Monthly Archives: May 2011
Wilshere inspires, Gunners called up and Sevilla offers Denilson a way out
Tomorrow marks the start of a new month where player and staff transfers will be the main activity all over the globe. We the gooners hope that AW will do his business early enough so that the fresh blood will have enough time to gel into the squad before the new season kicks off. In 2009, AW had to wait for the transfer deadline day in February before unveiling Arshavin to the World. In the winter transfer window this season, he acquired the services of a Japanese youngling that has the DNA of Hidetoshi Nakata, Shunsuke Nakamura, Cartoon Networks’ Samurai Jack and Street Fighter’s Ryu. The bloke took the EreDivisie by storm in just 5 months but he may not be eligible to play for the Gunners due to work permit problems so a second spell with the Dutch outfit might be on the cards.
Still sticking to transfer news, Barcelona is back again to launch another futile attempt to bring Arsenal’s captain to their Alien camp. The media Vultures say that a £30m bid is on the cards. For a player like Francesc Fabregas, £30m is preposterous. Even a shitty player like James Flour Mill-ner commanded the same amount and I haven’t even mentioned Andy Carroll yet. We all know that Man City say that they can pay up to £58m for El Capitan but the player has made it clear that if he’s ever going to leave Arsenal this summer, Planet Barcelona will be the only destination. I still hope that Cesc will stay because he’s absolutely vital in Arsenal’s trophy hunt next season. Denilson on the other hand is a player whose departure might be celebrated in some corners of the World. When he was on the pitch, Arsenal won only 33% percent of its games this season. His departure also ensures that a much better holding midfielder would be bought in his stead. We all know that AW is a replacement specialist so let’s keep our fingers crossed as the days go by. Sevilla has come to the Brazilian’s rescue to offer £8m for his services. Denilson cost Arsenal £3.4m from Sao Paulo in 2006 so a fee of £8m may not be the highest in the World but the club pat its back and say that it made over 100% profit from his sale because we all know that Arsenal is all about profits.
Nigeria hosts Argentina in an international friendly tomorrow so a host of international friendlies and qualifiers will take place in the course of the week. Arsenal is one the top sides in World football so it was expected that a considerable chunk of their squad will be called up for international duty. All Gunners that will leave London for their various destinations are 17 in number. They include
Thomas Vermaelen
The Verminator injured his Achilles tendon when he represented his country in September and that injury robbed Arsenal off his services for the season. He’s fully fit again so he’s been invited to captain his nation when they host Turkey on the 3rd of June in a Euro 2012 qualifier.
Theo Walcott, Jack Wilshere and Johan Djourou
After defeating Wales in their last Euro 2012 qualifier, England is now at the top of the food chain in Group G ahead of Montenegro thanks to goal difference. Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere will lock horns against Johan Djourou on the 4th of June in Wembley.
Robin van Persie
Arsenal’s red hot Flying Dutchman will get his chance to continue his amazing goal scoring form when the Oranje travel to South America to take on Brazil on the 4th and Uruguay on the 8th
Aaron Ramsey
Wales 2-0 Northern Ireland, May 27
Wales 1-3 Scotland, May 25
Rambo scored for his country as they beat Northern Ireland 2-0 in the Nations Cup on Friday but came in as a sub when they were beaten by the Scots.
Samir Nasri, Bacary Sagna, Abou Diaby and Gael Clichy
In a squad infested with Frenchies, Laurent Blanc decided to pick only 4 to play qualifiers against Belarus, Ukraine and Poland on the 3rd, 6th and 9th respectively.
Tomas Rosicky
This season will probably go down as Tomas Rosicky’s worst season in the club because he spent countless days injured and wasn’t too impressive when he was on the pitch. His lowest point was the penalty miss against Sunderland while his highest should be his first goal since the Feudal Age against Leyton Orient. He has been invited by his boss to captain his nation when they play Peru on the 4th and Japan on the 9th.
Wojciech Szczesny
Arsenal’s No. 1 will face a true test of his ability on the international scene when Poland hosts Argentina on the 5th before taking on France on the 9th.
Andrei Arshavin
Russia’s little leader will rally his troops when they host Armenia on the 4th in a Euro 2012 qualifier before playing with Cameroon on the 9th.
Nicklas Bendtner
Danish sweetheart Nicklas Bendtner will get another chance to show off his pink boots when they host Iceland in a Scandinavian affair with a place in Euro 2012 finals up for grabs. The game will take place on the 4th.
Marouane Chamakh
Chamakh has been called up to play a Nations Cup qualifier against their neighbours Algeria on the 4th
Farmer Eboue
It’s plant cropping time again in Africa so Farmer Eboue has been called by the Elephants boss to teach his fellow Ivoirians how to plant cocoa in Benin Republic on the 5th.
Kieran Gibbs and Henri Lansbury
European Under-21 Championships, June 11 – June 25
The young duo have been called up to the England squad for next month’s European Under-21s Championships in Denmark. Stuart Pearce’s side begins their campaign on June 12 against Spain in Herning. They then meet Ukraine at the same venue on June 15 and finish their Group B fixtures on June 19 against Czech Republic. Before then, England takes on Norway in a warm-up fixture at St. Mary’s Stadium on June 5.
Jack Andrew Wilshere is the revelation of this concluded season and has earned plaudits for his exploits on the pitch. He may not have the strongest of bodies physically but his mental state can be compared to a father that has 3 kids. His composure with the ball is top notch; his ball control is second to none. He also has an eagle for that killer through ball and he’s never afraid to go into a challenge. There were games he was hacked and scythed to the ground countless times but he simply got up and continued doing his thing but there were other games he lost his cool with the Stoke match a noteworthy game. Wilshere won the PFA Young Player of the Year award because of his consistent performances on the field of play and he also ended up being Arsenal’s and Gooner Daily’s Player of the Season. He has said that it will be a disaster if Arsenal doesn’t secure any trophy of any sort next season. Going without a trophy next season will be meltdown for we the Arsenal faithful.
It would certainly mean that the fans will request for AW’s head on a plate and the board might be under extreme pressure to meet their demands. Wilshere went on to say a lot of inspiring words,
“A hundred per cent it will be a disaster if we don’t win a trophy next season. We know that. The fans feel it. We feel it. We just need to win a trophy. There have been times at halftime when there have been arguments and we’ve come back out and won. We do miss a player like Patrick Vieira. But there are leaders at Arsenal, the experienced players like Robin.
Thomas Vermaelen is back — that’s great. We’ve got Van Persie, Vermaelen, Cesc. We probably need a few more big leaders to help us out. People say Cesc doesn’t look like a captain, but he’s been great for me this season. I hear people say he’s not a good leader, but I think he’s a good leader. On the pitch he is always helping me. Off the pitch he has become a good friend. He’s been over in England eight years, but Barcelona is his home. It’s hard for him so I can understand where he’s coming from but he’s the Arsenal captain and he’s been great this season and we hope he can be great next season. In some of our games he has been our best player by a mile, and we need to keep our best players if we want to win things. He likes Arsenal, and I’m sure he wants to be at Arsenal. If they can reach an agreement then I’m sure he’ll want to stay. He needs to stay.
When things were going well, we were good at that – all together. When it went wrong maybe our heads went a bit and we never got it back. There will be a lot of things going on in the summer to see where it wrong. Not so much keep going on at the ref, but just let them know. You see the players at Man United and they are great at it. They are round the ref.
If nobody watched Arsenal play and saw they finished fourth with no trophies, then everyone would say it’s a bad season but look at some of the games — you don’t beat Barcelona every week. So we can take some positives. We were so close against Birmingham to winning a trophy and then we lost in the last minute. That’s the last thing you want because Koscielny must have felt like I thought, that it was a bit unprofessional to ruffle his hair up. It was the worst way to lose and since then it just seems to have gone wrong. We just need that one trophy and it’s going to change. We said before the Birmingham game that this could change our season if we win it and if we lose it. It changed it for us.
We lost it and we went out the Champions League and it went downhill from there. Wilshere has strong support for Wenger. The manager stuck with me and he gave me that chance and hopefully I’ve repaid him. Because he’s a good manager he wants to protect his players but we have to take responsibility. We need to stay in the top four and push on for a trophy.”
He still had the time to talk about his nation,
“My perfect formation would be 4-3-3 with one holding and then the two going forward. I would be one of the ones going forward – like we played with England against Wales with Scotty Parker holding and me and Frank Lampard. He has great hope for England’s future. Definitely there are players. Josh McEachran is a great player. I hope next year he can break into the England team, like I did this year. Theo Walcott’s maturing really well. People were saying he didn’t really find the final ball but this year he has been brilliant for us. He’s popped up with some goals.
There’s Jack Rodwell, Adam Johnson, younger players like John Bostock who haven’t really had their chance yet. In the England team, there’s Ashley Young, Theo, Andy Carroll, Adam Johnson, me. There are a lot of good young English players coming through, maybe a bit like the Spanish players. Obviously I look at the Spanish and want to play like them because they’re the best in the world and won the World Cup. That style of football is the way I like to play.
There are English players like Joe Cole and Ashley Young who can play that way.”
These are certainly the words of a man that has what it takes to lead Arsenal and England in the near future. Fabio Hitler has even confirmed it himself that Wilshere has a very bright future. Jack Wilshere has been likened to Paul Gascoigne, Liam Brady and Paul Scholes.
Speaking of St. Paulinus of Manchester, the veteran has decided to call it quits with football to end an illustrious career that saw him win a shitload of trophies under Sir Alex Chewie. Neville and van der Save did it before him but his retirement will definitely be a great loss to football but I can’t recall many central midfielders that had the attributes of Scholes all at once. A central midfielder whose through passes where like hot knife through butter, shots like a battering ram and the aggression of a raging bull that’s about to fight it out with a matador. Paul Scholes will surely be missed not just by Man Utd fans but by neutral football lovers. I heard that he’ll be given a coaching role at the club in appreciation for his years of service.
In the Arsenal news, I urge to check out this Arsenal season review by Sounak Mukharjee. I really loved the way he categorized the article. He started with the season targets set by the club before writing about the goalies, defenders, midfielders and the strikers. He also wrote about the highs and lows of the season. Trust me, it’s worth a read.
I would also like you to check out Omar Almasri’s Arsenal blog called O Posts. He has been writing about and giving in-depth info of Arsenal’s transfer targets.
The tweet of the day goes to Mayorbaze,
“@Mayorbaze: Not a bad way 2 start the exodus but I would have loved to see Almunia topping that list. I don’t mind if we pay the interested club to get Almunia”
Come to think of it, no one is talking about our loyal SpanEnglish goalie.
Here’s to Jack Wilshere.
A rare gem at Arsenal Football Club.
Sayonara
Vela blocked, youngsters released and F.I.F.A.
Arsenal as a footballing body is a branch of a tree called the English FA and the FA is also a branch of UEFA. The general tree that covers them all is that organization that was formed in 1904, FIFA. If Blatter decides tomorrow that all goalies in the game must wear pink, there’s nothing that Wojciech Szczesny can do about it even if he has tweeted that he hates the jersey colour.
Sepp Blatter became the boss of football’s governing body on the 8th of June, 1998 but one of my fondest memories as a kid was watching the first game of the World Cup between Brazil and Scotland on my birthday on the 10th of June, 1998. Cesar Sampaio scored a brace in that game but Arsenal legend Emmanuel Petit scored the final goal that won France the cup. 4 years later, the cup was co-hosted for the first time in Japan and Korea but my memories of my country in that tourney are not fond at all. Nike were the first to create a disaster by releasing a lemon green jersey that had a horrible view under the Sun. Nigeria didn’t even help matters by finishing at the bottom in a group that contained Argentina, England and Sweden. The star of the tourney was Ronaldo but Oliver Ganges Kahn surprised everyone by being the first goalie to make it into the World’s top 3.
In 2006, my country missed out but the highlight of the tournament involved Materazzi and the Pope of football, Zinedine Zidane. Last summer, the World Cup came to Africa for the first time and Nigeria messed up again by losing out in a group that contained Argentina, Korea and the modern day Spartans. The Aliens from Planet Barcelona infested the Spanish National team and used their mutant powers to win the tourney. Before the World Cup was played, we were told that the next edition was to be hosted in Brazil and I plan to visit the country for the tourney whether Nigeria qualifies or not.
In recent times, there have been dark clouds shrouding FIFA over claims of bribery and corruption. We all know that David Beckham, David Cameron and a host of others were the ambassadors for England’s World Cup 2018 bid but they lost out to Arshavin’s Motherland Russia. I really loved the catch phrase the English chums used,
“England United….The World Invited”
The 2022 World Cup was to be hosted outside Europe thereby making countries like America, Australia and Qatar to make bids for hosting rights. Qatar won the bid to host the tourney in their hot land but claims are now emerging that Asian Football Confederation’s president Mohammed Bin Hammam literally bought the tournament for Qatar. He has denied these reports but he has been banned from participating in any footballing activity pending further investigation of the case. This now means that Mr. Blatter will be unopposed in the forthcoming election that is supposed to take place next month. Another FIFA figurehead that has come under the spotlight for the wrong reason is CONCACAF’s president Jack Warner. Jack Warner has also been suspended over allegations of corruption filed against him.
There are emerging tales that Warner and Bin Hammam paid up to $40,000 to Carribean officials for votes in the forthcoming presidential elections. I watched an interview on Warner in EuroSport News so I was able to get a few words from the boss of football in North America.
Warner says,
“I’ve said this before; you haven’t seen anything yet because at the end of the day, Blatter must be stopped and if he believes that he has Blazer as his ally. The same Blazer that has charged me has never spoken to me, never called up an executive council meeting, never called up a meeting of the emergency committee. Blazer is an employee and I’ve never seen any documents yet. The accuser is questioning me with nothing”
UEFA chief, Platini was also asked a few questions about what he feels about the turn of events in World football’s governing body and he says that it will be a massive blow for football if the allegations are true. Platini has made some reforms in his own European football governing body which include adding 2 extra referees on each line to prevent goal line errors, giving England and Spain 3 automatic Champions League group stage slots because of their outstanding performance in the tourney and changing the previously mediocre UEFA Cup to the more exciting Europa League.
I don’t know why all these things are happening to our beautiful game but I sincerely hope that they get their acts right and sort every issue because the ramifications won’t be nice.
To the Arsenal side of life, 4 youngsters have become free agents because AW decided that they were surplus to requirements at the club. I’ve seen 2 of these youngsters play before while I’ve seen the other 2 in Football Manager. Mark Randall is the most prominent name in the list of players has been given the boot by Arsenal. The 21-year old bloke that was born in Milton Keynes joined Arsenal in 2005 but I doubt if he has made up to 5 appearances for the club. While at Arsenal, he has made loan appearances for Burnley (2007/08), MK Dons (2009/10) and Doncaster (this season). The only game I could remember watching Randall was in that Carling Spoon defeat to Burnley in 2008 in a game that’ll be remembered for Bendtner’s profligacy. Good luck to the youngling as he searches for a new club. I’m pretty sure that he’ll fit into a npower Championship side because he has Championship experience.
The second name in that list shares the same name with the Hollywood actor that starred in Mission Impossible and The Last Samurai, Thomas Cruise. The youngling didn’t make any senior league appearance for Arsenal but played his only Arsenal game I can remember when the Gunners visited Georgios Karaiskakis to play Olympiakos in the Champions League group stages. Youngster Kyle Bartley also made his first appearance in that game but he’ll still be an Arsenal player. The other 2 players that make up the list are Roarie Deacon and George Brislen-Hall. I have no idea how those blokes look like but I know that Deacon is a chocolate skinned bloke because I manage my Reserves in Football Manager 2011. Good luck to them all as they ply their trade with new employers in the near future.
Carlos Alberto Garrido Vela is one of the most cultured strikers you’ll ever see. He has a very sweet left foot that’s skilled in the art of chipping goalies. Since his move from Chivas Guadalajara in 2005, he hasn’t played much due to work permit issues so he was loaned to clubs in Spain to get some games under his belt. He finally got his chance to play for his club almost 4 years after he was bought and he gave the Gunners a night to savour in the 6-0 win against Sheffield United where he sealed a hattrick. Last season, he featured in the Carling Spoon and played a lot of games on the left hand side because of AW’s new 4-2-3-1 formation and hasn’t been too impressive there. This season he has made few sub appearances and scored 3 goals but as time went on his chances of playing for Arsenal reduced from slim to none thereby making AW to hand him a temporary switch to West Brom where he has impressed. As expected, West Brom came to Arsenal for an enquiry but AW has told them that the young Aztec Warrior will be part of his plans next season.
This summer all attention will be turned to International football but every player in Arsenal’s squad will go home and watch the games from their plasma screens because the 2 tourneys being played won’t be of any importance to them. Wilshere would’ve been involved in the Under-21 tournament that takes place in Denmark but he has been withdrawn. The other tourney that will be played this summer is the Copa America 2011 that will be played in Argentina. As a Hispanic side Mexico is eligible for the tourney but AW has told the Mexican FA that Vela won’t feature for them in the tournament because he wants the young Aztec Warrior to go through the preseason with the rest of the other blokes in the squad.
In other news, Swansea has entered the record books as being the first Welsh team to play in the Premier League. A hattrick by former Chelsea reject and speed merchant Scott Sinclair helped them in their surge. Phil Dowd also awarded them 2 penalties but this time they were well deserved unlike the horror outing he put up at St. James Park in February.
That’s all for today.
Since we’re in the offseason break, Gooner Daily would appreciate any guest writer that would like to share a thing on two with the Arsenal World through the blog so if you’re interested with sharing your article, click on my contact page to see how you’ll be able to get to me. I’ll appreciate it if the articles will be sent through email.
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The sentence of the day comes from Arseblogger,
“Arseblogger: Have you ever noticed how many of our players can accommodate the arse? In their name I mean……..Cesc fabregarse, Andrei Arseshavin, Thomarse Vermaelen, Bacary Sagnarse, Nicklarse Bendtnarse, Lukarse Fabianksi, Emmanuel Eboue…..No, wait, he is an Arse”
This was published in his post on the 26th but I just wanted to share it with the Arsenal fans.
A club that’s managed by Arsene Wenger.
Sayonara
Song talks about mentality and a quick focus on the birthday boy: Andrey Arshavin
As a proud Nigerian, the Premier League is more or less the most viewed league in the country so the football fans of this country have divided themselves into 4 main fan zones which involve the top 3 clubs that wear Red and the final fan zone being that Blue wearing team from West London. With Liverpool’s trophyless inactivity in recent years, the English Premier League fandom has been divided into Chelsea, Man Utd and of course the Arsenal.
Yesterday, Man Utd had the chance to be crowned as Champions of Europe for the 4th time but they came up against a side that’s infested with aliens from other galaxies. That diving nitwit called Dani Alves has a head that’s shaped like Saturn without the rings on, David ‘son’ of Villa shoots more balls than the amount of Sun rays that hit the Ozone Layer, Xavi and Iniesta were put in the same spaceship with Superman when Krypton was about to go into oblivion and Lionel Messi is the supreme ruler of his own planet. He came on a personal mission to invade Earth and his invasion plans are working well because he’s literally worshipped in some sections of the Earth.
The champions of England played the champions of Spain yesterday night but it was a one way contest from start to finish. As expected Man Utd’s Korean superstar Wong Fei-Hong worked his skins off but it wasn’t enough because old hags like Hugh Giggs Hefner couldn’t keep up with the pace of Barcelona. Rooney’s goal was beautiful but Villa’s match winner was the kind of goal you’ll score in Pro Evolution Soccer when you press the ‘R2’ button after taking the shot.
I hate Barcelona for unsettling Fabregas, funding Busacca to give rVp the softest of red cards and their long list of players that can’t shut up but I hate Man Utd more so I was happy with the end result because if United had won yesterday’s match, Twitter would have been forced to extend their 140 character limit because Man Utd fans over my timeline went haywire when Rooney equalized for them. I don’t even want to write about how my Man Utd contacts on BlackBerry Messenger were acting up.
I’ll give you a few quotes from the beaten finalists,
Rio Ferdy says,
“At 1-1 we genuinely thought we could win the game. But we got hit with a bit of a sucker punch. A couple of their goals were preventable, but you’ve got to give credit when it’s due. We had a gameplan today that we thought could beat them. Tonight, it just wasn’t to be.”
Vidic the Terrible says,
“When you come to the final, you want to win. We didn’t win today, but we have to say tonight that Barcelona played some good football. They had more chances than we did. And they were better than us tonight.”
And Edwin van der Save says,
We made one or two mistakes, and they punish you. It was one game too many for us I think. It’s not nice to lose of course but they had the better chances. I don’t know if I could have prevented Leo Messi’s goal. I thought I positioned myself well but David Villa was blocking my sight. Messi tends to curl it to the far post and he just clipped it around Villa. They are very good. We started well in the first 15 minutes, same as we did in Rome, and you just have to try and score the first goal but we didn’t do that It’s not always given that your career ends on a good note but I thank everybody for the memories and we’ll see each other again.”
You can’t deny that Barcelona is the greatest team in this era but I’m proud to say that they met their demise at the Emirates even after scoring first. That’s one game, I can tell my kids about in the near future.
To Arsenal news, I’ll start with Aaron Ramsey. After spending a shitload of time out injured thanks to that dimwitted Rugby oaf called Shawcross, he did very well to come back and get unto the pitch to gain match fitness. Nottingham Forest and Cardiff where the teams that offered to give Ramsey the match fitness he needed but there was still time for him to feature at this parent club Arsenal this season. Things went from good to better for the youngling when new Welsh boss Gary Speed awarded him with the biggest individual honor a footballer playing for his national team can have, the captaincy. Ramsey was also the person that put a little dent in Man Utd’s title bid even if they still ended up as champions. Ramsey has urged AW to splash the cash this summer to bring it that much needed quality that has been lacking in certain areas of the pitch. I know that spending £∞m on a certain player is no true guarantee for a trophy but it’ll go a long way because Arsenal FC is a club whose players get injured mysteriously. Take this season for instance, Eboue’s knee against Braga in the Champions League, rVp’s knee against Birmingham in the Carling Spoon final and Djourou’s shoulder against Man Utd in the FA Cup. These were injuries that were supposed to make them stay out for all eternity but they made amazing comebacks. On the other hand, Fabregas’ hammy was supposed to keep him out for a few weeks but it changed to a few extra weeks. Vermaelen’s Achilles tendon was a different story on its own.
I don’t need AW to buy every player that’s linked to us but I want him to get us a center back, a holding midfielder and a winger. I’ll keep you updated as more transfer stories unfold.
Rambo celebrating his goal against United
Alex Song grew from strength to strength this season with more consistent performances for Arsenal this season. Even though his new hair-do seems like a fashion disaster to me, his exploits on the pitch has gone a long way to impress his ever growing fans. He even improved his game massively by adding goals to the equation. Out of the 5 he scored this season, the match winner against West Ham still stands out as one of my personal favorites because I was scared that it was going to be one of those Arsenal games that we’ll press and probe but nothing will come out of it. We still had such games last season with Sunderland and Blackburn the most notable. If someone told me that we were going to draw those games at the Emirates I would have laughed the person off but they actually happened. The principle attribute that was the major factor why Arsenal couldn’t convert 1 point to 3 was the issue of the team’s weak mentality. There were many games Arsenal left me with tears and agony. When you needed them to give that extra 110% they were found wanting.
At the start of the year, Arsenal was the only team in the Premier League that was gunning for all four trophies football as a sport had to offer. There’s one adage that I read in Emirates View Point and it has been in my head forever,
“If you haven’t had your first cigarette, you can never be addicted to smoking”
In the present crop of players under AW’s disposal, only a meager amount of 5 players know what it feels like to stand on that podium with all your fans screaming in elation. Fabregas, Clichy, rVp and Almunia won the FA Cup in 2005 while Squillaci has a long list of trophy hauls he won in his days at France and Spain. The others just read about them in books or re-live them in their dreams. This is not the time to point fingers at player A or player B because the season reminds me of T.I.’s hit track, dead and gone. Song has come out to say that we need to change our mental approach next season if we want to break that trophy duck. It’s also pleasing to know that these words are coming out from a player like Song because the fans can attest to his approach play this season. He was never afraid to make that tackle and get that yellow card as long as the opposition play has been stopped. Even after being booked, Song was still there to make more tackles and stop play. He crossed the line when we played Sunderland at the Stadium of Light but I felt that the booking was soft though. The only players that played in the same wavelength with Song to me all season long where Szczesny, Sagna, Wilshere and rVp. There were other players that played in the mold but they didn’t maintain it all season long.
Mentality isn’t something you can just teach in a class. It’s something that the individual will have to improve by himself. Next season starts in August so we’ll have to wait and see if Song and the other ‘high mentality’ blokes can rub off their influence on the rest of the squad.
Song in action
There’s a Gunner that turned 30 today. He was born in the city of St. Petersburg. I still prefer the city when it was called Leningrad. This gunner started his career in Zenit St. Petersburg when he was 18 and played stayed in the club for almost a decade achieving legendary status there before being snapped by Arsenal for £15m in the winter of 2009 on the very last day of that transfer window. This gunner made over 300 appearances for his former employers and was instrumental in their league win in 2007. He also gave the 2 assists that were needed to sink Rangers in the 2008 UEFA Cup final. In the same year, he dazzled Man Utd in the UEFA Super Cup to win the trophy for his Russian side. On the international scene, he helped his country to win the bronze medal in the last European Championships that took place in Switzerland and Austria in 2008. He was very distraught when his country missed out of the 2010 World Cup but he played a major role in his country’s bid to win the hosting rights for the 2018 World Cup even though he won’t be among the 23 men that will represent his country.
In his first season at Arsenal, he took the Premier League by storm with his account opener being at the hands of Arsenal’s goal scoring maiden, Paul Robinson. His highest point in his Arsenal career was the incredible 4-goal affair he had at Anfield in the spring of 2009. The first was from a Fabregas pass after some good work by Nasri, he worked the 2nd himself after some poor Liverpool defending, his hattrick was gifted to him on a platter thanks to more atrocious defending from Liverpool and his 4th came from a brilliant counter attack that was started by Walcott. His first full season with Arsenal was last season and he came up with the goods scoring 10 league goals in 30 appearances but he got injured when Arsenal played Barca in that 2-2 draw at the Emirates. This season he hasn’t been that little magician we all felt he could be but he still did well enough to score 10 goals and lay on a lion’s share of assists for his teammates.
With all the summer shenanigans about player departures going on, he has relieved me and other Arsenal fans by saying he’ll be at Arsenal next season.
Happy Birthday Andrey Arshavin.
I hope that you’ll quell your own personal inconsistent demons with better performances next season.
The tweet of the day goes to @jimthegooner
“@jimthegooner: Retweet if your team has beaten Barcelona this season”
I guess that we are the only fans that can retweet on that tweet. Except you’re a fan of Hercules CF
That’s a wrap folks.
Sayonara
