Morning all and welcome to Friday.
We’ll start with the good news that Wojscez©® has signed a new deal with the club. A five year contract for the promising young Pole means he’s a happy chappy, he’s obviously been given some assurance that first team football is, if not guaranteed, within his grasp. His comments from a few weeks back were clearly borne out of frustration and a lack of clarity about his future and that seems to have been taken care of. The man himself said:
It’s a great feeling to sign a new contract with Arsenal and I’m so pleased. The negotiations happened very quickly and it was easy.
While Arsene Wenger said:
We have all seen his huge potential, both in training and in the matches that he has played for us, so we look forward to seeing him develop further in the coming years.
I have to admit having the fear that he’d go somewhere for nothing in the summer and turn out to be the most awesome keeper of all time. Part panther, part Mr Stretchyarms from the Fantastic Four, part Sylvester Stallone from Escape to Victory. Seeing him do that elsewhere would have been tough. It also means Fabianski knows his young compatriot is breathing right down his neck, as opposed to Manuel Almunia who is on life support somewhere now. It’s hard to see any future for the Spaniard at the club right at this moment in time but things change very quickly in football.
Fabianski is, for all intensive porpoises, our number 1 right now. The thought of that a few months back would have filled even the unflappable underpants with poo. So who knows? It was also pointed out to me on Twitter yesterday that perhaps I should learn how to spell his name now that he’s going to be around for a while. A fair point I suppose. Woycheck Sczczczczczzcczzczcznsey. Royston Chesney. Wojscez©®. Got it.
There’s some early team news ahead of Sunday’s game with Everton and the good news is we don’t appear to have lost anyone from the Wolves game. That’s a couple of times that’s happened in a row now. We’ve played a game and not picked up any fresh knocks. Clearly the medical team have questions to answer, why aren’t we picking up injuries like we used to? I’m not used to this healthy nonsense. Kieran Gibbs is the only returnee and I suspect he’ll watch from the bench on Sunday. The manager says there’ll be a couple of changes from Wednesday night, just to keep things a bit fresh, but we can think about, and speculate on, those closer to the time.
It’s very early for transfer guff but this morning’s Guardian reckons we could be in for Bolton’s Gary Cahill. They’ve said they’re willing to sell him, the player says he wants to go play for someone better, and we’ve been linked. It all seems a bit fanciful to me and unless there’s something really, really wrong with Vermaelen’s achilles I don’t see it happening.
And beyond that there’s not much else going down. Arsene’s press conference takes place later and as well as the Everton game I expect he’ll be asked about Ian Holloway’s fantastic rant about the team he put out on Wednesday night against Villa. Well worth a listen if you haven’t already heard it. I think he’s perfectly entitled to play whoever he wants out of his 25 man squad, it’s not as if they took a battering at Villa, and it’ll be interesting to hear what Arsene says about it, especially after he was critical of Mick McCarthy last season for playing a supposedly weaker side against Man United.
Right then, time for this week’s Arsecast and I’m joined by the Cultured Left Foot of Yogi’s Warrior to discuss Newcastle, Wolves, Fabianski and more. As well as that there’s Internet Joe, Talkshite Radio, some vintage news, a touching documentary as well as a chance for you to win yourself an Arsenal book with thanks to GCR Books. All you have to do is listen to get the details.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here (23mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
[audio:http://arseblog.com/podcasts/arsecast_episode175.mp3]More tomorrow including all the guff from Arsene’s press conference. In the meantime have yourselves a good Friday.
