Welcome to a brand new week and welcome to the first Interlull of the new season.
There’s the small distraction of the transfer window to keep us vaguely interested for the next 36 hours or so. It closes tomorrow evening at 6pm. Sky Sports News will be sending reporters to stand outside training grounds, stadiums, club toilets and anywhere else they think they might find a scoop.
Arsenal interest in the window centres around Mark Schwarzer. Will he? Won’t he? I loved East Lower’s line on Twitter – Must be weird being Mark Schwarzer. Term has started but you’re still not 100% sure which school you’ll be at.
Fulham don’t want to sell even though he doesn’t want to play for them and the deal may be more complicated now due to a possible injury to his stand-in. That said, they always said his move to Arsenal was dependent on them getting in a replacement. There’s talk of Shay Given going there on loan which I’m sure will have some people wondering why we don’t go for the Irishman but there’s no way City would loan or sell him to us.
If Schwarzer is to come it would mean we’d really have be thinking of shifting one of the existing keepers out, probably on loan. It could one of the youngsters, Mannone or Wojscez©®, but personally I’d like to see Fabianski go. Almunia would be a solid number 2 (no jokes please).
There might also be a few deals involving fringe players. Armand Traore is interesting West Ham and, somewhat bizarrely, Juventus, while the likes of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Henri Lansbury and a couple of others could go out loan. There’s interest from Blackburn (boo), Leeds and Swansea for Lansbury while talk of a return to Doncaster for JET.
The manager has made his intentions as clear as mud on the official site saying:
It is dead at the moment but maybe not finished. At the moment I would say, as it is today, it is finished.
The thing is, the today he was referring to was yesterday. Or possibly the day before. So today’s today might be an entirely different today than the today he was talking about. I think, should we manage to sign Schwarzer, this will have been a pretty good transfer window for us. Two defenders, a striker and a goalkeeper would certainly show that the issues we’ve all been so concerned about have been addressed.
Of course it remains to be seen just how successful the new boys are going to be but the two we’ve seen so far have looked promising. Squillaci will be in contention for the next league game – Bolton at home on Sept 11th – and if the Aussie arrives then he’s likely to play in that game too. Let’s wait and see what happens. I wouldn’t put it past Mark Hughes to make life as difficult as it can possibly be, so let’s hope City are willing to let the ‘very unhappy’ Given go Cottaging.
For more on the transfer window I’ll be on Twitter 24 hours a day with inside information, reliable sources, up to date gossip, rumour and fact that my team of monkeys with typewriters will be churning out. I think I need to fine tune them though:
shcwarzer having medical fail now eeeeh eeeeeeh eeeeeh aaaaahhhh
I’m a stickler for correct spelling and grammar, dontcha know.
Moving on to matters football and Arsene has spoken about Cesc and his performance on Saturday. He says:
I don’t think he is the type to give anything less than his best, just because he didn’t get a move. He may have wanted to join Barcelona but he loves Arsenal as well, and that’s why he made his decision. There is a trust and confidence on both sides. He has given enough to the club and the club has given a lot to him in return.
It is inevitable that every time he doesn’t play as well as we know he can people will magically become psychic and state will great confidence that his mind is elsewhere. As I said yesterday it was his first start of the season and he’s nowhere near as sharp as he normally is. If the Barcelona thing didn’t happen this summer we’d be talking about him getting fit properly after a long summer at the World Cup. I have no doubts over his commitment. Every time he pulls on an Arsenal shirt he’ll go out to do his best for the team, the way he’s done since he made his debut as a 16 year old.
As I don’t have any psychic powers whatsoever and am unable to read minds I will refrain from speculating about what’s going on inside his head.
And speaking of speculation there was a lot of that flying around regarding the arrest of Jack Wilshere. The facts as I can gather are he was arrested, then bailed, with regard to an late night ‘fracas’. And that’s about as much as any of us know about it. Until there more facts then I think it would be unwise, and unseemly, to comment.
And for a Monday morning that’ll have to do. More tomorrow as the transfer window enters its final mind-numbing, tedious, hyped up load of bollocks exciting few hours.
