Blog Archives
Van Persie wants reinforcements and Arsenal books a date with Olympique Borrupiakos
At 11.59pm yesterday, I was still convinced that there was still time left in the transfer window but as soon as my clock’s pendulum hit the 12.00am mark, I realized that Arsene Wenger has only FIVE days left to bring the much needed quality that is still lacking at Arsenal Football Club.
I’m pretty sure that Wenger has a certain starting XI in mind and he doesn’t want to dent the learning curve of Ramsey, Koscielny, Wilshere among others but he has to delve into the transfer market because Arsenal is a squad that have players that are susceptible to injuries.
Gibbs seemed okay when Arsenal played Newcastle in the club’s Premier League curtain raiser but at the stroke of halftime, everybody learnt that he had done his hammy. Koscielny was meant to be Vermaelen’s partner in crime this season but after 30 minutes of play against Liverpool, he kicked the ball away and held his waist like a woman that’s going into labor.
These early season injuries should have sent a spark to Wenger’s head to let him know that if he truly wants to end the trophy drought, he needs to add a quality player or two quality players.
Vermaelen is also adept as a left back and is more than capable enough to play when Gibbs gets injured so Wenger has to purchase a center back that will be able to play with Koscielny or Djourou as the case may be.
Alex Song is Arsenal’s No. 1 defensive midfielder and Emmanuel Frimpong has shown signs of progress but his inexperience will definitely take its toll on him in the course of the season. We all witnessed what happened at the Emirates when Liverpool came around. Alex Song would have been intelligent enough to know that he has been booked earlier on so there’ll be no need for any reckless challenge so as not to incur the referee’s wrath.
Song will leave Arsenal for the best part of one month when he represents Cameroon in the 2012 African Cup of Nations that’s taking place in Gabon and Equitorial Guinea so it’s a priority for Wenger to buy another holding midfielder that will be a good cover-up for Song because I can’t lay all my eggs in Frimpong’s basket at the moment.
Finally, Arsenal Football Club needs a striker that can deputize for Robin van Persie when his glass bones decide to give up on him. Carlos Vela has gone back to Spain on loan while Nicklas Bendtner has been sitting on the bench with his eyes firmly fixed at the exit door. Chamakh is all that Arsenal has and he hasn’t proved his mettle this season but Wenger is still hoping that he’ll come good.
It would be a pity if Nicklas Bendtner does not find a club within these five days because he now looks like a deserted figure at the Emirates. A young striker that showed so much promise decided to open his chewing-gum occupied mouth to tell the world that he deserves to play every week in a top club like Arsenal.
If he was backing this up with goals and Man of the Match performances, I would’ve nodded my head like an Agama Lizard in support of him. He scores when he feels like and misses when we need him the most. If he fired that shot from Wilshere’s pass, it would have gone anywhere and the last time I checked, the net can be classified as anywhere or somewhere in the field of play.
Not withstanding, Arsene Wenger needs to get it right with the few days he has left. No more fabled tales of not finding the right player because no matter how many goals you score in a game, you’ll still go home with 3 points.
Arsenal’s skipper rVp met Wenger earlier on about the possibility of making signings but the media Vultures reported that Wenger told his new captain that he’s happy with his squad. However, Robin van Persie has come out to tell the media Vultures that strengthening is vital:
“It is vital for Arsenal, we lost Fabregas and Na$ri which is hard for us because those are two great players.
To come up with that performance in the second half is special. If you look at the team, people questioned our mental strength but we showed loads of that.
It was Jenkinson’s best game, we played very well, Szczesny was on fire and he saved almost everything.
Frimpong is doing well. I’m happy that we are in so let’s go from there.”
With Nasregas now a forgotten phrase, the next big thing in Arsenal is Robin van Persie so if he wants his boss to buy a player or two, Wenger has to heed to him even if it means signing another quality striker that can put his place under threat.
The media Vultures continued doing what they do best by linking Arsenal with potential arrivals and with little or no news of the departures because the usual suspects are all gone.
I’ll start with the most hilarious of them all. I usually generalize the English Press and journalists alike as the media Vultures but I’m going to point out the faction of the lot that came up with this funny tale. The Mirror reported yesterday night that Arsenal made a meager £6m bid for Bolton’s Gary Cahill.
Bolton’s boss Owen Coyle has been in a standoff from June and has slammed a £17m price tag on the player’s head so a £6m bid would be regarded as an insult to Bolton and Cahill. It reminded me of how Arsenal felt when Barcelona brought the initial £26m or so for Fabregas.
After reading this tweet, I felt that there was a little bit of sense in it so I decided to share it:
“@Jimmy_Chilides: The bid for Cahill was missing the 1 when he sent it over,Wenger wanted to bid £16mill not £6mill but apparently there was a miss type LOOL!”
Everyone was informed that Wenger was lining up a £16m bid so I’m in the opinion that it was an error from The Mirror but if it’s true……
The media Vultures also reported that Arsenal is after a bloke from Sochaux called Kevin Anin. The last Sochaux player Arsenal was linked with was the tall and technical Marvin Martin but his stories have died down faster than the way it took Ledley King to score that goal against Bradford City in 2000.
Kevin Anin was also linked to Arsenal’s fierce rivals, Tottenham and there are tales surfacing that he skipped training at the club to force a move out. That’s not the type of player I would like to see wearing the Red and White. You can afford to be rough as a player but football managers in general do not tolerate indiscipline.
See what happened to that GhanItalian Mohican, Mario Balogoat that said that he didn’t know who Jack Wilshere was. After all his on the pitch and dart-throwing off pitch shenanigans, he spends a lot of time wearing a hood at the bench. That’s what indiscipline can do to a player’s career.
They’ve also reported that Valencia and Malaga are closing in on Arsenal’s target Mikel Arteta. Valencia is a club that has £26m to spend after the sale of Mata to Chelsea and Malaga is a club that has the money to buy 10 Matas so if Arsenal messes up with their proposed hunt for Arteta, these clubs will snap him up.
Arteta is an accomplish player that hasn’t really gotten the chance to wear the Red of the Spanish national team so he might be in the opinion that a move back home would help his cause but a move to Arsenal would be a brilliant bargain by Wenger because he has vast Premier League experience as well as a good passing range and a dead ball specialist. Having an Arteta in Arsenal would mean that birds would be able to fly past the Emirates again because van Persie has killed a considerable chunk of them with his free kicks.
The media Vultures have also reported about the kind of news that the gooners are accustomed to. They have unveiled that Arsene Wenger is after an 18-year old French teenage sensation called M’ Baye Niang
Niang plays for Caen in France and has been touted by the French media Vultures as the next Thierry Henry and I have a hunch that Wenger might go for the lad. For starters, he’s French, he’s young, he’s a prospect and he’s fabled to be the next Thierry Henry.
C’mon, its Arsene Wenger I’m writing about now. We all know that he has a thing for players of this sort.
Moving over to news regarding departures, the media Vultures have reported that Arsenal’s 3rd choice goalie Vito Mannone is about to go on loan to Chievo Verona. It’s not yet Don Vito’s turn to shine at Arsenal so another loan move would do wonders to his confidence. It’s even better for him because he’s heading back to his Italy where he would eat a lot of pasta and take his girlfriend to the Leaning Tower of Pisa when he’s free.
They’ve also reported that Rosicky is considering abandoning Arsenal for Wolfsburg. If there’s any player in the club that owes Arsenal his services, it’s Tomas Rosicky because Arsenal stuck with him for the best part of two pregnancy periods when he was out with his hamstring injury. Many clubs (especially in Italy) would have rescinded his contract in that period.
In other related news, Emmanuel Greedybayor has completed his loan move to Sp*rs, Morten Olsen is keen for Bendtner to leave Arsenal and $amir Na$ri has stated that Arsenal lacks ambition.
After the grueling process of qualifying for the UEFA Champions League, the suit wearing chums led by Platini decided that it was time for the grouping for the 2011/12 season. The show was anchored by CNN World Sport‘s Pedro Pinto and a few football figureheads graced the occasion with their presence.
The 2001 FIFA Golden Ball winner and Champions League with Real Madrid, Luis Figo was the first person to honor the show with his fresh presence. He and another football great Paul Breitner did the draws for the top seeds and the results where:
A: Bayern B: Inter Milan C: Man United D: Real Madrid E: Chelsea F: Arsenal G: FC Porto H: Barcelona
Manchester United’s Sir Bobby Charlton was the next figurehead to reach the stage and after doing the draws for the 2nd seeds the results where:
A: Villarreal B: CSKA C: Benfica D: Olympique Lyonnais E: Valencia F: Olympique Marseille G: Shakhtar Donetsk H: AC Milan
Euro 88 winner and former Chelsea player/coach Ruud Gullit was next in line for the draws for the 3rd seeds and the results where:
A: Manchester City B: Lille C: Basel D: Ajax E: Bayer Leverkusen F: Olympiakos G: Zenit H: BATE Borisov
1990 FIFA Golden ball winner Lothar Matthaus did the final draws and the final group stages looked like this:
Group A:
Bayern, Villarreal, Manchester City, Napoli
(Group of Death)
Group B:
Inter Milan, CSKA, Lille, Trapzonspor
Group C:
Man United, Benfica, FC Basel, Otelul Galati
Group D:
Real, Olympique Lyonnais, Ajax Amsterdam, Dynamo Zagreb
Group E:
Chelsea, Valencia, Bayer Leverkusen, Genk
Group F:
Arsenal, Olympique Marseille, Olympiakos, Borussia Dortmund
Group G:
Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Zenit St. Petersburg, APOEL Nicosia
GroupH:
Barcelona, AC Milan, BATE Borisov, FC Plzen
The last time I checked, this is an Arsenal blog so I’m going to lay emphasis on Group F.
Arsenal has been landed in a group with French heavyweights Olympique Marseille, Greeks superpowers Olympiakos Piraeus and German champions Borussia Dortmund.
The group is not as hard as Group A but there are some tricky encounters to be played. Arsenal has some history with Olympiakos and the memories of playing the Greek outfit are quite fond but the two-legged affair with Dortmund will be the peak of the bunch. Rosicky will get another chance to return to the place he once called home and stars like Lucas Barrios, Shinji Kagawa and Mario Gotze will have a chance to shine at the European stage.
Arsenal would have to ensure that it tops the group to avoid the likes of Barcelona again.
Sticking with Barcelona, a website called The Gaffer has dropped a bombshell regarding Arsenal’s former captain, Cesc Fabregas.
The site revealed that Fabregas has admitted that he has made a HUGE MISTAKE by joining Barcelona.
Barcelona is a club that I really hate so I took the liberty of publishing the entire article in this post to save my readers the stress of clicking on the click but please feel free to do so if you want to.
SPANISH SENSATION Cesc Fabregas has revealed that moving to Barcelona was the biggest mistake of his life and is desperately lobbying the Champions’ League winners for an immediate return home to his teenhood club Arsenal.
During his last three seasons in north London Fabregas made no secret of his desire to play for Barcelona, changing his first name by deed poll to ‘Wantaway’ and training in a Barcelona replica kit paid for out of his own pocket.
But in an emotional interview with Heat, the playmaker revealed how his dream move has turned into a nightmare.
“My dream move has turned into a nightmare”, he said. “It is like I finally kissed the girl I have been fantasizing about for years, and then opened my eyes and realised she was Carlos Puyol.”
He continued: “Nothing about this as good as I hoped it would be – it is too hot, they all speak too quickly, and everybody has their dinner at midnight.”
Fabregas is reportedly disappointed by the level of Barcelona’s famous continental sophistical, describing it as “merely a diguise for a lack of banter”.
Friends of the star hinted that Fabregas had arrived for his first day training gleefully expecting a team mate to cut up his socks, set his trousers on fire or sleep with his girlfriend for a joke. When his initiation failed to materialise Fabregas is said to have flushed his own head down the toilet so he could feel like one of the lads.
Fabregas is also unhappy with his lack of playing opportunities: “When I signed for Barcelona Guardiola promised me an automatic first-team place, but I am the worst player at the club.
“I spend most of the day carrying out undemanding administrative tasks. It has been terrible for my self-esteem. I have begged the manager to sign Nicklas Bendnter so I can get my confidence back.”
Fabregas confessed that his nostalgia for England has led to disturbed sleep and erratic behaviour. “Last night, I dreamt that I was being kicked through the middle of Stoke on a wet Wednesday night. In the dream I was so happy, but when I woke up and remembered all the photocopying I had to do, I was devastated.
“I am so lonely I have even started phoning Emmanuel Frimpong. We weren’t really friends during my time with the Gunners, but now the thought of never partnering him in another shuttle run makes me feel like crying. I just want to go home.”
Although Arsenal are thought to be interested in ending Fabregas’ Spanish exile, manager Arsène Wenger is unwilling to meet the Catalan giant’s £35 million valuation of the player, and instead targeting several rough diamond French teenagers who might be good in 2016
The Gaffer is a satirical site by the way. However, I wish that this kind of a thing would happen to $amir Na$ri.
I hope that someday, he would call all the media Vultures and say:
“I really hate it here at Manchester City. The money is too much and Clichy forces me to watch Arab porn with him.
I also hate the fact that everything is Blue here. They remind me of my Marseille days and my memories are not too fond because Ribery bullied me a lot with his evil scar and his style of play that saw him take all the glory
Diaby broke my leg in 2009 in training and I’m really scared about training on the same pitch with Nigel de Jong. He was the evil man that broke my friend’s (Hatem ben Arfa) leg and I could be next”
I wonder how that got into my head. Maybe I was caught up with the moment.
That’s enough for one blog post.
Sayonara
You can follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back 🙂
You can also visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page and click on the like button.
Finally, you can subscribe to the blog to get notifications of new posts by email
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Arsenal visit Frulli: Time for the Italian Job
“If you lose Fabregas and Nasri, you cannot convince people that you are ambitious after that.
You cannot pretend that you’re a big club. A big club holds onto its big players and gives a message out to other big clubs that they just cannot come in and take the players away.
We worked very hard with these players for years to develop them and its time for us to keep them together.”
These words were uttered from the same mouth that said this yesterday after he felt that the time was right for Nasri to move on:
“You cannot think about only one game in the season, and there was some logic in the decision and some business interest.”
I don’t know if the board played a major role in this or if Wenger was actually at fault but the bottom line remains that Arsenal and Manchester City have agreed terms for the signing of $amir Na$ri.
Wenger was generous enough to give the reasons why Nasri left Arsenal. He summarized it all by saying that it was psychological and financial:
“$amir trained on Tuesday morning but I knew before training. He didn’t know, the decision was made this morning just before training. He came in to practice.”
“I don’t question $amir Na$ri’s commitment or professionalism. If I told him ‘you come with us and play’, he would have played like he did on Saturday but you wonder what kind of a commitment you can have.”
“Football rules are made like that, that the player can be worth a lot of money today and nothing in six months so it doesn’t look completely logical but, at the end of the day, of course, we are forced into a decision like that for psychological and financial reasons.”
“I am a realist so I have no illusions. It’s part of the modern life of a professional football player. It’s not that by coincidence that everybody suddenly lands at Man City.”
“We did not want to lose Fabregas, but we were forced into a situation we didn’t want. Nasri is a situation where the player didn’t want to extend his contract with the proposals he had somewhere else. What kind of commitment can you have when the player is not there long-term? That is the question you have to answer.”
Thanks Arsene, this explains a lot.
Nasri spent three full seasons at Arsenal, made 125 appearances for the club, scored 27 goals and supplied 16 assists. If you want to know what Nasri is all about, click on this tribute I wrote for him when he turned 24.
Now that Arsenal has lost two of its most creative players at this critical part of the season, Wenger has to go into the transfer market and shop for players the way those celebrities do it on E!
The media Vultures reported that Arsenal is eyeing a £26m bid for Lille’s BioHazard of Eden but the hierarchy in Lille are convinced that their Hazardous player will stay with them for one more season. This means that Wenger has to forget about Hazard and look elsewhere.
The media Vultures have also reported that Arsenal’s target Yann M’ Vila wants to wait for the outcome of Arsenal’s match against Udinese before making his decision. The lure of Champions League football will be his primary target so he’ll definitely turn his back on Arsenal if they lose tonight.
However, there’s a player that has turned his back on a move to Arsenal; Per Mertesacker. The bloke has decided to remain at Werder Bremen weeks after begging Arsenal to make a move for him.
It’s not surprising to know that everybody is backing away from Arsenal at the point in time because the club is hardly ever serious when it comes to transfers. All we hear is that Arsenal is linked with Professor Xavier or Arsenal is closing in on Captain America.
Everton’s Sylvain Distin has also come out from his lair to tell the media Vultures that Arsenal’s proposed attempt to lure Phil Jagielka away from Everton will fail. I don’t know who everybody’s favorite is between Cahill, Samba and Jagielka, but I know that one from these aforementioned players will do a very decent job at Arsenal.
It seems as if there might be a bright spark after all for Arsenal in terms of possible arrivals. Just like the way Nasri asked to be omitted from today’s squad, Mauro Zarate of Lazio told his coach to omit him from the club’s Europa League qualifying match because of the speculations regarding a move to Arsenal. Lazio manager, Eduardo Reja confirmed this in the club’s official site. You might want to use Google Translate though. 🙂
In other Arsenal news, Fabianski has vowed to fight hard for his place with Szczesny, Miyaichi was on target when Arsenal’s Reserves beat Wigan’s Reserves 3-1, Wenger has promised to strengthen his midfield and Arsenal and Newcastle have been fined £30,000 for failing to control their players.
You have to feel for Fabianski, he was doing a decent job when he replaced Almunia but injury paved the way for Szczesny and the Young Pole hasn’t looked back. However its pleasing to know that Arsenal’s goal keeping situation has been resolved amicably.
Ryo Miyaichi was on target for the Reserves when they beat Wigan’s Reserves but I and many other gooners tend to wonder when Arsene Wenger will give the bloke a debut. With Arshavin and Walcott playing horribly on Saturday at the Emirates, I expected Wenger to bring on the Jap but I guess that we have to wait for some time before we can witness our very own Ryodinho that got his work permit through the exceptional talent clause.
Joey Hitler made a mess of Gervinho’s antics at St. James Park two weeks ago, now his club as well as Gervinho’s club have been slapped with a £30,000 fine. I hope that he sleeps well at night after hearing this. Who knows if Mike Ashley is going to deduct the £30,000 from his own salary :). That will be something.
Arsenal has a certain Italian Job to execute tonight in Stadio Frulli. This game is of utmost importance to Wenger, the player’s confidence, the fans and potential signings.
A draw or a win will be more than enough to send Arsenal to its 14th Champions League group stage in a row but a 2-0 loss or more will bring Wenger to his maiden Europa League experience. An experience that he’s certainly not looking forward too.
To team news, there are a lot of reasons to make the gooners smile. RVP is back from suspension, Gervinho, Song and Frimpong are available for selection, Djourou and Rosicky have been declared fit but Jack Wishere and Laurent Koscielny are out for this encounter.
Koscielny stands a chance of playing Manchester United but Wilshere is out for two to three weeks, not the two months that was rumored on Twitter.
Udinese’s boss, Guidolin has stated that he’s scared of the threat that Arsenal poses and he has warned his players not to be fooled by Arsenal’s off the pitch shenanigans.
Wojciech Szczesny will definitely be the man between the sticks because Arsenal would need a keeper that can save di Natale’s evil free kicks tonight. Sagna will definitely start today but he might be deployed to the left flank again because Gibbs and Traore are not fit enough which means that Jenkinson will be the right back. Vermaelen and Djourou will play at the heart of Arsenal’s defense.
Song is a sure candidate to start tonight but Wenger might be tempted to play Frimpong ahead of Rosicky to add stability to the midfield thereby allowing Ramsey to play in the creative role behind the front three.
Van Persie will lead the line and he’ll be assisted by Gervinho and Walcott on the wings. Arshavin will have to settle for a place with the bench.
I usually give a graphical illustration of my expected lineup but I’m writing this post with my BlackBerry and blogging with a BlackBerry has its limits. This is one of them 🙁
My expected lineup should be
Szczesny
Jenkinson – Djourou – Vermaelen – Sagna
Frimpong – Ramsey – Song
Walcott – RVP – Gervinho
When Mark Wahlberg had an Italian Job to execute, he used explosives to blow up the area beneath a safe that had gold in it and it fell unto him in his speedboat in d city of venice.
Arsenal’s Italian job is a very critical one.
To qualify for the uefa champions league.
Here’s to a happier blog post tomorrow.
Sayonara.
You can follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back 🙂
You can also visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page and click on the like button.
Finally, you can subscribe to the blog to get notifications of new posts by email
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Nasri omitted, Arsenal cheated and Wenger NOT spending
Arsenal like every other word has its own definition. The Oxford, Chambers and Scrabble dictionaries define it as a place where weapons are stored but we humans have our specific definition of Arsenal.
Some say that it’s a selling club that has taken over the mantle from Ajax in the days of old. A French cunthound said that it’s a mere training centre where players enjoy their football without winning trophies. Others say that it’s a breeding ground where Wenger assembles youngsters from all over the galaxy, uses his alchemy to turn them from lead to gold then exports them to other clubs that come asking.
I define my Arsenal as a club that was synonymous with success and trophies but its going to a phase where things are not going too well. In Wenger’s first nine years at the club, he had an amazing trophy haul with the most notable being three Premier League titles and four FA Cups but the fans that adored him and sang his praises those years want his head on a plate nowadays.
They fail to realize that Arsenal isn’t as peachy and creamy as it used to be in terms of spending due to the funds that were allocated to the magnificent Emirates Stadium. A large section of the fans have been solidly behind Wenger and the duck was almost broken on the 27th of February, 2011. A run that saw Wenger’s men joust past Tottenham, Newcastle, Wigan and Ipswich was to be ended with a final battle against a Birmingham side that was vanquished home and away in the League but we all know how it ended.
There’s a saying:
“If you’ve not had your first cigarette, you can’t get addicted to smoking”
Wenger has done a lot of good things for Arsenal but he was also the reason why Arsenal lost to Birmingham in the final, why Arsenal lost to Manchester United with seven recognized defenders, why Arsenal lost to Barcelona without shooting the ball and why Arsenal chickened out of the Premier League with such ease.
When Arsenal played Manchester United in the FA Cup final in 2005, Manchester United has the lion’s share of possession as well as shots but Arsenal had resilience, coordination, character as well as teamwork. Even a Jose Antonio Reyes red card wasn’t an excuse in that game.
Arsenal has become a shadow of the side that won games with consummate ease. It has been replaced by a team that nags a lot when things go wrong.
“It was Diaby’s red card that killed us against Newcastle”
“Arshavin was pushed from behind by Bramble when we played Sunderland. It was a clear penalty”
“Luis Suarez was offside when the ball was played to him”
blah, blah, blah
In recent times, Wenger has been making the same mistake time after time again and he has failed to learn from it. There was a time when Arsenal’s attack had an amazing stockpile of players and everybody was hungry to play. It was led by Henry but the likes of Bergkamp, Wiltord, Kanu, Reyes, Jeffers and a young Aliadere were raring to go. Now when RVP gets injured, everybody pushes the panic button because all we have is Chamakh. 🙁
The same manager that had a defense with Adams, Keown, Winterburn and Dixon is now represented with the likes of Miquel, Jenkinson, Gibbs and Armand Traore. He failed to give a 2-year deal to Pires because he was above 30 yet he handed 2-year deals to Silvestre and Squillaci.
With my history lesson well and truly over, it’s time to write about the events dominating the Arsenal World in recent times.
Arsene Wenger has been given a 2-match ban as well as a fine of €10,000 for violating UEFA’s rule book in section I don’t care, sub-section piss off but I’m pretty sure that it had something to do with him communicating with the bench when Udinese visited the Emirates. This clearly means that Wenger will be at the stands in tomorrow’s game in Frulli and Arsenal’s first group stage game in the Champions League group phase or the Europa League group phase as the case may be.
All Wenger has to do right now will be to select his match-day squad and hope that Pat Rice would make him proud. Arsenal will be boosted with the likes of Gervinho and Song as well as Wilshere back in the squad but there will be a player that will be missing in action tomorrow.
Arsenal’s Samir Nasri has told Wenger to omit his name from the squad traveling to Italy because he’s still down on getting those greens at Manchester City. Omitting Nasri from the squad to prevent him from being cup-tied will clearly show Arsenal’s lack of ambition and love for money so one should barrage Wenger with taunts because this would mean that the board has won the battle with the issue of Nasri.
If Nasri doesn’t play tomorrow, it would signal that his Arsenal career is over so a replacement would be needed badly for him but the media Vultures have reported that Robin van Persie went to have a meeting with his boss concerning possible arrivals and Wenger told him that he’s happy with his squad so he won’t spend.
I don’t want to believe the media Vultures this time because they are the same set of people that reported that Arsenal is closing in on Hazard, M’ Vila and Jagielka. Wenger has also insisted that he’ll sign experienced players before the end of the transfer window so I don’t know why he’ll take a u-turn and say that he’s happy with his squad the way it is.
With eight days left in this transfer window, I’m really hoping that Wenger would sign the players that Arsenal needs because the club is currently 14th on the log and I doubt if these crop of players will be good enough to break into the top four this season. Arsenal has become rougher than normal and the injury-prone players are still around so new signings are badly needed in this club.
However, Young Guns Blog reviewed that Arsenal has signed a 14-year old superstar called Gedion Zalelem and he’ll arrive at the club in January 2013; when he turns 16.
A website called Sporting Intelligence analyzed Arsenal and Blackpool in the Premier League last season and have concluded that both clubs were cheated over the course of the season.
They believe that Arsenal would ended up as runners-up and Blackpool wouldn’t have been relegated if the match officials did their jobs well. They examined 713 significant incidents ranging from penalties, offside goals and goal line incidents and concluded that Arsenal should have ended the season with 72 points instead of 68.
As expected, they brought up the issue of the Sunderland game (Arshavin), Vidic’s glaring handball at the Emirates (errrm, the last time I checked, we still won) and Arsenal’s goal difference and all.
It’s a nice article quite alright but you can’t judge that Arsenal was cheated because of a game or two. What about the games that were there for the taking that Arsenal spurned?
The Wigan 2-1 lead that was thrown away by Squillaci’s super own goal,
Leading Tottenham two goals up at halftime, only to self destruct and end up losing the game,
Scoring Liverpool in the 97th minute only to concede a penalty moments later,
Or the most embarrassing of them all,
Going 4 up against Newcastle only to end up drawing the match. This game still gives me nightmares from time to time.
The quote of the day goes to the captain of Udinese, Antonio di Natale:
“We studied Arsenal’s defeat by Liverpool & they have problems in every area… I believe it will be Udinese who’ll go through”
Tomorrow is not far away.
Sayonara.
You can follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back 🙂
You can also visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page and click on the like button.
Finally, you can subscribe to the blog to get notifications of new posts by email
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
