Up For Grabs Now

 Up For Grabs Now has exciting news: we’ve teamed up with our favourite purveyors of high-quality and innovative football t-shirts, Philosophy Football to provide an extra-special competition for you lucky readers.

Philosophy Football have franglaised ’Arsenal’ in tribute to Monsieur Wenger who has brought so much joie de vivre to the red half of North London. The design is inspired by the superb book Arsènal by Alex Fynn and Kevin Whichter, which is strongly recommended to anyone who prefers their Arsenal media to be high-quality and printed rather than low-quality and online.

The shirt is available from www.philosophyfootball.com we have 5 to be won in our February competition. To enter simply answer the following question:

What club was Arsène Wenger managing when he was appointed Arsenal Manager?

Send your answer to admin@philosophyfootball.com with full name, address and T-shirt size, with the subject heading ‘Up For Grabs Now competition’. Entries close 28 February. The site also has a host of good t-shirts, both Arsenal and general, perfect for the discerning football fan (i.e. all of you lot who read our superior guff).

In other news, we’re becoming increasingly erratic. Whilst before Up For Grabs Now was a haven of daily rubbish, we now concentrate the rubbish into gobbets every other day. As we get back into the football proper this will change. But for a while I hope you’ve enjoyed this little rest as much as Arsene seems to have.

This is all the more true since at the moment there is basically nothing going on to talk about, particularly since I refuse to discuss Andrei Arshavin until something happens for sure or not. I’ve already said I’m not sure what he’ll bring to the table, and from that point of view I’m happy the club seems unprepared to pay over and above the odds for him.

I’m more surprised that we haven’t brought in someone to shore up the middle, but then again the existing players aren’t as far off as people seem to think, and there hasn’t been much in the transfer window (aside from Man City and their comedy purchases).

Speaking of which, given that they’ve bought him I’m amazed that nobody, to my knowledge, ever mentioned Nigel de Jong as a prospective Arsenal target. About the right price and pedigree. Anyone know anything about this? Would he have been a good Arsenal player?

To continue our ‘laugh at Tottenham’ trend I found this little nugget of brilliance from ‘Onest ‘Arry on MSN:

Redknapp added: “He’s the only goalkeeper I’ve got and this is a football club that has been put together by I don’t know who and I don’t know how.It’s a mish-mash of players with people playing where they want to play. It’s scary.

Our love of Tottenham Hotspur condenses in the final sentence: ‘It’s scary’. Quite right ‘Arry, and we’re all delighted you’re on board to escort this mish-mash all the way into the Championship. Harharhar.

Now for Kung-Fu Panda. Come on the Arsenal for Cardiff tomorrow – we’ll have a full preview later, but I’m hoping there are some opportunities for the youngsters, and fingers crossed a returning certain E. da Silva…

First blog for a while. Things have become very busy down UFGN towers, as we are in negotiations with Manchester City, who have offered us half a million euros to blog for them for a week. We said no, because we want to be blogging about a team in the Champions League and not some moron-managed relegation hopefuls.

Then first things first. Hands up if you love Robin van Persie?

I certainly do. I’ve been banging on to anyone who will listen (and quite a few who won’t) about our need for penetrative players, and RvP (crude rape-allegation jokes aside) has stepped up and started to provide it. One of the things people often forget about Thierry was how many goals he made, as well as scored, and that kind of consistent final-ball provider is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been lacking, maybe since he left…

In response to Grabs’ comments about Eboue, I can only reiterate my belief that he knows What Arsene Did Last Summer, and in the face of this fact all of the various comments people have been making about his ‘use as a utility player’ and his ‘ability to play everywhere’ seem a little ridiculous. They also seem ridiculous because I have never seen Eboue play at centre-back or in goal, and also never in the centre of midfield for more than ten seconds or up front. So when people say ‘he can play in any position’, they really mean ‘he can play anywhere in the peripheral positions where his calamitous defensive howlers are slightly less likely to lead immediately to the concession of a goal, and his attacking ineptitude is likely to be glossed over because he might not be the person who finally loses the ball.’

Anyway. Rant over. For the time being.

This Arshavin saga goes on and on as well. I have no idea why we’re even talking about buying him. It’ll create all sorts of headaches. For instance what will our dream formation be? At the moment, with everyone fit, I think we look a bit like this:

Almunia

Sagna Toure Djourou Clichy

Walcott Fabregas Rosicky Nasri

Van Persie Adebayor

Subs: Fabianski/Denilson/Diaby/Bendtner/Vela/Wilshere/Ramsay

This is my preference, but I’m naturally attacking-minded from my childhood in the Marines, and don’t see why Rosicky and Fabregas can’t play together. Some of you no doubt will think that it looks a bit flimsy in the middle, but Nasri and Cesc can both tackle, and no doubt Rosicky and Walcott could be encouraged to as well. And swap one of Nasri or Rosicky for Denilson and you’re sorted.

But that, on paper, is a midfield which can do a lot of penetrating. Where does Arshavin play? Whilst it’s always nice to have players, I just don’t see why we need to spend £18m on a player who might not add anything, particularly when it looks as if we’ve got quality coming through for the foreseeable future…

There’ll be more on this in the next couple of days, one would imagine. Then we get to start worrying about football again. Which will be nice.

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.

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.

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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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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.

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.

Afternoon all. Many apologies for the tardiness of the post – I was returning from the land of rural dial-up, where I went armed with the wrong shape of cable. Idiot. Anyway, normal service should now be resumed on UpForGrabsNow, taking you through the transfer window and beyond into Arsenal’s 2009. Will be great to have you along for the ride.

I’ll start today by simply drawing out a number of things that Wenger said at his pre-match press conference this lunchhour. At the end of the day, I can blog until I’m blue in the balls, but it’s The Word of Wenger which actually matters. He was predictably barracked on transfer strategy and raised some points which regular readers will recognise as familiar from the ideas we’re always rabbiting on about on this blog:

“I believe that what we want to do is not basically linked with money – I read some ridiculous amounts of money that are completely crazy.

Quite right too. I’ve always said it. All this “we need to spend big” chat is just witless tabloid garbage, which we can do without at Arsenal FC, thanks very much. Back to Arsene:

“When I accepted to stay I knew what would be available and what kind of restrictions would be existing. I deal with that and have no regret and no imagination about how much money is available. What is most important is the Club has built a new stadium and we live in a very strong and healthy situation financially.”

Sounds like we don’t have much of a transfer pot and possibly didn’t have in the summer either. If this is the case then PHW has been telling big porkies. It would also put blogs like Le Grumble to shame, always whinging about Wenger’s apparent refusal to spend. If it just wasn’t available then that’s a whole new barrel of badgers, and Wenger’s loyalty is all the more admirable.

“How many clubs have managed to build a new stadium, have a good financial situation and continue to play at the top? This team is together getting stronger and stronger but what we need to focus on is continually developing and not live in dreamland where we are linked with players of £30-£40million because that’s not realistic.”

It’s nice in that Dreamland, isn’t it? I’ve been there once or twice myself and it was lovely. A youthful Johann Cruyff signed for £497 million, pulled on an Arsenal shirt and nutmegged me before thrashing the ball past Van Der Sar. It was great.

“Chelsea haven’t built a stadium and they lose £100million per year. How do you imagine you can deal with that at Arsenal Football Club without going bankrupt? We have to be responsible.”

And here comes the bombshell. The Big One. The Big Moan that has grown and grown this season got popped, as quickly as it took Arsene to say:

“It is not that we don’t want to spend. I believe that we have gone for a policy and we need to have a logic and a line of conduct inside the Club that has to be respected. We have gone for a policy that is to develop our young players and we have to show some character and strength and not listen to everybody who comes out every day with a new name.”

This suggests Arsene did consider using the Online Community (as that linked article suggests) in dictating his transfer policy, but on balance has decided against it. Probably a wise decision.

 ”If you look at the best players we have had over the years – in the last 10 or 12 years – we have always played at the top. The best players who have made a massive impact here are not always the ones who have cost £30-£40million. I can cite you players in the last 10 or 15 years who have cost £30million and have been a flop. It is not necessarily linked that you spend £30million and get a massive player.”

We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep on saying it: it’s quality we need, not headlines.

Wenger also talked about Arshavin, rather coyly, as seems to be his approach to this particular transfer saga, unlike Arshavin’s tired old whore of an agent who has been flagrantly exposing the transfer-market equivalent of his diseased genitalia all over the red-tops all week. We’ll be calling Andrei a Gooner in a couple of weeks for about £8 million, I reckon.

Finally, Arsene admired Mikel Arteta but said there had been “no enquiry at all about him”. Unlike his flat denial of interest in Shay Given,this doesn’t rule anything out, and it would be nice if we would enquire about Arteta wouldn’t it? It would be even nicer if we offered them a grubby fiver and some of Eboue’s old y-fronts and they accepted with open arms. It is the credit crunch and all that, isn’t it?

Happy the day after the no blog day. Sorry about that, all. Myself and grabs both found ourselves inconvenienced around the UK yesterday. We hope you didn’t find it too traumatic an experience.

Also Happy New Year to you all, on the off chance that there is anybody reading this and not swimming in afterbeer, I salute you, and apologise for the random and gossipy nature of all things Arsenal.

However, since this blog was established to bring you the finest in eloquent Arsenal twaddle on a daily basis, it would be rude not to say something.

The feeling for Arsenal fans today, as all chaotic hell begins to unleash, is something like being on a small Caribbean island with no boat as a hurricane slowly approaches. For the time being it’s quite calm and pleasant, and there’s a miniature umbrella in your drink, but the winds and rain are starting.

Only in this case the winds and the rain are transfer stories and wild speculation about the future of Arsenal players.

The big news is that Kolo Toure has apparently had a transfer request turned down by the board. A very strange story given what we know of Kolo, but perhaps not surprising. He must feel a bit like he’s lost his mojo at Arsenal, and centre backs are such funny players – rock solid one minute and then not the next.

You can see why we wouldn’t want him to leave, but at the same time how many players that you know want out can you afford to have on your side at any moment? Mind you we super-really can’t afford to have Toure and Gallas go at the same time, so perhaps the refusal is holding out to see if Gallas goes. If he doesn’t then maybe the board will feel better about letting Kolo follow his heart.

Other than that it’s the usual codswallop about people coming and going, none of which I’m prepared to take too seriously. The newspapers have begun doing their thing where they put little boxes for every club talking about who needs to be bought and sold.

None of them say anything interesting, although I wonder if the fact that every newspaper is now linking us with Arteta is anything to do with Arseblogger’s championing of him the other day.  Journalists are not a hard-working bunch, as a rule, and around Christmas time they are particularly lazy (does it frustrate anyone else how crap newspapers are around this time?), so it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I for one am still hoping we buy a wide player as well as a central player (and possibly now a defender too). But not Arshavin. Too expensive, and too bad.

The other funny thing is how they all claim Manchester City have unlimited money to spend, which just isn’t true. No matter how much oil they might have, these guys are not going to simply chuck unlimited cash at the team, particularly not at Mark Hughes. They’ll buy some players, certainly, but I’m not sure it’ll be as wild as everyone seems to think. The price of oil has fallen dramatically of late, too, and everyone’s feeling a bit more careful about that sort of thing.

The other story is that Wenger will go to Madrid. Not a chance in France, if you ask me, which is somewhat ironic because one of the few other jobs Arsene might take is the France national team. He’d hate the lack of control at Real – he can do whatever he wants at Arsenal, even if sometimes it seems like it’s not what the fans want. But it’s a good scare story.

Have a good day off. 

Unbeaten in six, back in the top four, Denilson hitting some form and with a run of nine very winnable games stretched out in front of us, right up until Roma in late February, perhaps it’s not so bad to be a Gooner after all?

It’s felt like a crap Christmas week from an Arsenal perspective, though I did get some sweet retro Adidas boots for Crimbo, which made me feel a bit better and will doubtless lead to countless hopeless Van Persie impersonations in the park. I always find that my legs aren’t quite bendy enough for this sort of thing.

But suddenly we’re eking out gritty victories over teams led by club legends and Arsene’s chuckling benignly and knowingly when asked about the prospect of us signing exciting, creative new players like Arshavin. Sure, he’s not naming names and for all we know he may actually have lined up Titus Bramble to bring a bit of sparkle to our attack (remember: a good player can play anywhere), but still, his flirty giggles and naming of no names has got us all going a bit, hasn’t it?

In that Sky interview, Wenger alarmingly pointed out that “3 points were requested today“. What? Does that mean that all this time we’ve been fretting away, all we needed to do was ask nicely every week and Arsene will pass on this request to the lads, who will grumpily oblige with a scrappy win? If only we’d realised sooner!

I’ve written a short play which explores some of the issues managers like Arsene must face at this testing, formative period of their lives.

Act One, Scene One

[The Emirate's Stadium at night. Arsene is wearing an inelegant puffa jacket and trying to avoid Geoff Shreves. The Arsenal fans' lines are shouted from off-stage in ghostly tones.]

Us: Who do you fancy, Arsene?

Arsene: No-one. I’m not telling.

Us: You fancy Andrei, don’t you Arsene?

Arsene: (blushing) No. I so totally do not fancy Andrei.

Us: Yes you do! Yes you do! Yes you do! [Sings] Arsene fancies Andrei! Arsene fancies Andrei!

Arsene: No I don’t! No I don’t! [Pause]. Do you think I should let him know how I feel?

[Blackout]

… to be continued.

Serious analysis: From Wenger’s manner and his comments to CanalPlus, I would bet the family cat that we are getting pretty close with Arshavin. Something in the Sky interviewer’s voice suggested that Arsene might just have told him something rather interesting immediately before the interview. BUT, the tabloid (and broadsheet) insistence on a £20million fee is, I believe, complete bollocks. If he was 23, had won the Euros for Russia and we were in a bidding war with Madrid, Chelsea and Milan, then I can see how he might command this sort of fee.

As it is, he had flashes of brilliance at the Euros, an impressive Uefa cup and has failed to win himself a move to a top European club despite openly prostituting himself on the market and sulking for the last six months. His contract’s up in the summer and nobody (apart from Tottenham, obviously) has shown serious interest in him. Get him for between £5-10 million, I say.

That said, my affection toward’s the family cat isn’t what it once was, and I still wouldn’t be that surprised if the whole Arshavin thing turned out to be tabloid bluster which Arsene playfully won’t quash any more (though he seemed to do just that last week). What his comments show for sure is that he’s after a creative midfielder. I’d throw Van der Vaart (who’s unpopular at Madrid) and Arteta (who’s way too good for Everton) into the mix, though it would have been better for us if Arteta hadn’t scored that brace yesterday, as he’s actually had a poor season by and large by his standards.

By most people’s reckoning, that leaves us with a defensive midfielder and a central defender still on the shopping list. Arsene has hinted at wanting another midfielder, but hasn’t mentioned a defender. Hmmm. Perhaps all we need to do is ask politely? Who should we ask for then? Upson?