Saturday 11 July 2009

All quiet on the Gooner front


Well, ho hum, not much appears to be happening at the moment, I have decided to make a conscious effort not to link to rubbish stories as this merely increases their traffic which is precisely what they are after, the likes of Piers 'lowlife' Morgan and the Sun rely on this kind of reality which is pretty damn lame in my opinion. The Sun was particularly guilty of more low quality journalism recently as they spun some very sensible Almunia comments into a rather twisted sensationalist story, in actual fact Almunia has only said we need more experience in the squad, shock horror, what a sensationalist thing to say!

The links to Blaise Matuidi continue. He has played for St Etienne for the past couple of years and Gilles has apparently recommended him to Arsene. Skysports were reporting that he had been shown around the Arsenal training ground last week, so if something is to happen I would expect it to happen before next weekend at the latest. I think signing players at this stage of their career is much more sensible than signing someone who has just hit the big time in terms of media recognition. One inevitably pays massively over the odds for the likes of Melo despite the fact that he really doesn't have much experience of European football, someone like Matudi has three years of first team football under his belt and if you can snap this kind of player up just before their fee hyper-inflates, then this is much better business. Stan Kroenke has upped his share stake to just over 28%.

I would urge anyone who has ever bought a copy of the Sun or the News of the World to read the Guardian today and have a look at Channel 4 news exclusive story last night. Obviously one has to be very careful with what one says but one should never forget the power that we have as consumers. If we see a company behaving in a quite disgraceful and unethical manner then simply don't buy their crap, if everyone did this then quite a few scumbags would be out of business pretty soon. It is fairly typical of these big companies to use a lot of money to hire a lot of lawyers in order to cover up various illegal acts. Rupert Murdoch, that lovely man, is refusing to comment on this issue. I'll leave you all to make up your own minds as to whether the News of the World was knowingly and systematically hiring people to tap into phones in order to gather a bit of celebrity gossip. Just don't ever buy the Sun or News of the World.

Our first game of the pre season is next weekend against the mighty Barnet, the bigger games start just over a week after this one. As a result I am sure Arsene will be looking to bring in any new signings within the next couple of weeks. On a positive note RVP's new contract is great news, I also had time to listen to his interview on Arsenal TV and it really was heartening stuff. RVP seems genuinely really happy at the club and his family are very happy in London, he also seems to exude a confidence in the players and manager that will definitely help breed success at the Club. RVP rates Vermaelen and thinks Arshavin will get even better after a proper pre season. There are a lot of ifs and buts at this stage, but if we can get and keep Rosicky and Eduardo fit, if we can bring in one solid central midfielder, if we can keep hold of our big experienced players, then we have a great chance of making some real progress.

1 comment:

Ted said...

no news is good news i say. i can't wait for some footy....