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

Bit of a slow news day. Expect it to get worse over the coming days as the commencement of the World Cup is upon us.

Robin Van Perise has been talking about how winning trophies isn’t everything in life. Not that he isn’t ambitious, but that basically he prefers the way Arsenal do business, run things and play football, as opposed to the likes of Real Madrid, for example. Here is what he said:

“I’ve always said that I want to win as many trophies as possible in my career, but not at any price. What I am trying to say is that I will work my socks off to get the maximum out of my career, but I won’t move to a club which does not play my style of football.

Dennis Bergkamp is, in my eyes, still ‘The Master’. The fact that he never won the Champions League, the European Championship or the World Cup does not take anything away from his greatness as a player.

Of course I love silverware in my football career. But sometimes you can’t rush from A to Z. Van der Vaart has said that, if Arsenal don’t sign him, I’ll have to join him in Madrid. But I don’t think that is for me. Real is a fantastic club but the speed of managers and players coming and going is frightening. It must give them neck ache, looking who is coming in and going out.

They have this philosophy: You did not win anything this year. There is the door and here is a couple of million to buy you off. Ready for the next purchase. I prefer the philosophy of Arsenal and Barcelona.”

It’s nice to see the huge reverence and respect that he still has for Bergkamp and you would have to imagine that if Dennis were to return to the club as a coach at some future point, then Robin would more than likely end his playing days with us. Elsewhere, he also said that he would like to score 30 goals and have 20 assists next season, join the club Robin. We’d all love to see that.

The weekend was a little bit strange for me as I found myself in grudging agreement with Andy Gray. I think I just got a little bit sick in my mouth as I wrote that. Not that I agree with everything he said, of course, but I think he made a fair point about the importance of Van Persie to our team.

The Telegraph are linking Barcelona with a bid for Clichy and if there were any truth in the rumour then it would be a fairly easy decision over which of Clichy or Fabregas to sell to them, especially with Gibbs developing nicely and given Clichy’s patchy form and sometimes poor decision making and concentration levels over the past season or two. However, you get the feeling that it is just more sh*t-mongering by Barcelona and yet another part of their ‘harass and torment Arsenal until they relent’ master plan.

The same newspaper is also citing The Sun, ever the bastion of truth and goodness, in it’s story linking us with another, improved, bid of £8m for Laurent Koscielny. Bit bored with this story, though a deadline of Thursday this week has apparently been set, so we don’t have long to wait, allegedly. Things must be bad though when your source for a story is The Sun.

Arshavin has said that he likes being at Arsenal but was a Barcelona fan when he was younger. Nothing too earth shattering in that. We can mull over who may or may not be leaving our midfield when/if we sign Joe Cole. It may well be that nobody will leave the attacking side of our team even if we do sign Cole. Anyway, that is speculation that will get plenty of time and discussion after England exit the World Cup.

Interested in Wenger’s thoughts on groups A, B and C at the World Cup? Group A. Group B. Group C.

I did read somewhere that Usmanov has apparently spent another £300,000 on shares in the club but can’t for the life of me find where I read that now. If true, it brings his stake to in or around 27%.

The official site would like your help in adding to their player database. So, if that sounds appealing to you head on over and submit some information for them to review and possibly add to the database.

See? I told you it was a quiet day. Have a good one.

**UPDATE: If the 7amKickOff theory holds true (theory link one and two), this has put to bed our interest in both Joe Cole and Laurent Koscielny.