At Arseblog we’re not big fans of Raymond Domenech. Firstly there was his reluctance to pick Le Bob for the World Cup preferring that Johnny Average Malouda, or whatever his name was. I can exclusively reveal that Pires would have scored the winning goal against Italy in the final.
Then there’s his complete unwillingness to communicate with managers of the team whose players he kidnaps on a regular basis to play for France. And it’s not just the managers. Claude Ukelele told him he was retiring about 50 times but somehow he didn’t manage to hear him.
Now he has annoyed Arsene Wenger by playing Thierry Henry and William Gallas for 90 minutes in midweek whilst only playing Evra, Saha, Makelele and other Premiership players for just 45. The boss was reportedly furious and confronted Domenech. Learning the lessons from the Pardew incident Wenger waited until the French manager emerged from the gents then karate chopped him the bollocks and stood on his neck saying “How do you like that then, you cunt? Yeah, not so fucking brave now are you? No Ferguson or Mourinho to back you up now, eh? Do it again and you’re a dead man, you hear? A facking dead man!”*
I can understand his frustration and the arrogance and disrespect from a man who will never even have the manners to explain why he does what he does must be infuriating. No doubt he’ll have something to say about it during today’s press conference so it could be interesting.
Ahead of the Newcastle game tomorrow we’re without Gilberto who has had to go back to Brazil with family matters. Hopefully everything will be all right for him. However, we will have Jens Lehmann and Freddie Ljungberg back despite the latter’s battle this week with some evil cheese.
Also back is Julio Baptista who should get a place on the bench at least and it’s good to see him return to the squad. I think with everyone fit we’ve got some good strength in depth and that’s going to be important in the coming months. We’ll hear what Arsene has to say about him later.
Now, the sad news. There is no Arsecast today, my apologies for that. There will be one next Friday and I’ll announce the winners of the classicfootballshirts.co.uk poster competition then. There were some technical problems but mostly some time problems – also, Arsene Wenger Hawkins was away on a sexy cruise this week and I couldn’t get hold of him. If you fancy a quick bet of the week bluesq.com have Kolo or Gallas to score at any time during tomorrow’s game at 4-1.
I believe there will be an influx of Americans tomorrow. Some of Arseblog’s stateside crew are making the trip. Hope you all have a good time, don’t drink too much (you know what happens!) and enjoy the new stadium.
More tomorrow.
* may not have happened exactly like this
