Up For Grabs Now

So. Another FREE VIDEO on Arsenal.com of the lads in training. We’ve seen this before. And we dealt with it. Not many blogs saw the importance of that footage, but we did, and we shared it with you.

That video was all about an uplifting guitar score which ultimately drove our gigantic Togonian from the club. It offered clues as to the real reason behind his heinous attack on Van Persie’s face. And it instilled, in all of us, a new optimism.

So what to make of this afternoon’s effort?

Well, there has certainly been a seismic shift. Gone and forgotten is the kind of formulaic guitar nonsense that did for Adebayor. But that hasn’t meant a return to Ade’s favoured Togonian hip-hop about shopping. Anything Togonian is clearly musica non grata when it comes to the Colney playlist.

Instead, the players have started training to a bizarre, grungy, grimy sort of electro. Still pretty teenage, and so a good reflection of the fact that most of our bench look like they were born under a Labour government, but funkier, slicker and less objectionable than the sort of puff Arsene made the players jog about to earlier in the season.

As for the training itself, cause for concern, I think. Of course, no-one will admit to a crumb of complacency as we anticipate the visit of Alkmaar tomorrow. But you have to say that a preparation which mostly involves a circle of players giggling in bibs as Emmanuel Eboue does keep-uppies with his backside does suggest a certain laxity may have crept in.

Kieran Gibbs looked baffled about all this, and must have been wondering what Fabio Capello would think if he saw the footage of Eboue and Song doing some kind of synchronised walking. Bad news for any World Cup dream to be associated with such behaviour.

And Boro Primorac looked absolutely furious throughout. And he appeared to be in charge of the whole sorry charade.

Certainly, Wenger wasn’t supervising anyone – he was off in a lonely corner of the pitch all by himself, engaged in a weird Sisyphean passing contest with the metal fence, something I’m sure we’ve all done, but which gets really annoying after a while when you realise that the fence absorbs most of the impact of the ball and it never really comes back to you as you want it to.

BREAKING NEWS: Beneath a picture of Abou Diaby rubbing his face with his shoulder, Arsene has compared his lanky but unpopular enforcer with a magnet.

This, he says, is why he is so attracted to the opposition goal (mostly made of air) and why he frequently appears to have no idea what’s going on, and why he’s never in the right place. All the other players have sat-nav. Diaby still uses a retro compass and a map Gilles Grimandi lent him a while back, but he’s magnetic, or the goal is, and so he’s permanently scrambled.

No idea what to do. Not the foggiest. Definitely not defend.

Arsene has explained that whereas most of us have even less idea of Diaby’s position on the pitch than the man himself, this is merely an interim period before he establishes himself as a fully fledged attacking midfielder. Or as a thoroughbred defensive midfielder. Or something.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Tags: Abou Diaby, Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, Boro Primorac, training video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.