Wenger discusses move for £45m Lacazette by refusing to comment!?

By Tony Attwood

Here I was, all ready to discuss ten more things that I would like to see changed in football, when up on my screen comes the statement that

Wenger discusses rumoured Arsenal move for £45m Lacazette

Wow, I thought, being a little naive in such matters.  Mr Wenger “discusses”.  Well that should mean we’ll know if the deal is an option or dead in the water.

That headline was on Goonertalk, and rapidly I scrolled down to read more and immediately found

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has refused to comment on links with Lyon cente forward Alexandre Lacazette.

Now forgive me if I am wrong on this, but isn’t the top statement directly contradicted by the second statement.  And yes I know that “cente” should be “centre” but we are tying out a new approach of not correcting people’s mistakes when we quote them.

What then happens is that the article (I use the word lightly) goes on to tell us a bit about Vardy not coming to Arsenal (in case we had been in Iceland replacing the population who moved out of Iceland and went to France.)

Then it quotes someone else’s Twitter account who quotes Mr Wenger as saying, “If I say that I like a player it starts speculation.”

It really reminds me of the fact that there are so many topics that are worth discussing, and yet over and over again dumb three liners are chosen instead.  One could for example consider writing a fairly interesting piece on

1: Giving support to Arsenal always, not making support conditional on Arsenal doing well.

2: The meaning, if there is one, of “I want my Arsenal back”.

3. The dreadful idea of moving games to fridays and mondays

4: The use of such silly phrases as “Arsenal supporters were in revolt” and “Arsenal fans will be disappointed that…”

5: A proper investigation into the FA and its resourceless support for Fifa and Uefa, how much public money has been thrown away on such awful corrupt organisations, and what if anything has ever been achieved by doing this.

 

6:  Finding a way of explaining to people who don’t understand it, what “evidence” means.

7.  Examining why time wasting by goalkeepers is never ever mentioned in the press, on radio or on TV.

8.  The fact that the chair of the FA has said that no one would want the role of England manager following the debacle of using five Tottenham players in the team.  Actually he didn’t mention the Tottenham players but he did point out that the  “media pressure was more intense than any other position in the game.”

I doubt that is true.  The media pressure on Mr Wenger is greater because it is continuous.  During the preliminaries to the Euros there was no pressure on the England manager I can recall.

Dyke also said sports psychology could have a greater role to play in helping England stars cope with the pressures of a knockout tournament. “Why do we not do well in competitions, in a tournament, when we won every game [in the qualifying group]?”

Actually, I agree that sports psychology is very important, but there is something else.  That is considering the evidence presented first by Untold then by the Telegraph and then by the Guardian.  It is all to do with the number of coaches per head of population.

But there is one other bit of news lurking around this evening.

Tottenham, not satisfied with providing five players for the England match against Iceland now want to start supplying the Iceland squad as well, on the grounds that if they have all the players in the Tottenham team they will eventually have the chance to be on the winning side when the sides meet again.

Now they want to sign Ragnar Sigurdsson from the Russian side Krasnodar.  Perhaps we should tell Iceland to watch out.  If Tottenham get five of the players in the Iceland team then we all know where it will end.

Finally there is a rumour that Arsenal are about to sign  Takuma Asano described in one twit as a “random unproven inexperienced Japanese striker from Japan”

Shall we keep tabs on that one and see if any of it is true?

• Amazing. The Transfer Window wakes up with six brand new transfers involving Arsenal
• The “Miserable Arrogance” of England; the Telegraph says Arsène should manage England and we can select players by referenda.
• Is football really the game that ‘we’ invented?

The Untold Preview of the Under 18, Under 19, and Under 21 squads.

• Part one – Overview and summary
• Part two – Goalkeepers and defenders
• Part three – Midfield
• Part four – Attackers