Morning all,
it’s a very quiet one this morning, which is surprising. I mean in the sense that it’s taken this long for there to be a quiet one. A couple of pieces of transfer gossip to tide us over though.
Firstly, The Mail says we’ve made an £8m bid for Christopher Samba who said earlier this month:
Everybody knows that I am an ambitious player. I think a move to Arsenal was very close in January but that is life.
I remain quite unconvinced that Samba is the answer to our defensive deficiencies, to be honest. He certainly adds a tallness that we don’t have, Djourou apart, but beyond that is he really the right player? It seems to me that it became the easy thing to suggest that Arsenal needed a more physical, dare I say it ‘taller’ presence at the back, and who in the Premier League is more physical and taller than Samba?
He had a fantastic game against West Ham towards the end of the season but that is the very first time I’ve ever seen him and thought he was anything other than, you know, very tall indeed. Perhaps I’m wrong, it has been known, and maybe he’ll flourish and make a big step up if he joins Arsenal but he’s not the kind of signing that’s going to make me jump for joy. He’d only out-jump me anyway.
I’d be quite happy for us to add a touch of industrial to our aesthetic, and also to increase our physicality, but I just don’t have it in me to get excited about this one. We shall see, I guess. And don’t ask me who I want either. I don’t know and it’s not my job to want specific players – although I reserve the right to not want them!
Andrei Arshavin says he’ll be at Arsenal next season:
Don’t believe the rumours. Everything is good with Arsene Wenger. I’m not going to leave Arsenal.
I suspect what happens with Arshavin depends quite a bit on what happens with Cesc and Nasri. The former is certainly our most creative player and despite everything Arshavin’s stats, in terms of assists, are pretty good, so to lose those two outlets, and possibly the goals of Nasri, would be way too much.
The thing with Arshavin is that he has a contract until 2013, as far as I know, so the club have his future in their own hands. That’s not the case with Nasri and the Cesc situation is probably going to start getting complicated once Barcelona have the Champions League final out of the way. Already I’ve heard whispers of our supposed interest in one or two of the current Barcelona squad. Perhaps it’s genuine, perhaps they’re being touted as makeweights in any Cesc deal, but I expect things to get busier than Pique with a box of Kleenex in a room full of Cesc photos.
Anyway, whatever you think about the Russian it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll sell him as well as the other two. However, he is training with Zenit at the moment though and as much depends on what happens with others – like a footballing butterfly effect – I also wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he went home this summer. In fact, if it were announced tomorrow that our entire squad was up for sale, as part of Aldi’s Thursday’s specials, I don’t think that’d surprise me much either. I’m so confused. I blame Arsene Wenger.
And that’s really about that. There is the small matter of the Champions League final tonight. I have to say I still find it odd this game is on a Saturday but there you go. I know Barcelona have acted the twat this week at our training ground, and they have some of the cheatiest, divingest players of all time, and Mascherano looks like a throwback to Cro-Magnon man with his enormous teeth which can grind up bone and also fashion basic tools out of granite, and the history between our two clubs has been somewhat fraught in recent years (what with their pursuit of Cesc and their desire for revenge after we somehow convinced them to spend £13m on Hleb), but you know, Evra.
And Rooney. And Ferdinand. And Nani. And Suralex. And not forgetting Evra. Did I mention Evra? So, I’ll be out with the lads from my football team tonight, sitting in a bar somewhere in Dublin, no doubt surrounded by United fans (especially the ones from my football team), and hoping for a Barcelona win.
That’s the great thing about hating everyone but Arsenal. If you get drunk enough you can make hay out of the fact you hate one lot slightly less than another lot and use that to taunt others, before being a bit sick in your mouth and going outside so you don’t have to see the cunts you hate a bit less celebrating. Football really is great.
Hasta mañana, Evra haters.
