Up For Grabs Now

Very many apologies for the silence from our end this weekend.

Fictional excuses: Grabber was getting a few of his choicest bonsai trees ready for an agricultural show this week, and I was engaged in a gruelling shampoo testing programme.

After some humming and hah-ing and a chronically timid piece of defending from Gael, we finally managed to crush Hull City beneath our imperious Arsenal heel. A goal of happily Piresian economy from Nasri and then a box-busting one-two between Van Persie and Bendtner gave the scoreboard the warm and fuzzy glow of dominance, an aura which was probably merited over the piece, however tardily it might have been achieved.

At this point, I’d like to reiterate that Alan Shearer is an imbecile of Daniel-Levian proportions. He ‘talked’ last night on MOTD (where we were scandalously on after Man City) about the home fixture between Hull and Arsenal, and said that Hull had been “dominant” on that occasion. He can only be describing the sort of dominance where you park not so much a mere bus as a bona fide East Coast mainline express train (with a quiet coach and a serviceable cafeteria) in front of your goal and then score a wondergoal and a header from your only two tentative sniffs at goal. Idiot.

I hope Shearer finally plucks up the balls to finally take the Newcastle job just so we can watch him oversee a disastrous implosion which gets them relegated having been hailed by hysterical Geordies everywhere as the messiah. We’ll see how far his lazily-informed, smugly expressed, know-all hindsight gets him then, won’t we?

Though I must applaud Johan Djourou for his innovative, and potentially homicidal, last minute upwards-headering technique, yesterday really belonged to the man possessed of 3 assists, the goal of the month for December and the balance of Natalia Markarova Rudolf Nureyev (who, my researcher informs me, is a ballet dancer with ’sick’ balance).

Yes, the man on form right now is Robin Van Persie. When he isn’t injuring himself or butting the unfortunate goalkeepers of lesser teams firmly on the bonce in seemingly unprovoked attacks, then he’s crashing rasping free-kicks against the bar and ripping opposition defences firmly asunder. More crashing and ripping and less injuring and butting, thanks Robin. He’s an absolute joy to watch right now, and long may it continue.

Something else which will hopefully continue is our ability to score late goals. Arsene, never one with a head for figures, helpfully pointed out post-match that:

I think we have scored 16 goals in the last 15 minutes of the last 33 games, and we did that again today.

I’d be very interested to see a proper analysis of how many of those goals were in some way related to the substitution of Emmanuel Eboue in favour of a player with a working knowledge of the sport. I’d wager a fair few.

As ever, we love to hear your thoughts, shouts, groans, cheers, yelps, farts, screams and laughs. Stick ‘em in the comments section where the sun don’t shine and we’ll have a right old chinwag.

Poor old Grabber. So exasperated was he this morning to read the same old garbage about Kaka’s preposterous transfer to Manchester City and not a word about Arsenal’s impending signing spree, that he ripped off all of his clothes, dashed down to The Armoury, thrust his wallet triumphantly into the air and purchased a bottle of Alex Song Aftershave for the extortionate price of £12.00 right then and there.

“There’s my money you bastards!” he cried. “Now, look here. If I don’t see Charles N’Zogbia in here signing kids’ shirts by tomorrow lunchtime, I’m never going to waste another penny in this ridiculous boutique!”

Then, in full view of the check-out staff, he proceeded to rub every last drop of Alex Song Aftershave onto his baby-soft buttocks before hurling the empty bottle into the popular caps-and-hats section of the shop and making a dash for the door.

I, Grabs, can only apologise for the lunacy of my colleague.

His actions were rash, and his comments regrettable. He would also have done well to have waited until he had heard what Arsene had to say in his press conference this afternoon.

On Arshavin, the man whose name points towards a major tussle in the near future with Alex Song for the prized Arsenal cosmetics range endorsement deal, Wenger had this to say:

[We are] nowhere. That means we are not close to signing anybody. We know what we want to do, but we are not close to signing today because I would tell you. But there is no basic news. There again, we are in negotations yes but we want to respect our principles. I am very hopeful [of a deal]. We will know in days because the transfer window closes on February 2 and we have only crossed halfway. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. There again, we want to continue to improve here with the players we have.

Understood? Good.

Nope. Not a clue either. Not the foggiest idea what he is barking on about. We are in negotiations but we probably won’t sign anybody because of the players we’ve got, though he’s very hopeful that we will sign somebody – except if we don’t. And if we do sign somebody it will be within the next few days, the rationale for this being that there is loads of transfer window still to go. Got it?

Still more impressive was this, in reference to the return from injury of Walcott, Rosicky, Eduardo and Cesc:

That is like being on a transfer market for us.

Hopefully this means that Arsene has finally understood that the important things about signing players is the shirt-holding-up ceremony and the headlines. He should really talk to the Arsenal press office about this.

Hello, press office? Hi, yes, it’s Arsene here. Just wanted to have a little word about transfer policy. Yup. Mmm Hmmm. Yes I thought you’d say that.

Anyway, what I was hoping was that from now on every time one of our players returns from injury you can feed the story to the national press that they have in fact signed for us, ok? … Do you see what I mean? Right… How are you meant to do that when they already play for us and may or may not have been recently appointed club captain? … It’s a good question…

I guess just do, like, y’know, a shirt-holding-up ceremony thing, some sort of press conference where they tell everyone how happy they are to finally be joining Arsenal, invent a new name for them – anagrams on existing ones would be good! (it’ll save on buying new plastic letters for the Armoury). Oh, and make up a credible transfer fee, nothing too extreme, you know. That sort of thing. I really don’t think anyone will notice. Does that all sound ok? Great.

Hopefully I’ll be signing Gallas and Silvestre in a couple of weeks so maybe start working on that if you want to plan ahead, ok? Great. Look forward to it. Bye!

So,  please don’t be fooled when Arsene unveils a strapping new French centre-half named Mailwil Lagsal. He’s not 23 and we didn’t pick him up for £3 million from River Plate.

And remember – you heard it here first.

Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated, but thank you to all for your messages of goodwill and support. There we were thinking the only people who read this were Arsene Wenger, Le Grove and a few other crazed obsessives, but it turns out there are several more of you prepared to tolerate the half-baked rumour and complete bollies that we insist on perpetuating. Good for you, and I’m very pleased that a single missed blog brings out the worst in you.

I should warn you that it looks as if there might be more. We feel that by continually peddling low-rent transfer gossip we are lowering ourselves slightly, and I only ever like to lower myself emphatically. We shall still try to get something out every day, but as they say if there’s nothing doing, there’s nothing doing, and we won’t waste your valuable time. Even if some of you have more of it to spare than others…

Today I’d like to talk about Bentdner again, and particularly Arsene’s apologia for him in his weekly email:

It is so cold for the subs when you come on it is not easy. You sit there for an hour and you start to warm up until you come on. When you really get into the game, the game is over. When Nicklas came on there were 15 minutes left and he had no real time to warm up really.

Overall this season, he had an injury problem with his ankle and I thought it affected his game a little bit, especially with his back to goal. He looks in training as if he is sharp again. He had some difficult periods because of those problems with his ankle but now slowly he is getting back to where he will be.

I have a few problems with this, not least the bits where he complains about the ‘cold’ concerning a man from, er, Denmark. Also the construction ’slowly he is getting back to where he will be’. Even with Arsene’s notriously complex use of English, this seems a bit much. The point is that the big-blonde-barmily-booted one hasn’t looked as if he’s improved much this season at all, and this time there isn’t even the excuse of injuries, as there is in midfield. It also doesn’t look as if he’s going to be going anywhere. What I’m hoping is that either he massively improves (although in some ways his rubbishness provokes me to wish him otherwise), or as our attacking midfielders get fitter one of them steps up to fill the vacancy. Carl, perhaps.

Speaking of which, does anybody know why the song for the midget Mexican is now ‘Vela’ pronounced to rhyme with ’superstar’ and ‘Cantona’, as opposed to the conventional usage of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ song, as agreed by all UFGN users…?

Most peculiar, I think we can all agree.

A not-so-instant response to this one, and for that I apologise, but it was a busy busy afternoon.

Arsenal vs Bolton Wanderers, 10 January 2009 will go down in history as the first time, since the creation of this blog, that Grabs and myself attended a home game a deux. Some of you have speculated that we’re the same person, others that we’re more than just good friends, but without going into too much detail it’s important for you to know that we are, and always well be, Arsenal fans first.

It was far from a thrilling game, I think we can all agree, and the relief on my face (cherubic, no less) after the whistle blew was only slightly qualified by the loss of my wager on Arsenal to win 3-1 with Nasri to score first. What was I thinking? Who can tell?

That we somewhat lacked for penetration was no surprise, given that Megson’s Merry Morons arrived and from the get-go only wanted to park ten men in front of the ball. The first half was mostly an example of the traditional game of ‘box-dodging’, otherwise known as the ‘Islington Shuffle’ whereby ten of the world’s best outfield football players, and Manuel the Spanish waiter goalkeeper attempt to pass the ball to each other for as long as possible without ever letting it drift into the opposition’s penalty area.

Arsenal are one of the finest exponents of this ancient art, and during the 45 minutes in question they moved the ball around very effectively, despite many challenges from Bolton players and the duplicitous touchline urgings of their assistant manager Patrick Rice. There was one unfortunate incident when Robin van Persie got in the way of Samir Nasri’s valiant attempt to kick the ball out of play, and in his panic deftly collected it before realising his error and blazing it over the bar, thus minimising the penalty points incurred, but other than that the Shufflers had much to be proud of.

In the second half, Manager Arsene Wenger had a word with the team and reminded them that during the second half they were obliged not to play Islington Shuffle any longer, and instead encouraged them not only to move the ball inside the opposition area but then to try and kick it into the conveniently positioned net. They left it a while, but eventually a tall Danish man arrived to toe-poke the game’s only goal, and though we did our best to give Bolton a great chance immediately afterwards they were too incompetent to take it, and instead we had to take the three points.

From our perspective the match was not without further incident. We visited the Armoury beforehand, with its fine range of merchandise. Finest of this range was, undoubtedly, the fragrance and deodorant ‘Arsenal’. ‘Arsenal’ was advertised by a moody picture of Alex Song clutching a bottle of the aforementioned scent whilst topless, with a pair of provocatively cannon-labelled white briefs poking suggestively from his low-slung jeans. One can only imagine the paroxysms of lust this has sent the womenfolk of North London into:

‘Darling, what’s that you smell of?’

‘Arsenal’

‘But my, you smell so incompetent…yet oddly irresistible’

‘Yes. I know. The fragrance is worn by Alex Song. He wears it when he meets Arsene.’

‘Tackle me, right now’

‘My darling, I’m afraid I’m a little out of position.’

‘You’re still irresistible.’

‘It’s a burden I’ll bear’.

Anyway, we also bore the burden of a couple of absolute idiots sitting behind us. Sample conversation (after Denilson mishit an outrageously ambitious volley of a looping ball outside the box):

Note, for full enjoyment of this imagine for a minute the voice of a young, screechier Barbara Windsor. Amy Winehouse, perhaps, only without the tonal nuance.

‘Deniiwwsan yoar such a shi brazilian. Why int you as good as Kaka?’

There was much more where this came from. It was unfair that they were so irritating, as the blokes in front of us didn’t seem bothered by our own conversation, particularly with regards to Bendtner:

Grabber: ‘Bendtner why are you so shit?’

Bendtner scores, crowd goes wild.

Grabber: ‘I knew it, he always had my full backing. I think he’s a wonderful footballer’

Grabs: ‘You’re a moron’.

Anyway that’s all twaddle. The real lessons from the game were:

1)    It’s great playing with an actual central defender. As Grabs’ correctly pointed out before I’d even so much as sat down, it’s Djourou who does all the talking at the back, just as Campbell used always to tell Kolo what to do (regardless of Kolo’s temporary captaincy). He also makes us about a billion times stronger in the air and defending set-pieces. You’ve got to wonder if part of the problem when Gallas and Toure play together is that Toure doesn’t think Gallas has any idea of what to say. Gallas, through his career, has almost always played best alongside strong and vocal defenders. One to think about.

2)    Nasri looks a very promising creative substitute for Cesc. He’s not quite the finished product – I for one think he should be a bit more direct, but he has more energy and vision than anyone else on our park at the minute, and clearly relishes in being the one making things happen in the middle. This must be a Good Thing.

3)    Vela sort of ditto. He should be getting way more time on the pitch. As soon as he came on we looked much more dangerous – he runs at people, he wants to get in the box, and he can make the awkward transition from ‘Islington Shuffle’ to ‘football’ better than most of the rest of our team.

4)    Diaby’s getting better, fingers crossed it carries on.

Other than that I think we can be happy with the win. Not our most beautiful game, but Bolton have given us problems in the past (although they looked pretty dire at times today), and we’re notching up a nice little run of unbeaten games. If we can bring in some creativity, and Diaby/Denilson show they can work against the better teams, then we’re certainly getting there as a team.

Arsene knows, remember – and just think how much more of a threat we’d pose were Walcott, Cesc and Rosicky fit…

Nobody could have banked on those injuries so specifically to our most incisive players, and even so we’re really not far off the mark. An Arshavin here or there might make all the difference.

My, what a long blog. Have a good Sunday.

Don’t forget you can get your fresh Up For Grabs Now delivered each morning by e-mail – simply subscribe in the box below…

Finally a temporary break from the relentless tedium of half-baked speculation and ill-conceived transfer suggestions (see UFGN, last 2 days), and back to the real business – a steely, gristly, belt and braces, coal-face home game against the razorish elbows and looming studs of Bolton Wanderers. Yum

It’s as important a game as all our games are these days. I’m now pretty firmly in the habit of listening out for the Villa result, and so (at least for now) it feels like it’s them we’re vying against on a week-by-week basis. Bigger aspirations can wait for us to finally string a credible winning run today.

That said, I sense that today is especially important for us because with the FA Cup last weekend and the time away from the League since the Boxing Day games, our squad has had quite a long lay-off from intensive duty. In that time, we’ve heard a lot about corners turned, of fighting spirit questioned and reinvigorated, of newfound determination to prove the critics wrong. Which is all great… except if it all goes a bit Darren Bent against Bolton today.

A good win would build on a fluid showing against Plymouth and could signal a change of tone to our season, and a positive shift in belief, something we desperately need over the next few months if we are to play our way through our horrendous injury list. Of course a signing or two are also important (and clearly on Wenger’s agenda from his comments in yesterday’s press conference) but arguably what we really need is for the players we already have to bond into a decent unit and find some form at last.

Team news: expect to see Almunia, Sagna, Clichy, Djourou, Toure (c), Eboue, Nasri, Song, Denilson, Van Persie, Adebayor – though we might well see some Out-Of-Position Diaby thrown into the mix as well. If the game’s not going well, it will be interesting to hear how quickly the crowd start shouting for Vela and how soon Le Boss brings him on. He probably isn’t ready to start, but it’s good to have a game-changer on the bench, at any age.

Bolton: Unfortunately Bolton’s asshole-in-chief Kevin Davies looks like he’ll make the game. His asshole-lieutenant and midfield clone Kevin Nolan is suspended (as he surely always ought to be). Expect a customarily heroic display from Jussi Jaaskelainen and vague mutterings from a few discontented souls about how they’d take Fabrice Muamba back if it meant we didn’t have to play Alex Song. Muamba’s a good player, and it will be interesting to see how our players get on against him, but he isn’t Arsenal quality.

The only other player I’d pick out as a potential threat would be Matty Taylor, who likes to hit exactly the kind of long-shot which Manuel our Spanish waiter goalkeeper enjoys waving a vague paw at as it flies into the roof of the net. He’s also got a pretty decent goalscoring record against us, if memory serves, so we should try and keep him quiet. Their defence is shocking, frankly, and if Van Persie can keep up last week’s form, he should be able to cut them to ribbons.

WordsOfWenger: A wee transfer overview. Gossip is addictive, after all. Yesterday’s press conference provided a few insights into current squad and transfer strategy. Nobody’s leaving, including Kolo. And yes, that would seem to include Gallas. Arshavin’s probably on his way. Arsene’s obviously interested and it just remains for Zenit to realise that their bargaining position simply doesn’t exist and he’ll be posing in a brand new number 13 shirt.

Arsene called a defensive midfield signing “a priority”, which calls for a pretty ridiculously loud sigh of relief, if you ask me. I won’t pretend to know any more than anyone else about who this might be, although I’m always interested to hear your suggestions.

Less sigh-of-relief inducing was his ambivalence on Matthew Upson, and though he refused to say anything about him (as he did with Arshavin) he also said he wasn’t looking for a defender “at the moment”. The shred of hope is that he’s got a target who is currently looking unlikely but whose situation could change. That could be Upson himself, if not then I hope it’s Christian Zapata, a player we were certainly interested in in the summer and who I’ve been really impressed by whenever I’ve seen him play for Udinese. Apparently Milan and Juve are interested too. He’s been injured for much of this season, which is a drawback, but with others establishing their first team credentials, it might make Udinese more open to offers.

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A very good morning to you. I can only apologise for the outlandishness of Grabs yesterday. It’s clear to everyone that Juan Seba Veron is a very, very old man, unsuitable for playing football, and frankly unsuitable for anything much except for playing dominoes on a warm roadside and talking about how the weather never changes.

But it did get me thinking about who we could add to the squad at this stage who would have enough experience, as well as offering us that extra sharpness in the final third, and also made me think outside the usual suspects for a bit. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think one Luis Figo fits the bill perfectly.

As yesterday, I know it might sound a bit strange, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. He’s getting on a bit, but we don’t necessarily need him for very long. He’s played at the highest levels continuously and has performed all that time. He’s skilful, has great vision and has always been more rugged than others of his ilk – bit like one DB10, if memory serves, and who wouldn’t put him in the team at the drop of a hat just now. He could play on either wing or in the middle, and we wouldn’t need him for very long – just until the other midfielders blossom into fully-fledged performers. I’m also sure he’d love the chance to play in the premiership for a bit in the twilight of his career, and I’m sure Inter would let him go for a bit of cash.

What do you reckon?

In terms of the other midfielders flying around I’ve had a look on youtube and I think Lorik Cana looks like exactly what we need. Big, strong and tough with proven leadership credentials, and the occasional  goal. He also looks like a bit of a nutter, and as has been pointed out elsewhere we do tend to win more when we have more people sent off. He’s also at a good stage of his career for a big move to England. The worry is that the French league isn’t a good enough proving ground, but he looks like he could handle it.

The worry is that Marseille wouldn’t be that keen to let their club captain go, but most teams are in a selling mood at the moment. Presumably he wouldn’t mind swapping the south of France for London – I think it’s easy to forget what a draw that is to some players.

In other news (other than the fact we’re playing Bolton tomorrow and Megson has been talking out of his arse about it, which I refuse to talk about because the idea that he’s a human of sufficient wit and/or guile to engage in psychological games with le boss is so ridiculous as almost to make me spew my pain au chocolat) there’s been a lot of talk about the fact we might not sell out the Bolton game, and the implications of that. It’s being argued that we’re charging too much for a team that doesn’t win anything, but I think that’s bollies. Attendances have been levelling off all over the shop, and the Arsenal attendance figures are always a nonsense anyway thanks to their policy of counting all season ticket-holders as permanently attending. Anyone who’s glanced around the ground will know that we almost never have 60,000 there, and I’m not quite sure the logic of saying that we do…

The real issue (if there is one), I think, is that lots of Arsenal supporters (particularly new ones) are people who’ve over the last ten years gotten much richer from their North London homes and the generally benevolent fiscal situation, and Arsenal has become the club of choice for that particular brand of upwardly mobile, Nick Hornby style chap and their families. It was the rise of these fans which meant we could build the Emirates in the first place, and that people can still on the whole afford the expensive tickets and scarves. Perhaps in the downturn some of these fringe attendees are starting to drop off, and that explains the unusually slow sales.

Either way it’s nothing to worry about. Bolton are much more deserving of our fears.

Good morning and welcome to yet another instalment of tedious speculation about Andrei Arshavin. Nope, scrap that. As far as I’m concerned the last word on the matter has come from the Arseblogger with his astute owl comparison. We will not be mentioning the Arsh-word until something actually happens apart from his agent sitting in London hotels claiming that “ten, fifteen, twenty-five” top clubs all want to buy his boy. Now, there’s quite a big difference between having 10 clubs interested and twenty-five, isn’t there. It’s also curious in that case that they only ever mention Arsenal as even vaguely interested (and Sp*rs, but let’s be realistic here). Anyway, I’ll draw  a line under the whole sorry affair until Arsene says otherwise:

————————————————————————————————————-

That feels better, doesn’t it? In place of the Arsh-word I’d like to suggest a player who I would love to see Arsene bring in this January. I’ve hinted at it before, but I really do think that Juan Sebastian Veron would be worth a shot.

In his favour is that he’s experienced at the very highest level of European football, can still pass like no-one else in the world apart from possibly Cesc, is being seriously considered for captaincy of the Argentinian national team and was last week awarded the South American Footballer of the Year award for his superb performances for Estudiantes, suggesting there is a lot of skill and influence in the old dog yet.

I also think he’d be very cheap and could be interested in a loan deal. I’ve seen him making noises about going to Lazio, but Lazio don’t seem to keen, probably still annoyed at his departure in 2001. Still, the fact that he’s interested show’s he’s got the appetite to get back in the big time.

 He’d bring us exactly the kind of guile and experience that we need so badlyfor our midfield in the short term. He’s obviously eligible for the Champions’ League, where he was never short of superb for United and I certainly don’t see how he could do any harm to our season.

Clearly, people will point to his failure at United and Chelsea. Of course he never produced as everyone expected him to, but I always felt the extent of his “failure” was overblown by the then unheard of transfer fee shelled out for him and the media’s desire to pillory Fergie as we stormed to the title in 2002. Arsenal play their football in a very different way to Chelsea and United and his sheer passing ability might see him fit into our style surprisingly well.

He is a player of rare class and natural ability. Might it not be worth having a Bischoffian “gamble” on him?

Very interested to hear your thoughts on the idea of Veron coming to Arsenal.

On to other stuff, and I always enjoy reading TribalFootball if only to laugh at their always bizarre angle on footballing developments. Yesterday they ran the headline: “FABIANSKI REVEALS ARSENAL KEEPER DREAM!” What a revelation. Who could ever have guessed that all this time he was hoping to get a game. Someone better tell Arsene, pronto.

The crowning glory, though, was this little jewel of an analysis of Sp*rs purchasing of Jermaine Defoe:

Tottenham have got the 26-year-old England star on the cheap. They will only pay around £6million for him as Portsmouth still owe them £7m from the original deal and on their other Spurs signings Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes.

It is an incredible piece of business by Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy.

They’re right to use the word “incredible”. As in, incredibly foolish, incredibly profligate, incredibly expensive. However much you try and make the deal look “on the cheap”, it quite simply wasn’t. That £7 million which Tottenham “saved” was money they were owed, y’know, like it was going to belong to them pretty soon. You can’t just pretend it never existed.

 Apparently Jermaine was charming enough to request £700,000 from Portsmouth as a “loyalty bonus”, which Tottenham kindly paid for them. Snivelling. Little. Gits.

Morning Grabbos, and what a morning it is. Ever so slightly warmer than before, I’d say. And, of course, the biggest news of the day is not connected to Arsenal at all but rather to cricket, and the question of who’s to become the new England captain. But none of you care about that, quite rightly.

There’s some more guff about Arshavin et al, but I’m not interested in that today, because we’ve got other news here at Up For Grabs Now…

In a unique coup, we have gotten hold of a world exclusive letter from Harry Redknapp to the supporters of Tottenham Hotspur, offering his support for the new year. This will probably be covered in other papers, but you heard it here first… 

Dear Tottenham supporter,

I’m just writing to tell you how pleased I am to be managing Tottenham, a club with a long and proud footballing history, and one of the biggest clubs in London. The start of the season was tougher than we all expected – I suppose the Premiership is just hard like that! It just went to show you can spend as much money as you like, but against top-quality teams like Hull City it will just never be enough!

Anyway, that’s all done and dusted, and you’ve got me on board now to steady the ship. Things are going better – as a manager I love a challenge, and there isn’t much challenges bigger than Tottenham Hotspur, especially when the first challenge is to buy back all of your old players!

Oh well, we don’t like things easy around here, do we? Ho ho. We’ve been getting a lot of points recently, but as I always say to the missus, ‘don’t expect it to last’! I’ll probably buy some old Arsenal players this season, that’s always good. Have you heard of that Sol Campbell? Only jokin’. Course you ‘ave. Think I might buy him from Pompey – only £15m last thing I heard, and they give me a great deal.

Anyway, I’m off to play some more Nintendo Wii with my family. Aren’t you lucky to have a manager who’s so up with the times and trendy like that? Wouldn’t catch that Arsene Wenger playing the Nintendo Wii on TV with a popstar, would you?

Thanks so much for all your support, and I hope to give you another fun year of Tottenham success and glory!

 

‘Arry.

 

Once again, you heard it here first.

We’ve languished five whole days in the transfer window. Five. Seemed like longer than that, didn’t it? Arsene has ducked and dived and the many Arsenal fans who have been holding out for a hero to arrive on whom they can pin all their hopes are still waiting for that man. Some are becoming desperate, pleading for Arsene to spend many millions on players like Stewart Downing. Any signing, they cry, is better than no signing at all.

Arsene says he wants “super-class” talent or nothing. That was the approach in the summer and that got us Nasri and a cavernous hole in central midfield. By the way, could people please stop saying that we “didn’t sign anybody” last summer? Nasri was quite clearly a signing, as was Ramsey. What you mean is that we didn’t sign the right players or that we didn’t sign enough players or that we didn’t sign players for the right positions. But we definitely signed players, so don’t pretend otherwise.

Yesterday saw us tie down Young Jack Wilshere to a reported 8 year contract. Wish they’d give me one of those. He’s the sort of talent that is very very hard to find, and it’s interesting that almost exactly ten years on from Arsene saying it would take ten years for Arsenal to start producing young players of adequate technical ability, along comes Young Jack. Shows you he has a fair idea what he’s talking about. Hopefully there’s more coming too – I hear Ashley Young’s kid brother Kyle is pretty useful.

Speaking at Jack’s signing, Arsene said (not for the first time) that he thinks Jack has “tremendous penetrative power“. Crumbs, and only just turned 17! Along with the importance of defending set-pieces assertively, Arsene has never really grasped the British obsession with innuendo, has he? Perhaps someone should have sent him Carry On for his Christmas in order to school him against pulling out such cracking gags in public.

One team who has been very active in the transfer window is Sp*rs, who look like wrapping up Defoe for £15 million. That’s a real bargain when you consider that Bent was £16.5 million, but when you remember that Bent is amongst the worst footballers on the planet and that Defoe is very, very average, and that Sp*rs only sold him the other day for much less than that, the whole thing actually appears to be a scandalously poor piece of business. Why do they keep trying to re-buy players they only just sold? Or sell players cheaply that they only just bought expensively? It’s like they’re short-selling in reverse, seeing how much of a loss they can make. Kaboul is another classic example. Hell, if we really want Luka Modric why not make a cheeky £2 million bid for him right now? At Tottenham it’s instant impact or you’re out the door and they don’t care how stupid that makes them look as judges of footballing ability or how perenially shite it has made their football team. Those Gooners getting antsy about Wenger’s apparently inexhaustible patience with players like Bendtner should thank their stars he at least has some pride and some stubbornness about him and that we’re not as hilarious or as crap as Tottenham with their insistence on massive player turnover year after year.

Redknobb has done a fine job at his recent clubs – Southampton, Portsmouth, West Ham – but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that they are now languishing financially and having to sell (or having already sold) the very players who brought them their success under Harry. Hopefully the Levy-factor will limit his success at Sp*rs and when he is sacked 7 games into next season he will leave his traditional legacy of financial meltdown and relegation struggling, something I think we’d all like to see more of at Sp*rs, if only to provide an amusing side-show to fretting about our own problems.

A cursory round-up of today’s transfer guff, with the tabloid hacks already wearying of their task.

Man City to buy Yaya Toure for £24 million! Folly, sheer folly.

Arshavin to buy out his own contract! Ok, go on then son.

Kranjcar to Arse! Fine. Probably won’t happen but wouldn’t mind if it did. A vanilla-flavoured gobbet of gossip if ever I licked one.

Bendtner + £5m = Matthew Upson. If this is anything to go by, The Sun’s journalists obviously weren’t any use at algebra when they were at school, which is possibly why they ended up writing Arsenal fetish erotic fantasies with no basis in reality and publishing them in that foetid abcess of a newspaper. The might as well have written 1 + 5 = 16, which as we all know, simply isn’t true.

Firstly let’s put this whole name-confusion issue to bed. It was my fault. I was tired. You know how these things go. That’s it. And I never meant to invade Gaza either, but they kept throwing stuff at me.

Seriously, I do think it’s a bit weird when people bring politics into football discussions. Let’s keep it either inane or about Arsenal, or both. Abuse at us is fine too, but there are other places to talk about the admittedly unhappy events in the Middle East.

Briefly, my thoughts on the Plymouth game: quite a nice victory, all things considered, and I disagree with Grabs’ thoughts on our defence, which I thought actually looked not unsolid, particularly Djourou, who makes me happier every time I see him. An example of a player who’s visibly maturing with responsibility. Could be a great asset for years to come. And Sagna, who has become my favourite Arsenal player. What a little champ he is.

The same could not be said of Nicklost Bendtner, who refuted much of his bold chat about leaving in the transfer window for first team football with a performance which, uniquely for a player in his position, withdrew him from the shop window. Given ample opportunity to score, he chose simply to thump it over the bar, miskick it or simply air-shot. The closest he got in the first half was his attempted clearance which almost flew into the roof of Fabianski’s net. Then, in the second half, he decided the best thing he could do was, rather than score a goal, simply attempt to claim something that was clearly an own goal, to the extent where he fooled his own announcer.

The muppet.

Ditto Aaron Ramsay, who was pretty anonymous I felt even though Brian Glanville, in all his quasi-senile wisdom, thought otherwise. Nasri was the real star, and Diaby in his own Diabyish way. We’ve all got to hold hands and pray that Nasri stays fit forever, because otherwise we have almost no creativity. It’s interesting that for all of the last few games he’s started wide and moved gradually inside – almost as if he’s naturally tending towards his true role. It would be nice to see him start there, and then see how the team is reconstructed with that in mind.

A word on the ITV highlights on Saturday, also, actually three words, as in ‘what the fuck’. Some points to consider:

1)      Never in the field of introductory television displays has such a rubbish montage of penalty shootouts and a CGI construction of a giant FA Cup been made. Also there is no need to show draws between non-league sides in all their extensive non-glory. Let them be.

2)      Alan Curbishley and Robbie Earle’s vapid chatter does not, by even the loosest understanding of the term, constitute punditry. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but why do people think that ex-players or managers make the best pundits? One job involves kicking a ball, or telling people to kick a ball. The other involves offering interesting and articulately-expressed points about the nuances of the game in a manner pleasing to the TV audience. An ability to do one of these jobs does not automatically lead to the other, just as being good at Su Doku puzzles does not make you a good lover. 

Rant over.

Some more piffle about Arshavin et al on the feeds today, but I’m not sure it’s worth bothering with. He would be such an unusual target, even if we needed a wide player, that I really don’t think it’s worth worrying about. Arsene has never gone for the obvious buys, and I doubt he’s about to start now.