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

Greeting Gooners. This week has been quite a week in terms of what other club’s have spent and the resolve that our own manager has with regard to his belief that the squad he has is good enough to challenge on all four fronts. As frustrating as it is to see another transfer window go by and see no quality central defender or defensive midfielder being signed, when you see the crazy money being splashed around, like jizz on an adult film actress’s face, it makes you glad that our club stayed away from that madness. There wasn’t a whole lot of value to be had.

It says a lot that both Arsenal and ManUre didn’t get involved, yet you see a club like Spuds try for basically every striker that plays in La Liga and fail miserably on all counts, therein making themselves look like amateur bellends.

Speaking of bellends, David Moyes has been busy taking away the focus from his own team’s capitulation at the Emirates by trying to manufacture an incident wherein he initially zzzzzzzz. The fact that he referred to himself in the third person tells you all that you need to know.The North Bank blogger doesn’t like that kind of third person self referencing, not at all, no siree.

Anyway, getting away from bellends and on to today’s game which sees us travel to Newcastle to take on a team shorn of first team strikers, through both the transfer of Carroll for a ludicrous sum of money and Ameobi to a fractured(?) cheekbone. Given this mini crisis up front there have been rumours that they may turn to former Gunner and the man that makes goalkeepers look prolific in front of goal, Jeremie Aliadiere. An interesting move if it happens and although he was never the prolific striker we would have liked him to be, having him there would be better than nowt. It would be nice to see him get another shot at a big club and see if he can get his career back on track. If they don’t sign him up, we may just see Gazza swing by with his fishing rod and a six pack to see if he can help out.

As for team news, Szczesny is set to continue in goal as Fabianski is out for the season after it was confirmed that he must have surgery on his shoulder. In front of him, the defence will most likely be Sagna, Koscielny, Djourou and Clichy. As we have been hearing pretty much since his injury occurred way back in early Autumn, Vermaelen remains three to four weeks away from a return. Sometimes it feels like Arsenal have found some way to break the rules of the physics of time. We should get Stephen Hawking in to have a gander at the state of the space time continuum around Colney.

In midfield, we will be without Song and Nasri. So, in the middle we should see Cesc, Diaby and Wilshere with AA23 and Bendtner playing ahead of them and RvP up front. Though there is a fair chance that Walcott may start ahead of Bendtner, I think that the boss may be a bit cautious with him given his injury record and the fact that he is recovering from a knock. If Diaby does start ahead of Denilson, hopefully he will put in a good shift and not just amble about the pitch.

Starting with Bendtner out right and RvP up front would allow the two of them to interchange positions fairly easily and give the defenders something more to think about.

Although AA23 hasn’t put in his best performances away from home, he is showing signs of coming back into some good form and his stats don’t lie. He deserves a starting place, especially as we will lack the creativity of Nasri who is out until after the first leg against Barcelona.

Away from today’s game, I think that the massive overreaction by some people towards journalists on Twitter following the Cesc thing was a bit out of order. I’m not saying that you need to agree with their views or suck up to them or anything of the sort. However, if you disagree with them, there are other ways to voice your dissatisfaction aside from sending them a message calling them a ‘cnut.’ Having a good disagreement is part of what makes the interaction on Twitter interesting. But, when you turn that anger or disagreement into some kind of slanging match, well, it doesn’t really reflect well on yourself and the club you support. It also gets all Arsenal fans tarred with the same brush.

If anyone has read my blog for any period of time, you will know that I am not averse to using a plethora of swear words, but the readership of my blog is quite small compared to the number of people that will see your Tweet as journalists tend to re-Tweet the abusive messages that they have been sent. By all means disagree with someone, have an argument with someone if you like, but try to at least keep it respectful. I don’t mind Arsenal fans complaining amongst themselves about incidents or what has been said, but when that gets directed in a disrespectful way at people outside of the Arsenal family, then it gives us a bad name. Just because Twitter is not face to face doesn’t mean that what you say has no ramifications. I suppose what I am basically trying to say is be aware of just how public an arena Twitter is.

While I am on my Twitter rant, please stop messaging players and asking them to re-Tweet your message. That is neither smart nor cool and it is more likely to get you added to someone’s blocked list than for them to follow you. Crikey, that rant makes me feel a bit old, but it’s something that I just wanted to get off my chest.

Today will be the first game ever that I will be able to watch at home in HD, can’t wait! Hopefully the lads will reward me with a few goals, but more importantly the three points. My upgrade to HD came through yesterday, just in time to discover a bikini bowling show on TV. It gave a whole new angle to the idea of a one-ten split.

Finally, check out Szczesny’s interview on ATVO and also in The Guardian. He comes across as a really nice bloke. Also, if you don’t already, follow him on Twitter at @53Szczesny53 as he is pretty funny.

You can also follow me on Twitter at @colm_smyth.

Right, that’ll have to do for today. Take it easy.