Sweating out the summer

Not a lot of any substance has happened over the last few days, and it shouldn't be particularly worrisome that not much has happened, one can always read into things in a way that suits one's particular predetermined interpretation of events. It's also always sensible to think before opening one's mouth or writing down one's take on events, otherwise the product of our thoughts can be rather embarrassing, to say the least. Generalising and dividing arguments into 'you're either with us or against us' don't breed an environment for sensible adult debate. It's also rather amusing that some people cannot recognise satire, maybe I should forewarn people at the beginning of the piece next time?

The media can never be trusted, we've always known that, it's even the case with match reports, so when rumours are circulated about Arsenal being interested in certain players, even a three year old should have learnt to take these with a pinch of salt by now. Arsenal is a club that plays things by the book, so if the club speaks about a transfer then it's virtually always reliable, but this fact still doesn't stop some criticising the club for not indulging their unquenchable thirst for rumour. In my humble opinion we should not slag off our club, manager or players before their 'guilt' as it were has been proven beyond a kind of 'reasonable doubt', hence slagging off a player on the basis of one Sun article is not really fair game to me. We would do better to wait until the waters have cleared and then pass our judgement when the facts of a situation can be seen with relative clarity.

As I'm on foreign shores at the moment, it has given me a chance to see things with a bit of perspective, and in the cold light of day the current close season feeding frenzy looks all the more irrational to me. There's nothing wrong with a bit of speculation, indeed there's nothing wrong with sensible joined up criticism of clubs and managers, however shooting from the hip is not big and it's not clever, we should all try to get at least a slight grip on the facts of a story before letting rip.

Some rumours have more basis than others but it still would not be surprising if they came to nothing. Arsenal Football Club will be busy behind the scenes trying to make things happen, it's pretty obvious that only a small fraction of potential transfers become a reality, so the close season should be seen in this perspective. There's plenty of football on this summer, with plenty of our own in action, so why don't we just relax, soak up some sun and enjoy ourselves without getting too worked up by the latest dishonest creations of some tabloid hack? So let's have a bit more reasoned debate and a little less of the over aggressive reactionary ranting.