Morning all, welcome to a brand new week.
It’s very quiet, I’m afraid. Sadly there’s not enough embracing of the quiet. Remember when The Tremeloes sang Silence is Golden? I don’t, I’m not that old. But they made a fantastic point. Much better than Ronan Keating who said something about saying it best while you say nothing at all. Look, it’s fine sentiment but I once saw Ronan Keating at Heathrow airport and he carried a guitar on board an Aer Lingus flight and took up an entire overhead locker with it, the inconsiderate bastard.
I might be misremembering but I’m sure there was a little frail old lady who had to get back to Dublin because of some family emergency who stood there crying because she had nowhere to put her bag and they put it right down the end of the plane even though she was sitting up front and then she had to wait until everyone got off to get it when we landed and the delay meant that by the time she got to the hospital the person she was flying in to see had died exactly the same amount of minutes it took for people to disembark and for her to get her bag. Boyzone bollix.
Frankly, the only musical instruments that should be allowed on flights are flutes, tin whistles, harmonicas and 80s style Keytars just in case Jean-Michel Jarre is on board and he fancies entertaining people with spontaneous performance of Oxygene to help pass the time. Anyway, my point about silence and silence being golden and the sound of silence was in relation to the fact nothing’s happening but we still have stories like ’13 reasons Petr Cech chose #33′.
How about 13 reasons why this publishing model (and I’m being generous here) will eventually eat itself and you can spend all day writing ’13 reasons why I don’t have a job anymore’? Wankers.
Anyway, speaking of planes (and 13 reasons why some Arsenal players are spray-painted onto one), you can see the exciting times the Arsenal players had getting on-board as they go to Singapore for the Barclay’s Monster Munch Trophy. We have:
- Cech getting a plane
- Cech sitting beside Wojciech – making Woj-Cech
- Cech doing … er …
It’s not just Cech, it’s all of them. The one with Calum Chambers in his seat and everyone behind him seems particularly awkward, like they’re all about to duff him up straight after. Anyway, the chaps are on their way, and the first match of pre-season 2015/16 takes place on Wednesday when we face a Singapore Select XI. I don’t know if it’s being broadcast or if it’s live on Arsenal Player or something, but I’ll try and find that out.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not that interested in watching it anyway. These games are about fitness, nothing more, and there’s a tendency – I don’t know if you’ve noticed this – for people to read rather too much into pre-season fixtures and performances. I mean, I get it when people pore over a game in the Premier League and make all kinds of assumptions and conclusions, but there’s no need to do that when you’re playing a friendly game, which is what these games in Singapore are.
Still, it’s going to be fun for the fans out there. I bet there’ll be loads of events where they’ll make Per Mertesacker dress up like a ghost and do a crazy dance or something, and Per will do it because he’s a good sport and he probably likes getting dressed up as a ghost. I mean, who doesn’t? No person who grew up with Scooby Doo could ever have a problem with that.
No doubt there’ll be some stuff with the manager during the week too, so if he’s willing to give away anything with regard to any further transfer plans we’ll have to just wait and see. I wonder if the Sterling to Man City thing might spark a bit of action in the market. Liverpool will obviously have some money to spend now and will want to replace him. With Theo Walcott still to put pen to paper on a new deal could they come a-knocking knowing he’s only got one year left on his contract?
Would that then create space for the kind of creative/attacking forward signing some have speculated we need for quite some time now? I haven’t got the faintest idea, but it’ll be interesting to see which Southampton players Brendan Rodgers buys instead.
Right, that’s just about that. Despite the fact there’s little or nothing happening, James and I will be here to provide you with some aural entertainment later on. If you have questions, topics for discussion or anything else you want to fire at us, please do so on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog using the hashtag #arsecastextra.
That’ll be up for you later on, we’ll have news throughout the day on Arseblog News. Now, I’m going to dress up like a ghost and play some a Howard Jones synth solo.
Until then.
