The North Bank – “It’s got va-va-voom” (An Arsenal blog)

A very short post today.

Reports are emerging that Cesc made his decision to leave after the comments Peter Hill-Wood made regarding his belief that Cesc may not actually be good enough to get into the Barcelona team were he to join them. Not that he was saying Cesc is a bad player, but there would be a lot more competition for places at Barcelona than he currently has at Arsenal. At the time, The Mirror reported that this had angered Cesc and there are now claims that he has told close friends that this was the tipping point in him making his decision to leave. This was confirmed to me as being more than just speculation by a journalist from the Express.

It will mean an awful lot of flak will soon be coming Peter Hill-Wood’s way and I would like to see him put to pasture if his comments contribute to our best player leaving the club. Better that Peter Hill-Wood move on than Cesc move on. P.H.W. needs to learn to keep his views to himself.

I think that Hill-Wood meant well when he made those comments. I believe that he was just trying to reassure the Arsenal fans that we would be keeping our best player this summer. However, he really did put his foot in his mouth by making that statement. Hopefully it won’t result in the exit of Cesc. To be honest, I would be really disappointed if this is the reason that Cesc uses for wanting to leave the club because nobody attaches a huge amount of weight to Hill-Wood’s recent year comments.

Arseblogger has a good take on what may be happening with regards to the reasons behind today’s Cesc-related story and possible behind the scenes machinations.

There is nothing else to report on the transfer front.

The only other piece of Arsenal-related news is that Walcott sees Beckham as his ideal role model. Hopefully he will use this inspiration to work on improving his final ball.

There, I told you that it would be a short post. Perhaps it’s the shortest one that I have ever written.

Have a good Friday. Unless something major happens in the next 24hrs, I will make my next post on Sunday.