Morning all,
we’ll start with the Sun’s story about how we are interested in Gareth Barry. They ran a story last week saying we might be trying to nick the Villa man from under the noses of Liverpool but it seemed more like the kind of story planted by Barry’s people to get Liverpool to finalise the deal. However, the Sun quotes Martin O’Neill, who says:
Myself and Steve Walford both know Arsene Wenger’s assistant Pat Rice. He phoned Steve to ask how the Liverpool thing had gone and said that they might show an interest. At the end of the conversation Arsenal said ‘that’s fine’ and that they’ll let us know. That is exactly what happened
So it’s hardly earth shattering. We rang Villa and said we ‘might’ show an interest. I don’t know if he means we rang and let them know at the end but it is at least a tentative link to a midfield player. Depending entirely on the price this could be a decent move – Barry needs no time to adapt to English football, what with being English and all, but if Villa are holding out for £18m from Liverpool then that’s probably put him out of our price range. The over-inflated prices of English players never ceases to amaze me though – £17m for David Bentley would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressingly stupid.
Despite apparently playing down talks of a transfer Blackburn’s Roque Santa Cruz has apparently told Paul Ince he wants to leave caand Arsenal are one of the potential destinations. I suppose this all depends on what happens with Adebayor. A quick search of the Spanish press shows no indication that anything new is happening on that front. Nor Hleb. The papers usually have pictures of the players when they arrive at the airport but there’s no sign of Dribbly McNoscore over there yet. Sport suggests that Arsene Wenger is determined not to make life easy for Barcelona with regards Adebayor but it’s really just the same old crap recycled.
I wonder has Adebayor come back to London for pre-season training. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have. Conspiracy theorists amongst you have emailed saying he’s been taken out of promotional literature, the shop won’t print his shirt unless you specifically ask for it etc. Me, I just want life to be as awkward as possible for him which is as much as he deserves for shooting his big, fat mouth off.
Meanwhile, the agent of Andrei Arshavin is getting itchy-feet. Having seen Zenit rubbish his claims that a £19m bid from an English club had been made he’s doing his best to talk up Arsenal’s interest, saying his client, who dreamt of Barcelona and only Barcelona, would really enjoy it at the Grove. It really does smack of desperation now and his dreams of a big pay day securing a great deal for his client are ebbing away.
Carlos Vela is looking forward to getting his Arsenal career going and playing with Cesc Fabregas. He says:
Spain was a just winner of Euro 2008 and Cesc Fabregas was sensational. For me he is my idol and it will be a great experience to work next to him in the squad. I hope he will help me in the first months. I want to be a warrior for The Gunners.
Awesome. I want him to be a warrior too, taking to the pitch in traditional Aztec garb and spearing opponents through the eye just because they look at him funny. Seriously though I’m really looking forward to seeing this young man in the red and little bit of white of Arsenal this season. It strikes me that we are building quite an array of talent for our wings/striking positions. Wenger has said that he sees Vela as a striker more than a winger so it’ll be interesting to see where he gets played in pre-season. Will he do like Walcott and blood him on the flanks (sounds a bit pervy that, actually) or throw him in at the deep end, so to speak? We’ll see. Only 4 days until the first pre-season game. Sweeeeet.
Danny Fiszman has defended the increase in price in season tickets. The cost of everything is going up these days so it’s inevitable that football will follow.
And that is about that. Till tomorrow, arsefans.
