Let’s see if I can make a coherent blog today with this hugemongous hangover and a two year old running around the house singing “daddy! daddy! daddy! I want robot!”

Uhh…

The other day I wrote that I thought that the dot com uses the “transfer linked” articles as a means of soft denial that there is real interest on the club’s part in whichever player is being “transfer linked.” So, for example, Pape Diakhate has been widely reported as an Arsenal target and yet never been “transfer linked” and the same is true with Joe Hart and several others. So, why is the dot com picking some folks and not others for their feature? Why not just reprint all the gossip columns in their entirety and be done with it?

I brought this up once before on the blog and at the time I mentioned that this idea actually came to me from a discussion with a friend of mine who works for the dot com. I complained to him about how I thought the transfer linked stories were beneath us and he responded with this theory. He made sure that I knew this is his PERSONAL theory, not an official “theory” of the site, but his personal belief. As he said, he didn’t even get a heads up when the club signed Chamakh so, it’s not like he or I have inside information.

That said, the club is intentionally picking and choosing which players they officially note as “transfer linked” and I think it’s pretty suspicious. If I were to be a cynic I’d just look at the list of names and say that in all likelihood Arsenal are just click whoring by repeating big names like Buffon, Cahill, Arteta, Jagielka, Schwarzer.. Did I just say Cahill was a big name? Christ, I am ill.

But even the cynic in me must admit that they aren’t just linking big names so something else is at work — Laurent Koscielny is hardly a household name, is he? And someone, somewhere, in the Arsenal hierarchy is approving these stories so there’s a good possibility that there’s something more than just click whoring at work.

Personally, I wish the whole thing would go away.

Speaking of going away, L’Equipe are reporting that Sevilla have spoken with Pape Diakhate’s representatives and are now negotiating with Dynamo Kiev over the price of the player. L’Equipe are a very trustworthy source so it’ll be interesting to see if a “transfer linked” story appears on the dot com soon.

Right, that’s your lot for the day. Can I go back to sleep now? I’ve got a pickup match in about two hours and I’m nowhere near fit to play.