4 Dec 2010

Afternoon Arsenalists and Arsenalista's!

Apologies that today's installment is a little late, having to stay up to report on the current Ashes series has serious destroyed my internal bodyclock! But I've got my bacon sandwich with me and we're ready to crack on!

Match day today, we're playing Fulham and hoping to improve our currently woeful home record. Considering that Fulham have not beaten us at home since 1914, we should be looking at this as 3 points in the bag. We're still without Thomas Vaemaelen, who is easily our best centreback at the moment, Mooney is still out of course and of course Cese is still out but its a pretty fit first team squad apart from that.The absence of Cesc should easily be filled by Nasri who continues to make an excellent start this season.

Onto what the papers are saying...
Chamakh has been saying how his great start to the season has been helped by the fact that he came on a free transfer. " If I had been bought for £18million, different things would have been expected from me at the start", the lad's spot on there. When we see players coming in for £12-18 million it's automatically increases a fan's expectation of a player. Chamakh's free transfer meant we were all expecting just another squad player, yet another Frenchman who would take a season or two to settle into the pace of the Premier League. But his aerial strength and ability on the ball has quickly endeared him to all of us at the Arsenal. Good luck and hope he keeps its up!

Another of our revelations this season has been the development of Jack Wilshere. He's stated that "We're all desperate. The main thing we want to win is the Premier League", well done Jack, it's good to know that the team realises that us fans have had enough of hearing about this teams potential and considering the size of our wage bill, we all our expecting at least some piece of silverware this season. Success breeds success! Let's hope we can take the Carling Cup and this will provide even more of a springboard to get the team to believe we can win more.
On a side note on Jack it's nice to see he's got a sense of humour. His tweet this week suggesting Ryan Babel should come to Arsenal gave us all a laugh! We're overfilled with midfielders who think they should be strikers so the thought of adding a player who's been nothing more than a bench warmer at Liverpool gave us all a bit of Christmas cheer and warmth to counteract the current Winter chills!

Whilst on the subject of being over-staffed in the midfield department, IMscouting (that woefully sh*t site full of nothing more than people making up stories) suggests we're looking at German midfielder Marco Marin and Mexican keeper Ochoa. IMscouting, along with talksport, are the biggest purveyors excrement since London Zoo stopped selling elephant dung by the tractor full. I would LOVE if someone totted up the number of supposed 'exclusive' moves they've reported and how many have actually happened. I'm more inclined to believe George Bush Jnr. has admitted he's nothing more than a monkey placed in a suit and strategically shaved, than believe anything that these two sites say.
The Mirror's saying we're looking at Villarreal's keeper Diego Lopez, from what I've seen of Lopez he's a good, solid keeper. Though I do stand by what I said yesterday and that I believe Wenger when he says he's not going to bring in anymore players in the January transfer window. Possibly one for a end-of-season transfer if Fabianski continues to wax hot and cold in his performances.


The Daily Mail are saying Aston Villa boss Gerard Houllier is looking at buying Thomas Ro-SICK-y from us. This I've can believe is a half-truth. Gerard and Arsene are old friends and Rosicky after his perennial injuries woes has struggled to show the form that made the German media once dub him "Mozart" and subsequently has seen himself fall down the midfield pecking order. If he does go I don't think we'd buy someone to replace him. Lansbury, JET and Ramsey (whose current loan at Notts Forest is due to expire in January) are all biting at the heels of the first team. Wenger's far more likely to give one of these a crack at the whip in the first team and hopefully one of them would emulate Wilshere's development and cement a place in the first team for themselves.


Well that's your lot for today. Our game against Fulham is not on any of the British channels so I'll be following on the radio (I do love following football matches on the radio, makes one feel a connection to those generations of football fans past for whom it was the mainstay of their ability to follow the fortunes of their clubs!). To all of you overseas, if you are lucky enough to have television coverage of the match ENJOY! Should be an easy one (famous last words I know.....)


The Afterthought.