Modric rumours gather pace

I can confirm the Modric rumours are true, he has joined the notorious Nasri gang of treacherous little c*nts who care more for money than anything else in life, perhaps he should go to City to make up for Adebayor's departure? Who knows. I seriously feel a little sympathy for some Tottenham fans in this area, players like this are the scum of the earth in my eyes, they should show more respect to their contract and their fans.

Still it must be remembered that a significant number of Tottenham fans racially abused Adebayor when he played for us. By signing Adebayor on loan Tottenham may have also just lost any hope of clinging to that thing known as moral high ground, it will be amusing to see Spurs fans getting behind Adebayor, the very same fans that racially absued him, deep down they must remember what they sung at him and what a repugnant greedy piece of shite he is. Harry Redknapp has never heard of ethics or morals though, tax laws too for that matter.

What I can tell you is that our Champions League draw is not awful and not easy, somewhere in between as it most often is. It is terribly sad to see City get such a tough draw, my heart bleeds pound coins for them. Marseille are a solid side, French champions of 2010 and Dortmund are by far the best of the fourth pot teams, German champions damn it. Olympiakos make up the numbers and are by far the weakest side, still Athens will be a tough away fixture for sure. As long as we don't get complacent we'll have a great chance of going through.

On the transfer front it's just about six days to the hour to go until the window shuts, hopefully Arsene won't get his arm crushed in the process and will have already secured several quality signings before the deadline. There are a lot of rumours circulating tonight about Kaka and Hazard. Apparently the Kaka deal is almost done, Madrid just have to agree to pay about a quarter of his wages for the year long loan. Hazard is reported to have agreed terms and it seems that we are not far off in the bid department, about 25 million pounds may be enough. There are also rumours a la Gary Cahill. I take it all with a large bag of salt to be perfectly honest, but I cannot but hope that some of it is true.

A display of courage: Arsenal 2 Udinese 1

That was Sterling stuff. We were up against it tonight, the stinking tabloid hacks were sharpening their knives, we had a few injuries, we were away from home against a very strong side. A lot of people wanted us to fail tonight and we didn't, we showed a lot of strength and heart to come back from a goal deficit at the break, and proving worthy winners in the end.

Jenkinson remained at right back with Sagna at left back, Frimpong started in the middle of the midfield in the holding role with Song and Ramsey alongside him, Walcott and the immense Gervinho flanked RVP. The first half was a cracking spectacle, truly end to end stuff. Gervinho looked dangerous on the breaking, weaving this way and that, Theo's pace scared them. Di Natale was a theat, his movement excellent and he clearly has the snout for a goal. Udinese also had a lot of pace in wide areas, Sagna did not look comfortable in the left back slot.

Udinese took the lead just after Gervinho had teed up Theo for a great chance which was expertly saved by their keeper. A neat cross in was headed precisely into the top corner and in off the post by Di Natale, Szczesny had no chance, Djourou could have been closer, the midfield also were not protecting the centre backs adequately. We saw the half out and 1-0 down it was at the break, on came Rosicky for Frimpong, Song moving deeper to where he should always be.

The equaliser came early on in the second half, Gervinho skinned his man, cut back a delightful side footed cross, RVP did the rest. The second goal came courtesy of a great bit of pace from Theo, a lovely touch inside and a great finish. 2-1 and the game was done. In between those goals the useless referee had given the most ludicrous of penalties for the most accidental of handballs by Thomas Vermaelen, the extra UEFA officials proving their complete uselessness. The outstanding Szczesny made a terrific one handed save from Di Natale's kick, a key moment.

There were many other incidents, some pathetic diving from the Italian side, a nasty deliberate elbow that was missed completely by the pointless and useless extra UEFA men and several great pieces of defending from Tomas Rosicky. Rosicky's overall contribution was key, and the change in the midfield was so key because Song is not good enough in a more offensive position, he simply has to be told to stick just in front of the back four.

There were a lot of positives from the game tonight. Szczesny is looking better game by game, a brilliant goalkeeper already and he will only improve. Jenkinson really impressed for one so inexperienced, he concentrates well and never stopped running. The centre backs were decent, Sagna struggled at times positionally which is to be expected. Ramsey was tidy and grew as the game went on, Song was a player of two halves and the less said about the first half the better. Gervinho was the stand out performer, it was his cutting edge that turned the tie around for us. RVP and Theo put in solid shifts. Overall a great night's work, now for some signings Arsene!

Home impotence and mixtures of incompetence

Ignoring the current disaster that is our squad the the manager's failure to strengthen over the course of the summer, our home record has been a cause of concern for many months now and the Liverpool result yesterday was a continuation of this, and not a one off freak result.

Last season we only won 11 of 19 home league games, picking up 37 points in the process. Certainly reasonable home form, but nowhere near title winning, in contrast to our relatively superior away record. Interestingly we only conceded 15 home goals, not a bad record given the media's hype about our defending, while we scored just 33 home league goals. Interestingly last season's home record was rather similar to that of 2008/9, it let us down then too, only 31 goals scored and 38 points picked up at home.

The following things back even further, a trend become rather apparent as I shall demonstrated to you. Here are the goals scored at home and home points, season by season from 2002/3 to the present day:

Season - home goals scored - home points

2002/3 47 47

2003/4 40 49

2004/5 54 44

2005/6 48 45

2006/7 43 42

2007/8 37 47

2008/9 31 38

2009/10 48 47

2010/11 33 37

Maybe I am reading too much into things but it seems to be that we are struggling to open up teams at the Emirates and this is not a new thing. There are many factors at play here, a big one for me is the 4-3-3 formation, the way in which playing with a lone striker can leave that player a tad isolated and make it too easy for a team to sit back against us, park the bus and then hit us on the counter. For me we need wise up tactically, tempt teams out a bit more and play more counter attacking football as we used to with our last great side. Players like Henry and Pires were masters of the counter.

Yesterday summed this up, it was a very even game, one which we were genuinely unfortunate to lose, but no one could argue that we created enough in terms of clear goal scoring opportunities. Liverpool did defend well but we made it too easy for them. There was not enough support provided for RVP with the front three system, for the 4-3-3 to work properly we needed the wide forwards to play more centrally at times. I would like us to revert back to a more traditional 4-4-2 formation for some home games, the squad certainly needs more adjustment for this to occur though.

Liverpool didn't create much either though and they needed the help of the officials, as well as lady luck, to break us down. Emmanuel Frimpong had a cracking game until his early bath and was rather unfortunate with both cards in my opinion. The first was bad refereeing, a minor confrontation when Frimpong believed the throw in was his, the second a late clip of Lucas' shin that could be argued to be a yellow of course, but it was relatively tame for me though, he had half pulled out of the challenge, it was not out of control and Lucas was looking to get him sent off with the grossly exaggerated reaction. Frimpong was niave though, with experience he will completely pull out of those kind of challenges and not give Lucas the chance to roll.

Liverpool were very average throughout and that it what makes the defeat so concerning. They didn't create much of note other than a Carroll header until Frimpong had harshly seen red. The opening goal should also never have stood, Suarez was offside when the ball was played to him, Miguel's clearance then freakishly deflected in off Ramsey's torso, a really unfortunate way to concede. With ten men we never looked like getting back in the game and the second goal was simply academic, other than demonstrating the stupidity of FIFA's ridiculous offside rule.

We were terribly unlucky not to come away with a draw yesterday but the fact that we didn't create more against such a mediocre Liverpool side is very worrying for me indeed. A lot has been said of our defensive problems of late, but for me an issue of at least as much concern is our inability to break teams down at home. We have only one striker who can score goals (RVP), Chamakh looks like a lost sould and Bendtner is looking for a move away. Andrei Arshavin has never looked at home on the left flank and that leaves Theo Walcott who is still developing. We badly need more offensive options.

Interestingly it has now been proven that we did not get our fair share of decisions last season, this is from a neutral journalist too. Other statistics also make out that all teams and players are not treated equally by referees. I did by own bit of digging to come out with these statistics from last season, here are the average disciplinary points (1 point yellow, 3 red) per fouls committed each game for these teams: Arsenal 6.9, Manu 5.9, Chelsea 5.2, Man City 6.4, Bolton 5.9, Newcastle 7.

I am certainly not a 'conspiracy theorist', I just happen to think that refereeing standards are pretty poor and the officials need for more help from technology in order to minimise error. Certainly yesterday England's 'leading' ref Howard Webb provided yet more evidence of just how bad refereeing is in this country. He lost control of the game by keeping his cards in his pocket early on, he tried to keep things even rather than enforce discipline consistently and he got a lot of big decisions wrong. Ryan Taylor got away with swinging an elbow at Gyan's head, Bardlsey got only a second yellow for a rather brutal tackle on Coloccini, there were many other poor decisions too.

Good refereeing is all about using common sense when interpreting the laws of the game, admittedly this is very hard these days given how stupid FIFA have been in introducing unworkable laws and diktats. It is also about being consistent, something we very rarely see in the Premier League. How often do we see a team come to the Emirates and commit five early fouls without a booking, the ref than books one of each side just to be seen to be fair. This is just useless on so many levels, the cards are pointless if one gives them out evenly regardless of what is going on on the pitch.

Inconsistent refereeing like this is like haphazardly parenting, they are designed to create confused and undisciplined players or children, they will both lead to complete loss of control whether it is on the pitch or at the home. If every player who raised his hands against us this season were to get a red card, I would not complain about Gervinho's harsh sending off at Newcastle. The sad fact is that we all know that we will see players do far far less than Gervinho and Frimpong have done and stay on the field of play for the full duration.

Don't forget your boots !!

With a quick look back over the shoulder at the Newcastle and Udinese games, it feels something of a small miracle that we have made a half decent start to the season. However, it is somewhat laughable to see Carl Jenkinson being put forward as the club's spokesman on the two clean sheets earned this season so far. I mean, the poor lad has only just made his debut in the deepest of water and frankly, it wasn't hard to see that he will take some time to make the jump between Division 1 and Champions League football !!

In fact, the second half against Udinese was really quite shocking. The fact that sicknotes Gibbs and Djourou are already crocked comes as no surprise whatsoever and only underlines the massive gamble that Wenger is taking by putting so much faith in these players.

Similarly, the abject performance of Chamakh makes it very hard to understand why Wenger has not invested more faith in Bendnnnnter. I know he is not everyone's cup of tea but Wenger's insistence on playing Nicky B on the wing for the last 3 seasons is just bizarre. Plus what is the point of putting him on the bench on Tuesday if Wenger had no intention of using him? I don't think he even warmed up at half time.

Suddenly, the six years of craziness that Eboue gave us looks like it could be missed. If that lunatic had ever managed to locate his pea brain and plug it in, then he could have been a great player. Certainly, I don't know many other Arsenal players who have played at such a variety of positions - right back, right wing and even centre midfield in the early days post Flamini and pre-Song. Defensive liability for sure, but Eboue was something of a Champions league specialist.

So having scrapped past Udinese, we now have the TV glare firmly in our faces on Saturday morning and whilst I will be at the ground, those unfortunate of you who will be forced to see Redknapp, Souness etc demonstrating their early on-set of brain death in why Sky calls "expert analysis", the build-up to the game will be at least 45 mins of Arsenal and Wenger bashing.

And whilst the moronic Redknapp and Souness are ex-Liverpool and so utterly biased, I for one take some small comfort in the fact that Wenger has not gone out and spent his vast piggy bank on the utter drivel that is Carroll and Henderson. £55m for those two unproven players is staggeringly shocking. Just stupidly unbelievable. Yes, you might be able to say that Downing, Enrique and Adams are better signings, and I would have to agree, but I suggest you ignore those three and just concentrate on how shite Carroll and Henderson are and then say £55m to yourself a lot. It will make yourself feel better. I promise.

In the meantime, its probably better not to think what the Arsenal team will look like on Saturday, let alone the bench. However, everyone under the age of 40 and/or 17 stone who are going to the game should probably take along their boots, just in case. Including the girls.

With Cesc gone, can the Wenger bloodbath be avoided?

Right then peeps. 1979Gooner is taking a well earned break to re-charge his angry batteries, so you are getting a rare treat of half-baked nonsense from your Unkle Ted instead.

Its been a helluva opening weekend in the Premiership, but maybe not for the reason that most people expected. However, first up is the long awaited news was confirmed today that el Capitano Cesc has re-signed for his homeclub Barca for around £35m quid, which on any view deserves top billing. However, trying to balance my feelings about Cesc at this stage is not easy. Obviously, no-one who has anything to do with Arsenal has much time for Barca. The graceless bastards publicly court our best players every Summer and Cesc now joins the esteemed list of Wenger players off to the Catalan giants. By my count Overmars, Petit, Hleb, Henry and Cesc will have cost them total fees of around £90m, give or take the odd peseta. Staggering really.

And in many ways, Cesc fits quite nicely into that list. He was clearly better than Hleb, almost certainly better than Petit, but then I have to pause for thought when you get to Overmars and Henry. I think I will just put him ahead of Stumpy and not quite up there with Thierry. So there you go. Cesc Fabregas - the second best player we have sold to Barca. The main difference is that this one was always going to happen. Cesc was simply desperate to go back and in the end, I think we are all just pleased the soap opera is now over. Until next Summer.

Not the eulogy you were thinking of? Maybe not. And Cesc's stats for Arsenal might suggest more. Certainly 57 goals and 100 assists in 303 appearances is very impressive indeed. So why the limp priase? Cesc is a lovely footballer, truly a modern day midfielder that will grace almost any stage, but in trying to rank him among the greats, I feel there are certain limitations that he was never likely to overcome. Now I will start by saying that Cesc gets into most people's list of great players, but its never been clear where he plays. Defensively, Cesc was always pretty poor. You might say it just wasn't in his soul, and occasionally he put in a good defensive shift, but that was a relatively odd occasion. Most of the time it didn't matter, as Cesc was so good technically, but often against our biggest rivals, it often did. I think Darren Fletcher had his number, as did a number of the Chelsea trolls (Mikel in particular), neither of them on a par with Cesc in footballing terms, but nonetheless able to dim his light sufficiently. In the battlefield of premiership football, Cesc was only occasionally able to make his technique win the battle against a physically superior opponent. I think it is telling that he often had to be deployed almost upfront for Spain.

Harsh you say? Maybe. I just remember long periods of the 06/07 and 07/08 seasons, which I think were Cesc's best, in admiration of what Gilberto and Flamini were doing behind him in midfield, giving Cesc almost a free role in midfield behind two strikers, which was something he rarely enjoyed in the last few seasons. Good midfielders like Cesc need runners to pass to and given that the current crop of RVP, Arshavin and Nasri were more likely to be coming towards him last season that going away, its not an easy task.

So why the slightly limp praise for such a great player. Firstly, its the disappointment that he has gone. No Doubt. Secondly however, its a genuine optimism that Jack Wilshere is going to really shine in the next 12 months. And hopefully the next 12 years. Unlike Cesc, Jack has thighs like treetrunks. And more importantly, unlike Cesc, Wilshere is not from Barcelona.

Indeed, name the last English player to play at the top level in Spain, Germany, Italy or France. Struggling? Probably Jermaine Pennant's 09-10 season at Real Zaragoza. Before that, I reckon its Beckham at Real Madrid. English players do not fall far from the tree. So good luck at Barca Cesc, I hope you get off the bench more regularly than your old mate Hleb.

Speaking of English players, I simply cannot move on before venting some spleen about Joey Barton. What an utter sub-cretinuous species of neanderthal that man is. Ok, he gets to start on a small piece of high ground because Alex Song did a very stupid thing by stamping on him (3 game ban coming from FA headquarters shortly), but what then followed with Gervinho was some of the most embarrassing scenes I have ever seen on a football field. His ability to decide to teach Gervinho an impromptu lesson on not exaggerating a foul by, low and behold, massively exaggerating a foul, was truly gobsmacking.

What depresses me afterwards is that Joey Barton then becomes the story, the troll no doubt feeding on arseholes like Henry Winter's utterly biased views in the Telegraph. Follow that up with a series of drivel posts on Twitter and then give him a slot on BBC 5Live's 606 show on Sunday for good measure. The man has no idea. Joey Barton is the best example of what is wrong in the UK since the kids went rioting. Oh, that was only 7 days ago.

And the Joey Barton show must not overshadow the stark reminders of Saturday afternoon's game against Newcastle. No Cesc, no Nasri, but it was the same old tippy-tappy no scorey football. We played some lovely stuff, we really did. But the front three of RVP, Arshavin and Gervinho could still be playing now and still wouldn't have scored. I don't think they give prizes for these sorts of things but 63% possession away from home with only 2 shots on target must be a record. No-one gets into the box, no-one shoots. All very frustrating. No wonder the away fans gave Wenger some grief.

Which all means we go into these next few games with the whole team on edge already and Wenger on thin ice. A couple of bad results against Udinese, Liverpool and Man Utd and Henry Winter and his mates will be leading the charge to whip up the Wenger bloodbath. Surely it should never have come to this?

Strengthen squad or bust

Some of you may have got the wrong impression after my post this morning. All I was saying was that Arsene is never going to give the game away to the media and expecting him to do so is rather naive, that was it. In saying this I was not trying to defend his transfer strategy and the fact that we are only a day away from the league opener at Newcastle with our squad looking very short indeed. The numbers have been announced and we have the following players:

GKs: Szczesny, Almunia, Fabianski, Mannone

Full backs: Sagna, Jenkinson, Gibbs, Traore.

Centre Backs: Vermaelen, Koscielny, Djourou, Squillaci.

Wingers: Walcott, Gervinho, Miyaichi, Arshavin.

Midfielders: Wilshere, Ramsey, Song, Frimpong, Chamberlain, Rosicky, Diaby.

Forwards: Chamakh, RVP.

In this I am assuming that Bendtner, Vela, Nasri and Cesc are on their way out of the club. Obviously there is a bit of flexibility with Chamberlain being more of a winger, Arshavin and Walcott being able to play centrally if needs be etc. It is clear that as things stand we are woefully short in terms of both numbers of quality players and in the level of experience throughout the squad.

There are just so many positions in which we are taking a big gamble and in which we could become terribly unstuck. Relying on Gibbs to stay fit is a biggie, whilst putting so much pressure on the young Jack Wilshere is tough on the young man, despite his amazing talent. Several other players are rather injury prone, in this I include Vermaelen, Djourou, Walcott, Diaby and RVP. There are just so many disasters waiting to happen if things are left as they stand.

Some of you may be surprised to hear this but I think that if Arsene does not strengthen the squad significantly now then I think he will be out of a job by this time next year. By 'significantly' I mean bring in one quality commanding central defender, replace both Cesc and Nasri with two quality midfielders, and bring in another quality forward.

There is no room for excuses now, they simply will not cut it, a significant chunk of cash will be there after the sales of Nasri and Cesc and the penny pinching must stop, Arsene has to go out there and bring in some reinforcements. He just about has time to do this before the end of the transfer window. If he does not then I have to say that if excellent results do not follow in the Champions League and Premier League then Arsene will deserve to lose his job.

Is AW taking the Michael? Yes

I am sure many of you listening or reading about the AW press conference that happened at 9am today will be very frustrated and angry. Personally I am still anxious about the state our squad is in, but the press conference was quite clearly used to give absolutely nothing away to the media. AW's smiling and laughing gave the game away today, he was quite determined not to give the media any ammunition at all and this is precisely what he did.

Why do I say this? Take the centre back situation, Arsene has spoken of our need for a tall commanding PL ready stopper and is in the market for one, as our bid for Jagielka confirms. Therefore his recent comments about not needing a centre back and the squad being big enough are not the honest truth, they are designed to keep his cards close to his chest and keep his bargaining position strong.

At the press conference today he talked of no one leaving the club this month, he talked of the squad being big enough, he talked of Cesc and Nasri being professional and gave absolutely nothing away. This is AW poker, he will say one thing but clearly this is not what he thinks. His comments on Arsenal.com from yesterday make this very clear. He spoke of the Cesc situation being sorted out quickly and the Nasri situation being ongoing:

"Ideally you want it sorted out before the season starts"

Arsene has made it obvious that Cesc and Nasri are both in the process of leaving the club, it would be utterly foolish of him to comment further on these deals at a press conference before they are done and dusted. I am amazed that some people out there expect him to do otherwise, it is utterly naive of them in my opinion.

I am not defending Arsene's transfer strategy by the way, leaving all this until the last minute has been a bit of disaster for us. However it is utterly naive of people to think that he is going to talk openly about transfer deals that have not yet been completed, Arsene has never done this and never will. He is playing his typical game of transfer poker and taking the Michael out of the media in the process, I would not be surprised by this if I were you.

Arsene knows we need reinforcements and that certain players need shipping out, he is quite clearly working on the case. He has some big decisions to make though as now is not the time for penny pinching, he must go out decisively into the market place or risk leaving us woefully short of strength for the season ahead. I hope he can do this, the problem is that there are so many people out there looking for any old excuse to vent their vitriolic spleens at AW and this is making his job harder than it should be.