By Sir Hardly Anyone
Just as I think I can have a few days off on a Kroneke hunt across the wild plains of Lower Rutland and along comes the Daily Express telling us that all hell is going to break loose on the transfer front.
Consider this for example: “Chelsea are keen on signing Leicester star Drinkwater as they try to keep manager Antonio Conte happy.” Ah, keeping the manager happy. He’s probably shouting a lot and the locals are worried.
But it is “Bad news for Arsenal & Liverpool” because the bloggettas working alongside the Excess story say Chelsea have made a £25m bid for Valencia full-back Joao Cancelo and “are ready to offer £30m for Arsenal ace Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.” Now I wonder why they are “ready to”. I mean the story has been doing the rounds for months, so surely they should be “ready” by now. What’s keeping them?
Especially as in their normal way the bloggettas are suggesting that Arsenal is so weak and timid (not to mention chaotic – see below) that what any other club wants they can have because Arsenal can’t hold onto their players.
Indeed the message is heightened by a further piece in the same paper saying, “Olivier Giroud is prepared to speak with Bundesliga giants Borussia Dortmund, reports claim. According to French website Le 10 Sport, Dortmund searching for a new striker amid speculation that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembele will leave the club. And Giroud, 30, is on their shortlist.
“The report claims Giroud is willing to speak with Dortmund representatives should they firm up their interest.” (See, told you so).
But again, what’s keeping them? Surely it couldn’t be that these clubs are even slower than Arsenal when it comes to transfers – with AFC being as slow as a slow thing going slowly on a slow day. As we say in the Kingdom of Rut.
So, a rather repetitive piece I felt. But they haven’t finished with us yet in the paper. “Jack Wilshere’s a man in demand as it looks like his Arsenal days are numbered. The England international, who spent last season on loan at Bournemouth, did not make the Gunners squad on the opening day of the season and could be set for a permanent exit.
“It looks like he will have plenty of options to consider, with the Sun claiming Newcastle, West Ham, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth are all interested in the 25-year-old.”
However I suspect that this is all printed just to disrupt my Wild Kroenke Shoot for Rutland Weekend Televsion’s new “Kill a Chairman” series (killing chairmen is not illegal in Rutland – its laws haven’t been changed since Viking times, what with the Kingdom refusing to recognise the invasion of the Normans in 1066 as legal, and the Normans failing to slow down the horses enough to realise that they had ridden across Rutshire in less time than it takes to do a thing that doesn’t take much time).
Anyway, the Excess reckons Abramovich has got his head out of his divorce papers for long enough to be able to promise three more new arrivals. First off is Drinkwater from Leicester for £25m. The newspaper (I use the word lightly) expects this in the next day. (That’s tomorrow).
The matter is only made slightly more tenuous as James Dickenson’s piece also contains the subheading “Chelsea transfer news: Danny Drinkwater watched Leicester lose 3-2 to Arsenal on Friday.”
Blimey – we know the journalists all go to the pub before the end, but to have done it, missed the other goals and then not checked on the wireless. Well!
But who cares when they can also have the link, “Click to reveal the best snaps of Antonio Conte’s touchline antics against Burnley.” Actually I didn’t bother. But I can tell you Chelsea have let 33 players are be sold, go on loan or be released. That is quite a few really and explains why Abramovich asked his wife to play (allegedly) for the club, thus leading to the divorce. Here’s the list, in case you are interested. It is provided by the Guardian who helpfully are keeping track of matters…
Juan Cuadrado, Christian Atsu, Asmir Begovic, Dominic Solanke, Alex Kiwomya, Fankaty Dabo, Bertrand Traoré, Nathan Aké, John Terry, Tammy Abraham, Kasey Palmer, Todd Kane, Charlie Colkett, Bradley Collins, Ola Aina, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Nathaniel Chalobah, Lucas Piazon, Mukhtar Ali, Ike Ugbo, Kurt Zouma, Jay Dasilva, Mason Mount, Izzy Brown, Tomas Kalas, Michael Hector, Jamal Blackman, Matt Miazga, Victorien Angban, Nemanja Matic, Mario Pasalic, Lewis Baker.
Anyway the Excess then says that players might not want to go to Chelsea just to be on the beach and eventually loaned and just called back each time Cesc Fabregas is banned for clapping the ref – although this could be quite often.
But still Leicester are desperate for cash given the fact that the owner is engaged in legal issues in Thailand. So there could be a transfer in there somewhere. Or not.
However’s here a thought, and this is where we get to the tactics. This is from Bleacher
At one stage, Arsenal had six of their 11 players out of position. The fact they managed to turn the game around with a such a jumbled team is a testament to their will and individual skill more than Wenger’s strategic thinking.
Arsenal’s goals did not come as a consequence of sustained pressure created by intelligent positioning of a team. They were more the result of profiting from Wenger-induced chaos. The Gunners boss deserves plenty of credit for trusting his instincts, but this should not stand as evidence that Wenger has transformed into a master tactician.
Wenger induced chaos. You know it makes sense.
- Why are Arsenal so wasteful in front of goal, and really, does it matter?
- Would Arsenal have won, Chelsea have lost and Liverpool only drawn a year ago?
- Sky Sports writers have found the easiest way ever to con their employer with fake transfer news
From the Arsenal History Society
“It’s an ideal situation to have 8 first team players in the last year on their contracts because it means everyone has to perform” Arsene Wenger
poor article ….go straight to the point…we don’t have all day to read that…
“a testament to their will and individual skill”…
are these the same players that the manager signed or promoted because of their quality, character, intelligence, and technical skills? 😀
You guys are fun to read.What was a manager expected to do when all his centre backs for one reason or the other were unavailable?Cobble up anything that has a percentage possibility of winning.He did and his team won.What next?
🙂
I read that Bleaker piece and couldn’t stop laughing, it must have been a satire. If any other manager did what AW did, said manager would be called a ‘tactical genius’, but not that old French guy, he doesn’t do ‘tactics’, he only rely on luck or something like that.
It’s funny reading how Arsenal get lambasted for their woeful defending because they conceded 3 goals even though they played a make shift defense but Leicester who is a defensive team with their first team defense conceded 4 goals. And I am told there’s no media bias against Arsenal.
Anyway, the match was an emotional rollercoaster and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Great win by the team, they never gave up trying to win the match.
As the great man was once reported to have said about the outcome “NEVER IN DOUBT”
37 more to go – not sure how my constitution will stand up to quite that much “Wenger induced Chaos” but I must say that tactic certainly seemed to come out all right in the end on Friday.
Chingy: as you are a bit rushed best not to read this site again.
Well Matt, I have been searching everywhere for that quote but I can’t find it. Put me out of my misery and tell me exactly where and when it came from.
Tony, AW did mention very tongue in cheek that having players in the last 12 months of a contract playing for a new contract was ideal.
Unfortunately the humour of the comment wasn’t understood by some…
http://news.arseblog.com/2017/07/wenger-on-why-its-ideal-that-players-have-less-than-12-months-left/
Here you go Tone
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4744598/Wenger-Having-players-final-year-contracts-ideal.html
Well you see Matt, if you put inverted commas around something that someone has said, it generally means you are quoting what they said exactly. And Wenger (according to the Mail) didn’t say what you said. Just your simple addition of one word – such as “8” – changes the meaning totally. And all that before we consider whether what the Mail printed was actually what he said in the press conference.
But the fact is that he did not say what you quoted – if you are going to quote something that is clearly contentious you really do have to get it right.
Quelle surprise. I click on the Sky Sports football webpage the morning after our 4-3 victory to discover a rather disparaging piece about Arsenal by a certain Peter Smith (Soccer Saturday reporter and football writer of world renown). Peter claims to have ‘worked alongside Sir Alex Ferguson for twenty years’, which is a bit like me saying I know George Clooney’s wife because she keeps an office next door to my workplace. Nonetheless, Peter draws on his vast experience of Premier League football to inform us that the same old ‘defensive failings’ were at the heart of the three goals conceded. My first question to Peter Smith would be: Aren’t most goals in football matches the result of defensive failures? In which case there wouldn’t be anything else to talk about.
Thankfully, and by way of an explanation, Peter devotes two lines of text to the lack of our three first choice centre backs, but only to remind us that those in their place were ‘badly short of know-how’. I find this comment quite insulting, not least because in my opinion zonal marking doesn’t work (See: Liverpool vs Watford, below), but also, put bluntly, Petr Cech had a shocker. He was all at sea for the equaliser and should have been more incisive for the other two goals. Very disappointing. Peter Smith didn’t notice our goalkeeper getting anything wrong, but then why would he? His entire mentality is focused on bashing an Arsenal defence ravaged by injury. Perhaps we should buy some more defenders and hope those we have already don’t notice. Perhaps we should also get rid of Cech because he had a bad day at the office. Perhaps Peter Smith is a moron.
Strangely, Sky Sports didn’t follow up on Sunday with any savage rebuttals of Liverpool for their schoolboy defending, or analyse the elephant in the room at Chelsea, namely the mounting disciplinary problems which are costing them matches. They also clearly don’t read local news, otherwise they would have read a piece from Watford’s Miguel Britos in the Hertfordshire Mercury about how they purposefully targeted Liverpool’s sloppy defending from set pieces because they know, as we do, that they’ve done naff all to address this key issue since last season. Kind of like Leicester openly stating they tried to put our makeshift defence under repeated pressure with crosses – 14 of them in the first half alone. It’s called tactics, lads. Surprised you haven’t heard of it.
Peter was even kind enough to quote reliable village idiot and wearer of scouse-tinted glasses Jamie Carragher, who claims without a hint of irony that: “It’s the same old problems, year in, year out for Arsenal. The back three haven’t looked comfortable all night.” Funny, I seem to recall last season Arsenal only shipped two more goals than Liverpool. Same old problems, year in, year out, eh Jamie? How’s that Van Dijk transfer coming along?
There is the other aspect that neither commentators nor PGMOL seem to play fair, & that is the obstruction of Arsenal’s goalkeeper. Cech is not the best at complaining to the officials but he should make it obvious by walking up to the official & offering him the gloves.