I have been getting seriously worried. We had that little bit of a laugh over how every club in the multiverse will be bidding for our players, and how they will all be leaving, and the club will fall apart and we will be heading for League Two or wherever it is that Southampton play.
And then… there were a couple of tremours, a few of us with nothing better to do wrote emails to the News of the World, the Sun and the Mirror, saying, “this is old news – we had the fact that [enter player name] was going to [enter club] weeks ago on Untold Arsenal.
And then… they all shut up. None of our players have been going to leave for weeks.
Until today, when at last the news is in. Theo is going to Juve. Not actually according to one of the big newspaper type things that people buy, but on Fans FC. So not really the best source, but it is a start. Come on guys! Down that last whisky! Ade to Milan, Clichy to Barca, Gallas to Portsmouth – the opportunities are endless.
Oh yes and the Mirror can bring back last year’s story (and it really was this time last year) Ade is going and we are going to buy Peter Crouch. (I know I have mentioned this 100 times before but I still fall about everytime I think of it. I have asked my colleague who does IT at work for me to put a revolving banner thing on the home page, so that it alternates between the advert for “Making the Arsenal” and “Arsenal will sign Crouch: Daily Mirror 2008”.
(Actually the papers are full of horror that Almunia can play for Ingerland, as if they never noticed before that you can play for the country of my birth even if neither you nor any of your family were born here or have ever lived here. I do wish they’d read my column then they’d know these things).
Meanwhile, back to today’s game, we have the usual 20000 groin strains, which shows just how much we do need two or even three squads.
It is an argument I’ve launched before, so yawn away, but I’m repeating it because it is still an argument that many of the “for God’s sake buy players now” people ignore.
If you have the very best players, and they are sitting not playing they will want to leave: witness Meandering Diarra. The only way around this is to have younger players like Gibbs ready to step in. He knows he will step back when Clichy returns, and he will put up with this because he’s only four years old or something, and besides Clichy took over from Mr Physically Sick Cole when he (Clichy) was only five.
That is the beauty of this system: we don’t have a bunch of Diarra’s who would prefer to play for Portsmouth than work he way into our first team. We have excellent players who will wait for their time to come. Denilson, Song, Djourou, Theo, Vela…
And lastly, thank you a millionfold for the correspondence following the last post. Truly restored my faith in the Arsenal Supporter.
(c) Tony Attwood, lost on the M25. (“I told you it was the M3 we wanted and you’ve f*******ing gone past it.” “It’s not the fu******* M3 its the M27.” “There is no f******************* M27….” (You know how it goes.)
