Victor Wanyama looks like Essien. Which means he's good...
Morning Gooners! Apologies for the late post, it’s Sunday, I’m still recovering from watching a lot of womens volley ball last night. My gosh, aren’t those girls athletic? So, so athletic. Oh, and technically athletic… sorry, I mean gifted.
Just on the Olympics, I thought it was disgraceful to see empty seats for the swimming. I read that it was corporate tickets that hadn’t been fulfilled. Absolutely awful / predictable. Even more disgraceful is a stat Geoff flew my way… apparently these major sponsors only funded 15% of the games. Nice one. 15% of the game and we’re talking about banning people who wear rival labels and we’ve literally bent over and rolled out the royal red carpet for them with ticket allocations and Olympic lanes. Outrageous.
That said, London is a great place to be right now. That opening ceremony absolutely blew me away. Everyone in the bar watching it with me felt the same. I’ve never known the capital so unified. I hope the rest of the world enjoyed it. Amazing how much negative sentiment you get online when you state you’re proud to be British. I’m sure if some of the verbal I’ve had in my direction was being sent out by me I’d be in the dock like John Terry. Anyway, it was a great opening, let’s hope the rest of the games can match it.
Anyway, back onto the football. We’re playing Kitchee FC this morning. Good times, I’m actually going to watch this one. The line up looks like this:
Szcz; Eastmond, Djourou, Miquel, Gibbs; Coquelin, Diaby; Walcott, Ox, Miyaichi; Chamakh.
I’m looking forward to seeing Miyachi and Coquelin. I’m also looking forward to seeing Diaby play. Has he improved by watching hour upon hour of Patrick Viera videos? He’d be have done…
This whole tour has been pointless from a playing perspective. It’s more for pushing our brand. I wouldn’t read too much into what’s going on. The real training is happening back in London. We’re watching the fringe squad playing.
Rumours that have been making me happy are that we’ve officially lodged a bid for Cazorla. Now the ball is in the Malaga court. Hopefully we can tie that up nice a sharpish. I’m also excited to hear the growing rumours around Sahin. Like Geoff has alluded to, the days of Madrid and Barca having their way with the banks are coming to an end. Spain is dying as a country, so favours and let offs will likely be a thing of the past. If we can nab him for a favourable fee, we’ll be looking like serious contenders next season… on the proviso Steve Bould can turn individual talent in a unified beast of a back four.
The final rumour of the day comes from Scotland. Apparently we’re looking at Victor Wanyama of Celtic. He’s a defensive midfielder and would come at a cost far lower than the £25million quoted for M’Vila. I’m glad we’re still being linked with defensive midfielders and this one might carry some weight as it’s from The Sunday Times.
Right, that’s it, more of a post tomorrow morning. Have a great day, enjoy the game!
[twitter-follow screen_name='LeGrove' show_count='yes']
P.S. We’re one nil down already… a shocking bit of defending from Miquel.
santos will play well next season
it looks like grovers don’t appreciate what they have
only dreaming of new signing
i liked thomas eisfeld and chuks aneke
they won’t cost 30 millions, only a bit of time to motivate them for first team football.
i figure if you’re fit enough to play, you’re fit enough to be tackled.
and i guess its lucky he was too unfit to play for team gb, the senegalese might have ended his season before it even started.
diving crybaby
http://www.goal.com/en/news/9/england/2012/07/29/3274246/tottenham-winger-bale-charlie-adam-is-a-coward
Pedro
We better be celebrating tomorrow
Wenger: Park, Squillacci and Bendtner will surely be on their way out and Arshavin might still have a future.
Nuri Sahin wants an option to buy at the end of his loan spell at Arsenal and Cazorla has no buyers but Arsenal and the club sell tomorrow.
Podolski Giroud would be eased in to the Premier League and won’t start straight away.
Bendtner out, Podolski Giroud don’t start. What’s that telling me? Van Persie is staying bitches.
sadam,
btw, south korea beat switzerland 2-1 and guess who scored?
if i have to choose one striker between the 3 dead woods i will pick park.i am sure he wouldn’t mind being our 3rd or 4 striker.
arshavin is useless and chamakh played 3 pre-season games no goal.
Sadam – Pray tell where you’ve read/heard that?
Arsenal is a joke. We are shambles defensively. This tour couldn’t have exposed that any clearer. Contrary to what people say, it’s not centre backs we lack, it’s fullbacks. Our fullbacks (except sagna) are woeful. Man city won us basically bcos of their awful efending. ANd what has wenger done Or is doing to rectify the situation? Nothing. Jeez. God hep us this season!!!
I don’t think Chamakh touched the ball yesterday.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with the guy: he looks like we’ve plucked him from a pub team, although to be far if we had, at least he’d show some spirit.
Guys like this are a cancer to the club. I hope that once we realise we can’t sell them, then we just look to give them away.
Also, our back-up defence is truly shocking.
Let’s hope some of these signings actually come off or we are in big trouble next year.
Twitter speculation probably and some quotes in the Daily Mail about Bendtner, Park and Squid ‘on their way to go somewhere’ , about Arshavin’s future being 50-50 but remains to be seen that anything will happen anytime soon or ever.
Brazil for gold in the Olympic football? Spain look unprepared and unmotivated compared to many other countries., Individually they are almost equally talented to Brazil and then you have Uruguay faltering. I doubt GB will end up with many golds in these Olympics the competition seems so high and well trained many athletes are happy with getting to the final or any medal out of Silver/Bronze to add to the medal tally.
It may just be the Olympics but Neymar is showing off all his incredible individual talent along with a good team ethic/workrate at his age, Barca/Madrid can’t be his only options though?
The only youngster who’s impressed me during this tour is Eisfeld. The others are not good enough……. at least not yet. I’m talking about Bartley, Miguel, Eastmond, Jenkinson, Coquelin, Afobe, Miyaichi, Aneke, All these guys should be LOANED out. Our EPl games should not be used as training sessions for them to learn their trade. I hope for the the sake of our season that wenger realises this. I must say though that Nico has impressed me at right back everytime i’ve seen him.
And what happened to lansbury? was he part of the team?
Eisfield looks far more composed on the ball than anyof the other mid fielders. Song is disturbingly off balance everytime he gets the ball. Chuks Aneke has impressed too but his passing is a little bit on the conservative side.
Also I feel Miquel has huge potential. His positioning is good, good on the ball and plays 1-2 passes around the box better than many other players we have.
The day Theo loses half a yard of pace, it will be funny watching him go nowhere along that wing. Koscielny + Mertesacker is the 1st choice for me, need a better left back than Santos, and right back than Jenkinson, Midfield with Sahin, Gervinho, Podolski and Song should be fine for now, although the lack of a proper play maker worries me. We definitely need better options in striking department though.
From now till end of transfers we need at least 3 players imo. Cazorla, beast of a defensive mid and one top top class striker.
Sorry Miguel to small for pl. when will you people learn. Samba looks like going to qpr for 8m. Qpr will finish above us in the league next year.
Loan Ramsey out and give Eisfeld his spot on the bench, more hope for him.
Sam you’re delusional, Park and Santos? Ambition, you’ve dropped it somewhere.
We need all of the 2-3 rumoured signings this week. Leave them at Colney to get fit with Bould whilst the youngsters to to FC Koln.
Arsene has a Diaby for Jenkinson and Gibbs so we wont see them going. M’Vila is our best hope for a better defence, someone to wipe their mouths when they spill all their food around their gobs.
Lord, Jenkinson really is awful. No brain, get’s caught out of shape, wrong sided constantly, grabs players when he’s next to them. Grab Gareth Bale and he’ll go down saying you tried to end his career….seriously though Carl will give away a lot of free kicks and a few pens.
C’mon Bacary, get up off your arse!!
Also don’t really like the huge number of passes we make throughout our game to the overlapping full backs. They add really very little to our attacks and deflect attention from the fact that our attack build up through the middle is frustratingly slow.