Morning all, brief Saturday round-up for you all.
I have no news as yet of any of the Arsenal players who might have been playing last night. Fingers crossed they’re all ok and are fit and healthy enough to enjoy the fact that England are the best team ever and Capello’s a good Italian again and not an evil one, like Frank Sinatra.
Spare a thought for poor Andrei Arshavin though. The little Russian has lost his mojo, saying:
I can say that my style has also altered – it is more effective but less sparkling. I don’t remember when was the last time I score a really beautiful goal. It’s frustrating. I tried to analyse this, but can find no answers. It is feeble to talk about injuries.
To be perfectly honest I care not for the beauty of his goals, merely the goalishness of them. That said, if a player so interested in the aesthetics of the game is unhappy then it’d be good for all of us if he scored a Angelina Jolie goal to help him put the pain of his Lady Gaga goals behind him. Two in three so far this season though – and even if they were theatrical looking efforts they all count.
Meanwhile, Marouane Chamakh reckons things are going pretty ok since he joined. He’s come through a tougher pre-season than he’s used to and is trying to get up to the pace of the English game:
Matches over here are all played at 100mph. You have to be on edge all the time and you have the impression that the ball never goes out of play.
I know that once I get settled, my game will improve a lot. The players have welcomed me also and I feel part of the family and the morale in the squad is good. We want to win the Premier League this season and we are all focused on that.
First impressions of him have been good, even if he does have the kind of haircut that would make Vidal Sassoon himself weep gently in a corner, and obviously the more comfortable he feels at Arsenal, and in England, the easier it’ll be for him. With Bendtner out for a while yet and Robin van Persie out until next season or the season after or the one after that he’s probably got more responsibility than the manager would have liked right now. The thing about buying a player of his age, however, is that they’re far better able to cope with that than a promising youngster.
Speaking of promising youngsters The Mirror says we’re after Dynamo Kiev’s 17 year old keeper, Maxim Koval. He’s so young and so unknown he doesn’t even have a profile on Wikipedia for some clever clogs to edit to say he’s already joined Arsenal.
Tom Cruise, our one, not the mentalist scientologist dwarf actor, says he’d like to go out on loan this season to get some of that good old experience. I saw him play the other week when the reserves played Shamrock Rovers and I have to say he caught the eye a bit. He played 90 mins for the first team last season when we sent a team of youngsters to Greece. That day he was at left back, the other week he came in at centre-half and looked very composed. He’s certainly got the stature and presence for that position more than left back. One to keep an eye on, I think.
The FA have dismissed Stoke’s ludicrous complaint about Arsene Wenger’s comments last week. The boss likened the pushing, shoving and kicking to rugby and Stoke’s bean-headed little spiv of a manager, Tony Pulis, wrote a letter, stuck his pawprint on and it and sent it off before telling anyone who would listen what he’d done.
‘No case to answer’ came the reply from the FA, making Pulis and Stoke look rather foolish indeed. Will we hear anyone accuse Pulis of ‘whinging’? It is surely far worse than anything Arsene has ever done. Instead of keeping it quiet and dealing with it like an adult he threw his toys out of his pram and now looks like a big fucking baby. He could have called Arsene up himself, he could have had his Chairman call our Chairman, instead he went public and now has egg all over his stupid face. Ostrich egg at that.
Tony Pulis has got a bird abortion face, a bird abortion face, a bird abortion face …
Right, not a great deal else going on this morning. I’m away tomorrow so Tom will be here with your Sunday update. If I were you I’d have a lie in. I don’t anticipate it being breakfast time reading. Catch you on Monday.
Have a good one.
