*taps mic*
“Is this thing on?”
Looks like it is. No thanks to Amazon’s hosting. This cloud bollocks is not all it’s cracked up to be. 12 hours+ of downtime in one day. As someone who used to have a crappy little hosting business myself that’s remarkable. And by remarkable I mean remarkably shite. Useless cunts.
Anyway, sincere apologies to everyone for the inconvenience. I suppose it’s a good time to remind people that you can always subscribe to the Mailing List so you get the blog rammed into your box first thing in the morning. There are also apps for the iPhone and Android (hopefully a Blackberry one coming soon too) which should download it for offline reading. Anyway, while it’s nice to have options it shouldn’t have been so necessary yesterday. Apologies again.
So, what news of Arsenal? Well, we’re down another centre-half as Sol Campbell decided to join Newcastle. Good luck to him up there. His half-season cameo was good for us and good for him. It allowed for a certain amount of redemption considering the way he left the club and he played his part in keeping us going as all around him dropped like flies – and we suffered a load of injuries.
As I’ve said for a while I think his primary motivation is to play football and given Arsenal’s need to spend money on the defence his chances might well have been very limited. It does make our need for new players all the more pressing, something Arsene is aware of, saying:
We are still on the search for centre-halves. We have three and we need at least four.
Interesting to note he doesn’t consider Nordtveit yet part of the first team squad but with one good purchase the Norwegian could certainly be the man to back up the back up. You have to hope they’re working hard behind the scenes because time marches on. Still there are whispers about Mertesacker while this morning’s Sun links us with another Germanian, Serdar Tasci, who currently plays for Stuttgart. I realise transfers are complicated things but even though Djourou’s injury was described as ‘little’ by Arsene Wenger we have to ensure our squad is complete and new players have time to settle in.
Already it looks as if some players might miss the opening game of the season. Arsene is doubtful about the involvement of Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie who apparently only return to training on August 5th. He thinks they might be short for the opener against Liverpool which, despite their recent difficulties, is never an easy game. They’ll want to put the horror of last season behind them and with a new manager you can be sure they’ll be right up for it. Going there without two of our best players isn’t ideal.
As well as that Nicklas Bendtner will miss the start of the season with his groin injury, which is another World Cup hangover. He came back from South Africa and said he thought it was bad, Arsene Wenger said it wasn’t big. Already there’s confusion and misinformation about our injury situation and while he’s not everybody’s cup of tea I’d rather we had as many fit and healthy players at the start of the season as possible.
So at the moment Bendtner’s out for the start, Cesc and van Persie could well be short, there’s been no sighting of the lesser-spotted Denilson in pre-season at all, Rosicky picked up knock before the game the other night and wasn’t risked (and there are rumours that his withdrawal was so as not exacerbate any problems for a player we’re willing to sell), and there’s no sign of Diaby yet either. You do wonder if a 25 man squad is going to be enough, perhaps we should lobby for special dispensation to double that. It would be only fair.
Quick Spanish press update? They haven’t stopped talking about Cesc, making more noise I guess you’d call it. Apparently a load of the Barcelona officials have taken, or will take, a plane to London today (Easyjet, I hope, don’t want to weaken the finances any further, chaps) to talk to Arsenal. I hope we sit them down in a conference room and every time they try and say something Ivan Gazidis makes a noise like a startled giraffe gnu with a sore throat. And keeps doing it until they go away.
Fulham have appointed a new manager which might, ordinarily, give you some hope that a deal could be done over Mark Schwarzer. However, Fulham have appointed Mark Hughes, a man with the manners and touchline deportment of a coked-up gibbon with whom Arsene Wenger really has no relationship whatsoever. Whether this affects a potential transfer or not remains to be seen but I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I sincerely hope we’ve got other targets than the Australian. There are still whispers about the Italian, Marchetti, but it would surprise me if we were serious about him.
And that’s it from a news point of view. Time to give you the winners of the Emirates Cup competition.
Thank you for all your entries and the RNG has selected the following lucky winners: Dave Ricklesford and Steve Adams. Well done to you both. You get 2 tickets for each day of the Emirates Cup as well as an exclusive stadium tour on one of those days. I’ll be in touch this morning to get your details.
Thanks again to Emirates for the prizes, commiserations to those who didn’t win, better luck next time.
Emirates currently operates 14 daily flights from 6 UK airports via Dubai to over 100 destinations on six continents.
Emirates is pleased to offer Arsenal members very special fares worldwide. For more information and to book, visit www.emirates.com/arsenalmembers
And that’s about that. I’m off to ensure Amazon have enough peat to keep their servers going for the full day. Till tomorrow.
