Good day to you all. I hope you’re well and enjoying the running water that living in the modern world affords you. No such luxuries here as Dublin, the rainiest city in the history of the world, has run out. Stupid idiots.
We’ll start with Arsene and his pre-match interview which is normally published on the official website on a Friday went up a bit early so I watched it last night. The main points, from what I remember, are:
- Sol Campbell will bring experience to the squad and he’s in good shape and the deal will be short term because if Sol wants to play on for three years he’s going to have play week in, week out and it seemed fairly obvious that’s unlikely to happen with us.
- Philippe Senderos is ‘injured’ despite not being injured the other day according to Arsene and the player himself who says he’s completely fine and just wants to get out of here and start playing football again.
- Nicklas Bendtner is doing well and has taken ‘a big step forward’ in the last three or four days. He’s still expected back in the next two weeks
- Despite this the manager thinks it’ll take him a few games to get back up to speed so while the need for a striker isn’t as urgent as it might have been he is still looking for a ‘bargain’
- That was as much as he was willing to admit and remained a bit coy when pushed further, saying ‘When we sign someone we’ll tell you’, which kinda made me think something’s going on but with Arsene you can never tell
- Cesc is back for Bolton. Clichy is available again and ‘might’ play against Bolton. Denilson – “at the moment I rule him out”, he said as an afterthought, saying he had a ‘muscle problem’.
- He’s not particularly worried about back to back Bolton games, or the new manager effect, saying we have to concentrate on our own performances etc etc
And that was about that. There’ll be more, including updated team news, when Arsene meets the press later on this morning. There’s still no sign of Theo Walcott who has spent just three and a half minutes on the pitch this season and two of those include getting treatment after falling over. The Mail says the Arsenal medical team are wondering if it’s got something to do with his dodgy shoulders but whatever it is it’s doing him, and his career, no favours.
Sky Sports News say that Philippe Senderos is about to sign a pre-contract deal with a Serie A club. As he can leave on a Bosman in the summer he can pick and choose but with the World Cup in the summer he needs to be playing football now, so that may affect his decision. The Mugsmasher Echo says David Moyes is a considering a bid.
You might have noticed during the week that the official site no longer provides live coverage of the reserve games. I did make some enquiries and the unfortunate truth is that the viewing figures were so low it came down to a simple case of value for money. I’m told that the money they are not using for the reserves coverage will go back into the ATVO service, hopefully including live coverage of the FA Youth Cup games later in the season, and adding some new features in the near future. The highlights of the reserves games will continue. So there you go. Personally I rarely watched the live reserves games, but for me it’s decent value for the press conferences alone.
The Mirror reports Kerra Gilbert is joining Peterborough on loan for the rest of the season. Good luck to him, his loan spells in the past have been something of a mixed bag. Also in the Mirror a story about Jack Wilshere not going on loan to FC Twente because he doesn’t understand the strange dialect the manager speaks.
And that’s that. Now, on to this week’s Arsecast. To discuss all the goings on, including the BIG news about Sol Campbell, I’m joined by the ‘holic. As well as that there’s Den Nielsen, Tony Adams with a poem and the usual waffle.
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 (20mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Right then, that’ll have to do. Have a watery Friday, wherever you are.
