Up For Grabs Now

So we’re in the thick of non-Champions’ League midweekery. Wednesday, and still no match for 4 whole days. This must be how it feels to be a Spud quite a lot of the time – the sense that there’s a party going on, but it’s somewhere else and you weren’t invited. What do Spuds do to pass the time? They moan a lot. So let’s give that a go…

Today the party’s being hosted by a former Arsenal party-goer, Lassana Diarra, who is on his way to Real Madrid. Ramos was obviously admiring him when he should really have been admiring the many many goals flying past Hero Gomes into the Cocks’ net. The fee looks like it’s going to be well north of £18m which is quite clearly insane (please say there was a sell-on clause? Please?) and demonstrates again the guile with which Wenger must navigate the current transfer market. Anybody with any quality is going to go for vast pots of cash so you need to get in there quick.

If you look at it one way, Wenger has almost pulled an Anelka here. Signing a moaney kid for peanuts who could then be sold for bucketloads a few good games down the line. Just a shame we flogged him to Portsmouth in between. Like most Gooners, I may never understand the decision to let Diarra go. He wanted first team football in the run-up to Euro 2008 and Flamini was having a stormer. So LOAN him out! Don’t sell him. We loan everyone else, why make an exception for Diarra?

I’m not saying that Diarra’s Madrid move in itself means he is a great player or that he has somehow “made it” as a top class footballer (though he will probably turn into one pretty soon) – I don’t think he’s played enough top-class games yet. It’s just that if we had had him from the start of the season, I’m pretty sure we’d be top of the pile right now.

That’s probably enough moaning and wistful if-onlying for one morning.

Some cracking quotes coming from Arsene:

“I come from a little village of farmers where I was educated that when you earn £100 you do not spend £100. For me when you earn £100 and you spend £110 it is like cheating. A club must live within its own resources, not artificially supported. The economic crisis will force many clubs to rethink the way they are run. It seems too many believe football exists in a bubble, away from the financial crisis! Football depends heavily on the financial markets, sponsorship and television rights, all of which are suffering right now. Clubs will be affected, wages will come down, transfer fees must come down and there will be a bit of calm with the exception of clubs like Manchester City.”

The image of the miserly little 9-year-old Arsene flogging a range of promising piglets for £100, trousering £94 and spending just £6 on a little-known Iberian breed of young rabbits while muttering about the imminent collapse of cattle prices is an amusing one. Hold on, that’s our transfer policy!

From a purely Arsenal perspective, you’ve got to hope that he’s right and that the financial crisis will bite football’s saggy bottom pretty soon. If he is, then the harsher financial climate would certainly work in our favour, especially as we’ve clearly prepared for it. If he’s not, then we’ll be a bit stuffed as we’ll have been working within rigid spending limits on wages and transfers without having needed to.

Transfer Rumours: To illustrate just how hard our tireless journalists work on their transfer rumours (which we avidly devour day after day) I give you the BBC’s instalment for today. They report that the journalistic totem that is the Daily Telegraph has claimed that Arsene may replace serial sour-puss William Gallas with Le Mans’ Ivory Coast defender Gervinho.

Hold on. Have you been reading your own columns, BBC? You always, always link us with a move for Le Mans’ Ivory Coast attacker Gervinho. Are you quite sure he is now a defender? Really?

Now, I know Arsene loves nothing more than a nice fan-goading out-of-position midfield (the Diaby-Song-Fabregas-Denilson one is his personal best – just one player in the right place!) and I know the best form of defence is said to be attack, but surely turning the free-scoring Gervinho into a defender before he’s even signed for us is a bit much?

Next thing you know we’ll be snapping up Jimmy Bullard as back-up to Almunia and bringing in Rafael van der Vaart to partner Gervinho at the heart of the defence. Speaking of van der Vaart – yes please, Arsene!

Update: the Daily Telegraph (which I don’t normally read, honestly) has just linked us with  a £3 million move for Vitesse Arnhem goalkeeper Piet Velthuizen. Apparently, the 22-year-old said he’d be up for a move to Arsenal, and also said: “I don’t just want to be a top ‘keeper, I want to be the world’s best.”  He also said he wants to be “that star up in the sky”, “that mountain peak up high” and ”that little bit of hope when your back’s against the ropes”. Don’t we all, Piet, don’t we all.

The grumpy rumblings coming from Arsene Wenger in his pre-match yesterday suggest to me that he has his bony professorial finger on the stuttering pulse of the bloated Arsenal Blogmonster and he doesn’t like the kind of guff he’s being subjected to. Yesterday it seemed like he’d had enough and decided to well and truly take the piss out of his haters using the official website.

“First off,” he tells his press secretary (we shall call her “Clive” for argument’s sake) ”Let’s have an article headlined “Why Bendtner Will Come Good“, replete with a cryptic explanation based on something to do with the amount of “pressure” the poor boy puts on himself. That’ll get them going for starters!” 

You thought he wasn’t trying at all? You thought he’d been taking motivational classes from Eboue? You couldn’t be more wrong! Nicklas’ current streak of banjo-wielding cow’s arse avoidance is because the poor boy’s trying way too hard. Stifling his own talent through sheer burgeoning effort. Scrapping for every ball, dashing blindly down every alley, constant hustle and bustle – that’s his game. Sure you might not notice it by, for example, watching him play, but that’s not the point here is it?

Not content with the outpouring of wrath this playful article inspires, Arsene scratches his gaunt professorial chin. He has an idea. “Clive!” he cries, leaping from his professorial chair. “Clive! I’ve got it.” He whispers his plan in Clive’s ear. She is visibly shaken.

“You can’t do that Arsene, they’ll go berserk! You know how sensitive they are about your transfer policy at the moment. The other day I read someone who honestly wanted you to buy back Igor Stepanovs just so that he could see photos of the shirt presentation on the Daily Mirror website. He said he’d take a decent shirt presentation ceremony over three points against Boro any day!”

“Oh yes I can do it,” replies Arsene gleefully. “And I will. Advertise a live question and answer session. Do it now. Call it something seedy, something slightly Babestation. How about “Exclusive Arsene Wenger Webchat“? Is that too obvious? A bit much? Oh, go for it then, we might as well go full-frontal on this one! And kick it off with something really tantalising. Something like “What have you always wanted to ask Arsene Wenger?“”

“Right. Now in about 3 hours I want you to put up another article saying “I won’t answer transfer questions“. And put something in about how good our youngsters are and how bright the future’s going to be – they absolutely hate hearing that. Those bastards will have been dead excited readying their lairy demands and idiotic recommendations – I want them to know I’ll be having none of it. They’re always just like [here Arsene affects high-pitched voice] ‘Ooh, Arsene, go and buy us Ronaldinho, yeah? Ooh Arsene, I can’t believe you sold Oleg Luzhniy he’d be perfect for our defence right now. Ooh Arsene, why don’t you sign Stewart Downing?” Well I can’t take any more of it!”

Enough of that, save to say that Arsene’s Friday wind-up went down an absolute treat. Next week you can look forward to headlines like “Wenger – Why Alex Song is an Arsenal Legend already” and “Wenger – why I wouldn’t sign Messi even if he came free with my Gardener’s World subscription”.

Boro today. Not a happy hunting ground of late. Especially galling is that we seem to keep conceding to Jeremie Aliadiere whose only notable quality is that he is supremely well endowed in the vowel department. Count them – 10 last time I checked.

Expect to see sudden recoveries from the likes of Captain Cesc, Sagna, RvP, Ade and Gael and for Djourou to retain his place in central defence. Also expect an afternoon packed with Out Of Position Diaby and Inappropriate Outbursts of Song. And Eboue. Yum, just what we Gooners love to see.

I’ll be making no predictions ahead of this one as there’s really no point. Suffice to say that as an impatient modern supporter I’m just about prepared to accept a repeat of our 7-0 duffing a couple of years ago. And if Eboue can pull off something like this, (intentionally or no) then all the better frankly.

Finally, we have again been linked with a move for the superbly named Sagna/Drogba hybrid Gervinho (an Ivorian forward at Le Mans who can also play on the wing). Real name? Gervais Yao Kouassi. Brazilian lineage? None. The guy has grasped the crucial fact that with a Brazilian sounding name and a lot of hair, you can make yourself instantly attractive to visiting scouts who have one eye on how this is all going to look when it comes down to a shirt presentation ceremony.

Sources close to Wenger report that should Gervinho sign in January, Arsene will insist that he change his name further to “Margervinho” to comply with his strict policy of only playing strikers whose names make reference to The Simpsons, though this will disappoint a section of fans who had been looking forward to having a player called Gervais, for obvious reasons.

Oh, and it’s Sp*rs-United later on, that most perplexing of fixtures for Gooners. Who do you want to lose more? Both of them, really. I’m hoping for a fractious draw, as many suspensions as possible and, if we’re really lucky, points deductions all round.