Not much actual news today unless you’re the type who likes to gloat at the failures of others. Such as how Chelsea lost 2-1 to Inter, were denied a clear penalty, and basically look like a team in utter disarray after weeks of silly personal scandals and injuries have rocked the side. Maybe you are one of the people who could bask in that or maybe you’re more of the type who likes to have a look at the Stoke v. Manciti match and wonder if Manciti haven’t gotten it wrong in firing ole whatshisface, the guy who used to strut around his technical area like a baboon looking for a mate. Personally I don’t care who manages their gay bar.* For me, I can get no chuckle out of the fact that Stoke, who basically are the Crazy Gang of this generation were allowed to maul a technically superior team for 120 minutes because Steve Bennett is an absolute disgrace of a referee. Rather, I just hope that they are a bit tired from the long shift they put in and that Arsenal get a referee who doesn’t basically give the game to Stoke on a silver platter.
You could also be tempted by Wayne Bridge’s amazing revelation today that he has called it quits on his England career because he can’t get over what John Terry did to him. With Cashley out banging more chicks than a screen door in a hurricane, and injured, England’s left back situation is so dire that the Independent is mooting Paul Konchesky for the spot. I can’t laugh at that, as much as I’d like to, because I always thought that the England squad would fall apart once they got to South Africa and it seem like they are conspiring to beat everyone to the punch.
So, like I said, there’s precious little actual news today. But there is plenty of speculation!
The biggest bit of speculation is that Robin van Persie might be ready to make an early April return for Arsenal. Sorry but for me a coach saying that he “can hear it in (van Persie’s) voice” that he’s getting better is a far cry from seeing Robin on the pitch a month. Arsenal are sending a team of physios to the Netherlands in order to do an actual assessment of Robin’s injury. I have no doubt that he will be healthy soon-ish and he will probably get a few games at the end of the season for Arsenal. Maybe he’ll be fully healthy when we play Bordeaux in Madrid for the Champions League final. Then he will go to South Africa and have Chiellini break his other leg and be out for all of next year as well. Come on, you know that’s how it will go down.
Just under that speculation comes the “news” that Arsenal are looking at several trialists and supposedly are ready to “swoop” for both. The first is Ajax’s Christian Eriksen who comes highly recommended by Dennis Bergkamp. Well, he is 18 years old, an attacking midfielder, and 5’8″ or so seems like a shoo-in for a Summer signing by le Boss.
The other kid is Ingolfur Sigurdsson who is currently on trial with Arsenal and is rumored to be picking us over Man U or Chelsea. This kid is so unknown that there isn’t even a wikipedia page for him yet. Of course he’ll sign with us, we’ll probably offer him £10,000 a week. More prospecting by the boss.
There is an actual adult who is rumored to be on his way over to Arsenal and that is Hull City’s defender/defensive midfielder Kamil Zayette. Who, it seems is plumping himself for a move to Arsenal, or Man U, or Chelsea in order to make Guinea proud. Well, he almost went to Tottenham or West Ham in January so naturally Arsenal must be interested, right?
Jesus, that story has less meat on it than a Chicken McNugget.
Well, I can say one thing for sure, Arsenal did sign someone today. Arsenal’s Champions League left-back and Top Gun, Tom Cruise, signed a contract extension!
This flurry of activity from Arsenal truly takes my breath away.
*This is a reference to the 2009/2010 season preview where I revealed that if I were to ever open a gay bar, I’d name it “Man City” and paint it periwinkle and gold.
Talking about Stoke this weekend:
http://backofthenet.wikia.com/wiki/Route_One_Football
February 25th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
“Route 19″ football. Hilarious. I love it.
Tim, I watched the Inter-Chelsea game. Chelsea was clearly the better team. Inter got lucky and scored in the 3rd minute then parked the bus. Chelsea is (unfortunately) not in disaray. The scoreline is misleading. And a 2-1 loss away is actually not bad given the away goal. The difference is that Inter may actually be able to squeeze a 0-0 in the return leg and get through. I don’t see Porto getting a 0-0 at the Emirates.
The other things I noticed in the Inter-Chelsea game:
-The referee did a good job managing the game. Only blemish is that he messed up the penalty call – I think because Kalou made too much of an acting job raising his hands while falling, etc. It should have been either a penalty or a yellow for Kalou for simulation. The no-call was the bad call. He actually gave yellow to Milito in the first half for comical diving in the box.
-Ivanovic is a great all-around player.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Kalou dived!! too much delay between mininal contact and going to ground!
Viva!
February 25th, 2010 at 9:12 am
I think so too. He should have had a yellow.
The funny thing about Eriksen is that his youth team was named “Midelfaart”. Sophomoric, I know. But it made me chuckle.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:01 am
@TheSKAGooner, I don’t think we’re above sophomoric chuckling!
Re: Inter-Chelsea: Lucio contained Drogba rather well. 1st goal I dont think was lucky. It was a tremendously quick interplay by snejder, eto’o and milito, who made a meal of JT, and shot to the near post. Drogba dived at least twice in the box, no yellow. Re: parking the bus, it wasnt by design, I think. Chelsea had the ball, and you know how they are. Inter defended well, and they have a decent GK.
Eriksen could become a great player. I’ve seen him play a couple of times at Ajax and he has great potential. After only a few games he’s one of the players who lead Ajax on the pitch. Incredible start of his Ajax career. No doubt under Arsene he will become even better. If it’s enough for our first team… hard to tell yet, but I would love to see him at Arsenal.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Sounds great. If Bergkamp likes him, then that should be enough for Arsene. To that point, over these last few years with all of us wondering whether Arsene would sign Huntelaar or not, I had failed to see any mention of someone like Bergkamp putting his stamp of approval on the player or urging Wenger to sign him. Maybe that’s not his style per se, but you’d think someone like Wenger has to talk to Bergkamp more than once a year, right?
while i dont think chelsea is an disarray, i dont think they were dominant yesterday either. the possesion stats are misleading. after the early goal, inter was quite content staying organized in defense and attacking when they saw an opening. the fact that maicon only came fwd 2 or 3 times during the game speaks for itself. for all of chelsea’s possession inter created the better chances. the penalty call might have been more obvious if kalou didn’t try to make a meal out of the contact – but certainly there was some contact and kalou’s fall was quite melodramatic. lucio was beast in defense and had drogba’s number all night – which kind of shows that there is no real secret to beating chelsea. if you contain drogba, you contain chelsea.
We need Chelsea to stay in the CL for the obvious reason that it could impact their title run.
I don’t blame Wayne Bridge one iota. Donovan can now have a field day down the England (R) side.
I’m glad that Kamil Zayette has such a high opinion of himself.
I hope Gallas and Eduardo will be available for Stoke. You can never have too many options off the bench.
Derby embarrassed themselves with how they were relegated. Any team that gets relegated this season will have to live with the knowledge that they go down with team suffering a 9 pt penalty.
February 25th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
@ctpa, We need a few more wives to come out & confess.
Hi all, now that Cech is out for a month hopefully this means they will concede a few more goals as their stand-in, Hilarious Hilario, looked a bit iffy, especially with his kicking.
February 25th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
@Chary, We could offer them a loan of Fabianski
Eduardo has a chance for Stoke if he trains well tomorrow. Diaby, Gallas, Arshavin maybe available for NEXT week.
I want to draw attention to this gutless, cowardly piece of tripe in the Daily Mail which is not surprisingly unsigned:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1253887/SPORTSMAIL-COMMENT-Wayne-Bridge–weak-men-dont-win-World-Cups.html
In the immortal words of Robbie Savage: “you haven’t played the game so you don’t know…”
With all that has happened to Wayne Bridge, he doesn’t deserve the criticism that been leveled at him from all corners including Martin Keown.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
@ctpa, What on earth?! He’s the victim in all this, and his action is justified.
Is JT immune to public ire?
I don’t see why he’s so fussed that his mate slept with his ex. Terry’s a bit of a man-whore, so it was bound to happen. Just sleep with Toni Terry, and then shake hands with Terry and that would be the end of it.
February 26th, 2010 at 4:37 am
@connolysagent, I suspect there maybe more to the the Wayne Bridge -John Terry saga than has been published.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/a/arsenal/8538568.stm
This is how a well run football club operates. One Arsenal blog site is raising a lot of nefarious issues about where this money is going and why, ie. to reduce our debt before a final Kroenke move.
February 26th, 2010 at 5:31 am
I just read LeGrove this morning after taking a quick glance at Arsenal’s financials. What I can say with definitiveness is that the point about clearing the debt for a Kroenke takeover makes no sense. If Kroenke wants to buy the club out, he would pay a certain amount of money for the entire enterprise. What I mean is that it doesn’t matter if the club has 200MM of debt and 100MM of cash or 100MM of debt and 0MM of cash on the balance sheet at the time of a hypothetical buyout. The equity holders would still get the same amount. So LeGrove is talking nonsensically about that issue. Not sure about their other points about where money from 5 years ago went.
My take on what the important highlights are (and I’m going to have to pore over this some more at work today):
-The Highbury Square debt is down from 35MM pounds to 13MM pounds in the last 6 months. It’s clear now the club will have profited nicely from this, although it took a bit longer.
-Unrestricted cash was up 10MM from the last statement to 80MM pounds.
-In terms of transfer kitty, I think a good stab at arriving at a figure would be looking at the unrestricted cash of 80MM and netting out the 45MM of debt that is due within one year. So at the moment, if I had to guess I’d say we have 30-35MM for the summer transfer market.
-Sales and profit are both up nicely year-over-year, though match/gameday revenue was down slightly (probably due to one or two fewer matches, or just the economy)
So I guess we should expect to go into next season with no Highbury Square debt and pretty much just the mortgage at the Emirates which is going down at a nice pace. Things are good, yes. It obviously can all change overnight with a dreaded leveraged buyout.
February 26th, 2010 at 5:51 am
If anything, paying down debt prior to a takeover by someone like Kroenke benefits only the SELLERS, not Kroenke himself. Kroenke would pay $X whether or not there’s 200MM of debt or 400MM of debt. It’d just be a matter of the equity holders getting more or less in the sale.
February 26th, 2010 at 6:09 am
@ArseChicago, yeah… well, Le Grove’s not the place you go for rational, well thought out criticism of the club.
In other good news, Adebayor has been handed a 4 match ban after a clash with Shawcross.
I hope Arsenal don’t forget that Shawcross is a sneaky bastard.