Hello. Last night I dreamed we signed Cristiano Ronaldo and everyone was really excited but when he arrived we had to put him together like flat-pack furniture from IKEA and Real Madrid left out the hinges for his legs so he took over the job of running the official website. Odd.
Anyway, yesterday we won the Barclay’s Asia KFC Sellotape Trophy with a 3-1 win over Everton. I did not see any of it other than brief goal snippets. Walcott’s finish was tasty, so was Cazorla’s, so was Ozil’s. Everton scored a goal for some reason (we ought to make it clear to the opposition as early as possible that this kind of thing is simply not on), but in the end we hung on for a glorious victory that will be remembered throughout the ages.
Perhaps I’m being a little too cynical, all the work that goes into pre-season is about the team playing well and by all accounts they did that yesterday. We’re still a long way from where we need to be, but I suppose you want your preparations to go as well as possible. You can be quite sure if we hadn’t played well and won the game, there’d be some chiming the bells of doom this morning, so a convincing performance and a good win does go some way to getting us ready.
Afterwards, Arsene Wenger said:
I’m pleased with the performance because the focus in pre-season is to find the quality of our game back and I think for long periods we played in a very convincing way and the way we want to play – together, with good team play. Everybody shared the same vision on the pitch of the game we want to play. That’s positive.
We came here with 27 players, we had two convincing games with no injury after a week, so that’s fantastic.
He also touched on Theo Walcott, praising his fitness and sharpness, and was asked about his contract situation and whether there are plans to discuss it. His reply:
Yes, because he is close to the end of his contract next season.
I think the last we heard of this was Walcott saying he’d discuss it at the end of the season, now we’re into pre-season, and there’s still nothing done. It’s one of those situations that the longer it goes on the more speculation there’ll be about it. If he wants guarantees about playing time or where he’ll play, then that’s going to be an issue. I don’t think any manager can give a player any guarantee like that. If it’s about money, perhaps there’s a difference between what he wants and what we think he’s worth, but this is old familiar ground when it comes to Theo Walcott and his contract.
Last summer was nice because apart from Sagna, whose departure was obvious for a long time beforehand, we didn’t have any saga involving a player’s future. It was about bringing players in. We let Sagna go and signed five before the window closed (yes, it still wasn’t enough because of the centre-half thing), so it would be nice to avoid a situation that will be played out on the back pages day in, day out.
However, when you think back to some of the manager’s most pointed comments about how difficult it is to negotiate with Walcott’s people (“the embassy” etc), then this might well be one that becomes a thing between now and the end of the transfer window. And whether that has any bearing on what else we might do this summer remains to be seen.
So, it’s back to a much less warm England now for another week of hard training before the Emirates Cup next weekend. I don’t foresee too many head-tennis videos in swimming pools between now and then.
Finally though, I’ve got to leave you with this absolutely outstanding piece of comedy from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. If his football career goes wrong, a place on the stage awaits.
Till tomorrow.
