Morning all,
as expected Arsene did a lot of talking yesterday and then told everyone to shut up. Kind of. The final pre-game press conference of the season saw him quizzed about Real Madrid, Emmanuel Adebayor, the shareholders meeting and more.
As expected he played the Madrid questions with a straight bat, never confirming or denying anything but rightly saying nobody could question his commitment to Arsenal Football Club. So that’s that dead and buried.
Then talking about the tempestuous shareholders meeting he said:
I was disappointed because I believe especially the shareholders cannot complain. You look at the share price when I arrived and the share price now. You check in October 1996 it must have been around £400 and now it is £10,000. Some would say between eight and 10. But it means that the Club has moved forward and not gone back.
Delivering a Batman style ‘kapow’ to those. On people complaining and giving out, he said:
There are two things in our job. Criticism I accept with respect. Disrespect I don’t accept and don’t respect.
And how can you argue with that? Anybody is entitled to criticise but as I said earlier in the week it’s the manner of delivery that’s important. Arsene was upset at the disrespect shown to Sylvester who is, like it or not, one of his players. He would defend any of them the same way, has consistently done so and will continue to do so. Even Gimpy Horace, the one-legged, half-blind, club-footed, partially deaf midget we’re going to buy from Cannes this summer.
He then spoke about Emmanuel Adebayor and he was really less than convincing about his future. When asked if he would be staying with Arsenal, he said:
Yeeees, but that depends as well …. *big pause* …. it’s very difficult to go into any individual assessment with that. The only thing I can say is Adebayor is under contract and is with us and that’s it.
He then said Adebayor would not be in the team for Sunday which is as good an indication as any of where his future lies. I don’t think any of us buy the ‘groin injury’ story, I’m told he’s not receiving any medical treatment, so it looks like it’s curtains for Adebayor. Filthy horrible net curtains too. Bleurgh.
Of course he was also asked about spending this summer and he said:
Yes, we have one or two targets. We are analysing every position, the potential of the players we have. We have a team that is on the way up, we have to take that into consideration.
And on money available to him, he said:
I don’t complain about the money I have and I am not afraid to spend the money when I find it. Do people really think I have £100million but keep it in the bank because I am scared to spend it?
You’ll get more in-depth quotes from the official site and various stories on it. Again I do recommend the TV online thing because you get a much better sense of what he says when you watch the whole thing. If he hadn’t been a football manager there’s no doubt in my mind he’d have been a masterful politician.
Anyway, on to other things and the youngsters did us proud last night in the 1st leg of the FA Youth Cup final at the Grove. They hammered Liverpool 4-1 in front of a crowd of more than 33,000. Fantastic support. The goals came from Gilles Sunu, Jack Wilshere (pen), Dirty Sanchez Watt and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas (see them at 101greatgoals).
The second leg takes place on Tuesday night, May 26th, at Anfield, which just happens to be the 20th anniversary of Arsenal’s famous league win there. No doubt Steve Bould will make sure his lads don’t lose the run of themselves just yet but that’s a nice lead to be taking with them. Well done, boys.
Not much else happening. We could talk about the comments made by Alex Hleb but if that’s the best he can come up with, having had all season sitting on the bench to think, then there’s not much point. Have yourselves a good Saturday, more tomorrow.
