Gah, I am tired this morning. Stupid neighbours with their stupid alarm going off all night while they’re on stupid holidays.
The top story involves the boss and it seems he’s set to sign a three year deal. According to Chairman P-lo:
Hopefully we’ll have something to say in the next week or so. The length of the contract is up to him but hopefully it will be a two or three-year deal. We certainly want to pay him what he’s worth. But money is not the major stumbling block – there are just little pieces here and there to sort out.
So there you go. I suppose until we get proper confirmation it’s still up in the air but hopefully everything can be sorted quickly – at least before another round of ‘Arsenal in crisis – Wenger to leave – Ashburton Grove built with balsa wood’ stories.
The next biggest story is one involving a Honduran winger called Wilson Palacios. As uncovered by Gunnerblog it seems the player is on trial with us and the noises coming from his club and his father are that he’s likely to stay with us in a deal worth in the region of £2m. However, we do trial players all the time and the fact that the story is out in the open could be a way of raising the player’s profile and securing him a move to a decent European club on the back of Arsenal’s interest. While he does seem like a typical Wenger signing – e.g nobody has ever heard of the fucker – he’s hardly playing in a decent league, doesn’t have much of a goalscoring record for his club and I have no idea if he plays for the national team. If he doesn’t the chances of signing him are very slim due to work permit regulations. Colour me totally indifferent to this one.
Back to Arsene now and he says he might not appoint a ‘director of football’ as Ken Friar is doing such a good job when it comes to transfers and stuff. Now, Friar is a tough negotiator but he can hardly be rushed off his feet at the moment, can he? I mean, I could quite easily be Arsene’s transfer person. All you do is stick an ad in the Buy and Sell, get the best offer for a couple of your more established players, then sit around eating sandwiches for the rest of the summer.
He also talks about how the pre-season criticism of the team and how we were being written off has spurred the team on. Urgh. What a horrible word. It has made the team more determined, or something. That’s better. It’s one of those stories where Arsene says a lot of words but they take repeated reading to make total sense of. You have a go here if you like. My brain is too addled.
Gael Clichy is proud of the change in Arsenal’s spirit, which begs questions about why it has changed so much and is it down to the departure of one or two from the squad, while Gilberto denies there’s a lack of ambition at the club. You can read a full interview with him here.
And that’s really all there is to it. There are no reports of injuries to any of our players who were on international duty last night. I saw Bendtner play the full game against Ireland – he hit the bar and the post with headers – while Jens was in action for Germany as they beat England 2-1 at Wembley. While the focus will be on Paul Robinson’s mistakes reports suggest Jens was guilty of at least one very dodgy moment so quite how the manager views that in terms of this Saturday remains to be seen.
We’ll get more info and team news in tomorrow’s press conference so we’ll just wait and see. Now, I’m going to set next door’s house on fire to stop the alarm going off.
See you in 18 months or so.
