december 16th
09.01 – Well, despite the press in England building up our own TH14 as favourite, it wasn’t really any surprise to see Zinedine Zidane win FIFA World Player of the Year yesterday. Thierry finished second, with Ronaldo in third place. Arsene Wenger was quick to praise Henry’s achievement of getting into the top three, and you feel he’ll have other chances to win it. Helping Arsenal to progress in the Champions League this season will certainly help raise his profile in the far-flung countries where the likes of Oliver Kahn got the number one vote.
And with stories of Chelsea offering mega-bucks, Madrid looking for the next Galactico and even poor old Barcelona talking about signing him, Henry said this. “As long as people are happy with me at Arsenal I want to stay there. Arsenal gave me a hand when I was down and if I am among the last three players alongside Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane for the FIFA World Football Player of the Year award, it is thanks to them. I want to feel priceless for them and them to be proud of me.”
An absolute legend. This boy is going to go down in the history books as probably Arsenal’s greatest ever player. He loves Arsenal, we love him and he just happens to be the best player in the world right now, no matter who the coach of Chad gave his vote to.
I think a few people expected Zidane to come out with the ‘Come join me at Real Madrid’ stuff with respect to Henry, but our boy stuffs ’em once again. He says “It would be a dream to play with them both. But my ambition is to win the Champions League — with Arsenal.”
I have to take a moment to say goodbye to boring-boring arsenal. The esteemed webmaster, Mr Richard Head (seriously) has called it quits coz it takes up too much of his time and money (imagine). The last straw for him was a request from the FA people to pay £258+VAT for the right to publish the Arsenal fixtures for this season. Anyway, good luck to him. That’s one less Arsenal site now, just need to knock off Rupe and Chris and mumble mumble mumble.
More Carling Cup action tonight as our super kids take on West Brom, away from home. I’m sure playing at Highbury has given them a bit of help in the last two rounds, so it’ll be interesting to see how they go away from home. Expect a few more first teamers than the last couple of rounds, but we should still see Aliadiere, Cesc, Bentley, Clichy and others. Lauren could make a comeback at right back and Martin Keown should bring some experience to the centre of the defence. It is live on Sky tonight, so those of us unable to get to Highbury for the last two games will get a chance to see these exciting young players. Those of us who don’t have to work, of course.
Only 8 shopping days left till Christmas, assuming the shops are open every day. Which they probably are. So far I’ve done 0% of my shopping. I’m hoping to make that 5% by this evening. Slowly, slowly.
