It is strange to have an Arsenal free weekend when it’s not the summer or a dreaded Interlull. I might do something constructive like tidy up my office. The bit to the front, where I work, is quite good. A tidy, clean desk, all my various pencils and pens in my fantastic Arsenal mug (made from unbreakable pewter, cheers Mugsmasher!), but it’s what lies behind that needs working on.
Boxes of discs, records, cables and papers. Books, more records, a set of gigantic speakers. The box of stuff I cleaned out of the car ages ago thinking ‘Well, I can’t throw any of this stuff out. I might need it’. That was months ago and I haven’t so much as looked up or down at it. Some of that stuff includes old football pumps, a number of SCART cables for some reason, a vice grips, some RAM, a book by Len Deighton, a small sheep (toy, not real) and my sense of youthful idealism.
If you were to ask me how that stuff got in the car in the first place I wouldn’t be able to give you a good answer. So I could clean that up today. Or I could just sit facing the screen and not worry about any of it, which seems like a much more reasonable thing to do.
So, on to things Arsenal and this morning is a watershed morning in my support for the club. I know players come and go, like karma chameleons, but it looks as if we’re heading for a departure that will rock the world of Arsenal as we know it. The Mirror is reporting that Sylvester is set to leave this summer and is upset at not being part of the squad at the moment. The article claims he ‘lost his temper’ in front of teammates after being left out of the squad for the Liverpool game and feels that he was led up the garden path a bit thinking he was a valuable member of the squad when PSG were interested in him in January.
The simple fact is that we couldn’t possibly have let him go now having already allowed Senderos to join Everton. I can understand his frustration, to be fair, it’s horrible for any player when they don’t play, but I’ve always thought his signing was rather an odd one. He could have gone somewhere and played every week but chose Arsenal. I suppose if you asked any player would they rather go to Sunderland or Arsenal they’d choose Arsenal, for all the many and varied reasons which we need not go into, but from a football point of view perhaps he might have been better off going somewhere else. The arrival of Sol Campbell has pushed him further down the pecking order and his departure in the summer seems inevitable. I will be gutted, if only for selfish, Arsecast producing reasons. I do hope, with possibly three central defenders on the way in the summer, Arsene is looking around for replacements. I might even send a CV and a spliced up YouTube vid. I mean, if Sylvester can get a two year gig …
The Sun says Marouane Chamakh has turned down a bigger offer from Liverpool to sign for us. The player said he’d been talking to us, the ‘smashers and Sp*rs, and hadn’t made a decision yet, but I think you’d get very long odds on him signing elsewhere at this stage. One thing I would say though, after all the talk about him, nearly signing him last summer and all that, when he does arrived he’d better be fucking brilliant. Or else.
Andrei Arshavin is out of the trip to Porto next week. He revealed his injury news to his official site, saying:
I’m going to lose two weeks in the future with my muscle problem, but hope to return after leading the program more successful in the gate of Arsenal with much to brown in the sense of the championship after the good to football.
I do like a player who keeps us so well and truly up to date. Perhaps a couple of weeks off might not be the worst thing in the world. He might find his form again. If I were him I’d check in his car. People leave all kinds of stuff in them, you know.
Liam Brady has stepped down as assistant manager of the Republic of Ireland football team to concentrate on his work at Arsenal. Perhaps he should introduce an ‘old banger’ rule which states that no reserve team player, no matter how highly thought of, is allowed drive a £100,000 Mercedes McLaren car and instead must make their way around town in a 93 Mini Metro until they’ve established themselves as a decent member of the first team squad. That’s what I’d so. As well as banning chewing gum and making them all call me ‘Sir’ before genuflecting as I passed by. I’m a hard taskmaster, let me tell you.
Right then, that’s about that. Have yourselves as good an Arsenal free Saturday as it’s possible to have. More tomorrow.
