Hmmm, bank holiday here and in the UK, I believe. Which is kind of annoying because I wanted to ring up my bank today and complain about something but I suppose it’ll have to wait.
It means things are fairly quiet with not much in the way of fall-out from the Birmingham game and little written about City just yet. The Sun reckons Lee Bowyer could be hit with two violent conduct charges after the incidents with Bacary Sagna, which would be no less than he deserves, but what about Cameron Jerome’s stamp on Laurent Koscielny?
If you have a look at the video you can see Jerome have a look to see where the defender is and, most telling of all, Chris Waddle reckons it’s an accident which is all the proof you need that it was deliberate. Is Bowyer only being punished because his acts of nastiness were shown on Match of the Day? Please don’t take this as some kind of defence of Bowyer but a stamp is a stamp regardless of who is the stamper.
Anyway, they can imprison Bowyer in a spinning mirror and send him hurtling into space for all I care. As others have pointed out Sagna simply brushed off Bowyer’s violence like a bite from a crap mosquito.
The transfer window is open now, of course, and while there may well be some movement out of the club the likelihood of anyone coming in is slim. Arsene has clarified things somewhat by saying:
I do not rule anything out but nor do I rule anything in. If there is an exceptional chance I might take it but equally I might not. It’s possible that someone might come in but at the same time it’s just as likely that nobody will arrive.
I don’t want to say I will or I won’t because then someone will turn around and say ‘You said you would or would not sign someone’ and I would have to ask ‘Why on earth did you turn around to say that?’. What is this custom of turning around before speaking? I simply don’t understand it.
Basically, there’s a 50-50 chance with a 100% possibility of it going one way or the other.
Which really does clear things up and cover all the bases at the same time. To be honest, I’m not going to pay the slightest bit of attention to anything he says about potential signings. He obfuscates constantly and we know that when it comes to bringing players in he tries to keep everything as quiet as possible. So even if he does say something vaguely positive he’s probably just teasing the press conference folks.
Vito Mannone has returned from Hull making Almunia’s departure all the more likely, while we’ll definitely have players available for loan deals. Carlos Vela to Bolton or Chievo or somebody looks to be a serious option while the Mirror reckons Jay Emmanuel-Thomas could go to Nottingham Forest. There’s no doubt he needs a loan and needs some regular football because he’s not getting it with us. And speaking of Forest, Aaron Ramsey is available for them today. They travel to Ipswich after which Ramsey will return to Arsenal to push for a first team spot.
He’s been hampered a bit by the weather. The snow and ice meant three Forest games were postponed and the manager has said that he’ll need more training to be ready for Premier League football but he’ll add some depth to the squad at the right time. It shouldn’t be forgotten that he made a big jump forward last season, and was well on his way to becoming a regular until Lennie went smash. It will be interesting to see how he gets on and, with the emergence of Jack Wilshere, how much playing time he gets. The competition will be good overall though.
Beyond that not a lot going on. It’s too early to start talking about City so as this is a bank holiday and people have to get themselves ready to get back to work tomorrow we’ll leave it there for today.
Have a good one.
