who saved a penalty the other day so I feel all warm towards him while still recognising the fact he’s had a poor season. I think it’s unlikely that Arsene will spend on a goalie in January though.
And that’s really about it. I might go back to bed although lying down seems to make all the snots go straight to my head so when I stand up there’s a snot rush and that is not pleasant, let me tell you. I’ll just sit here, moaning softly to myself, and being quite miserable.
Till tomorrow.
