Still pretty quiet as we prepare for Chelsea on Sunday. There’s more crap this morning about Barcelona – this time they want Cesc and Eboue! Talk about hitting us where it hurts. Losing Cesc would be bad, but Eboue too? Worst. Summer. Ever.
As I said the other day though this is the kind of thing we’re going to have to put up with as long as this presidential campaign goes on. The funny thing is that the man who wins the election in Barcelona will be the one who has managed to show the greatest and most effective disrespect to another football club. He will woo the voters with promises of big names, have his people tap up players along the way and generally be rewarded for his underhand behaviour. It’s like Cunt Idol. A classy way to choose someone to run your club, no doubt about it.
Back to matters Arsenal and Manuel Almunia reckons Arsenal are still in the title hunt. The goalkeeper, who looks like he sees dead people, and scary dead people too, says:
We are on schedule to do good things this season, we have only a little step to get back to the top of the league.
Hmmm, that little step is Chelsea which is more like a whole flight of steps. Or one enormous step. Or one reasonably sized step for a midget. Frankly, I have about as much faith in Almunia’s opinion of our title chances as I would in John Wayne Gacy’s ability to provide a safe and non-rapey clown experience at a kids birthday party. I will be bitterly disappointed if he plays against Chelsea.
Nicklas Bendtner says he can make a big impact on our season … when he gets to ‘full strength’. He then goes on to talk about how he’s not at full strength yet and how the old groin still gives him gyp, which is great to hear. He’s got to play from the start on Sunday though. We need his physical presence against a side of Chelsea’s size and we’ve got to hope he can get scoring as quickly as possible and add to his thus-far massive tally of … three goals.
One area that must improve is our defending. Nigel Winterburn is a man who knows a thing or two about that. This is what he had to say about our United performance:
I was very disappointed with what I saw from Arsenal. I couldn’t believe the level of defending for all three of Manchester United’s goals.
This is a man who not only knows about defending but who has watched us all season long. He’s seen the dodgy goals we’ve conceded and to say he found Sunday’s efforts unbelievable tells you everything you need to know. Work rate, effort, spirit, desire and all those kinds of things have been mentioned this week and unless we up those then Chelsea will score against us. And not just once. It’s not just down to the back four either, we have to defend better as a team, from front to back. I’m sure that is the main thing Arsene will have been working on this week and I suspect we’re going to hear a bit about it in the days to come as the media briefings take place.
Young Brazilian striker Wellington stole the show in a friendly against Dagenham and Redbridge yesterday. Central defensive trialist Stevie Savage also played and did pretty well also. Whether he did well enough to get a contract remains to be seen.
More, including the Arsecast, tomorrow.
