Wenger’s regrets, two transfers out, playing on a Friday, what Pep said about “ten years”

By Tony Attwood

Arsenal’s first Saturday 3pm match will now be on…  9 September.   Because of course the league has allowed Sky to play with the fixtures.

And we start the season on a Friday launching the whole PL season at 7.45pm on Friday 11 August when we play Leicester at home.  The notion that there are some of us who have to get to the game from 80+ miles away, through the Friday evening traffic in London has not, it seems, occurred to anyone.  As for the Leicester away support… well, tough.

Meanwhile it appears that the rising cost of players continues to… well, rise.

Manchester United have agreed a £75m fee with Everton to buy Romelu Lukaku and according to the media are “confident” of securing a deal before the weekend so that Lukaku can fly to the United States on Sunday.

Lukaku would be Man U’s second summer signing following Victor Lindelof who cost £31m.  But Mourinho has suggested he is fed up with the lack of progress on signings just as once upon a time he got fed up with the club doctor at Chelsea.  Or come to that all of his team at Chelsea.

If this one happens Chelsea will be a bit upset because they wanted Lukaku which means that at the last minute Everton could put the price up.  Or demand Rooney back as part of the deal.   Chelsea however want someone to take Diego Costa off their hands.

Meanwhile, what with all the chit chat about the referee using the video ref equipment and still failing to see that an obvious elbow in the face is a red card offence, Mr Wenger has talked about three matches from his time at Arsenal when he would have welcomed  Video Assistant Referee technology.

 

He noted the 2006 Champions League final against Barcelona, in which Samuel Eto’o equalised from an offside position and suggested that the use of VAR could have seen his men lift the Champions League trophy that night.   As he said,

“I would choose Barcelona’s equaliser in the 2006 Champions League final because it was offside, and we were 1-0 up with 30 minutes to go.  That’s the trophy I miss here, you know, so that is for me the most important one.”

Warming to the theme he then said, “The second one I would choose is the second yellow card for Robin van Persie at Barcelona in 2011, because this was the moment we were qualified against a very strong team, and it was a very difficult decision to accept – it basically killed our chances.

“After that maybe I go to a more recent decision – against Bayern Munich when Laurent Koscielny was sent off for a penalty when Lewandowski was offside. That just comes to my mind now but maybe I forget many, many, many, many more.”

I suspect we won’t get many more such stories from Mr Wenger, until he retires.  After that, well…

Last, for the moment, the Telegraph is running the story, “Pep Guardiola: It will take 10 years before Man City can rival the likes of Barcelona and Bayern Munich”  I am not quite sure that is the story his paymasters want to hear.

Last, last, because there is always another last, one of the bloggettas has copied our story of players for sale, but haven’t quite got the numbers right.   But not to worry, the Mirror understood it a bit better and has announced that the two we are selling straight off are Lucas Perez and Mathieu Debuchy.

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