Sticking it to the (Catalan) Man.

June 3, 2010

Yesterday saw Arsenal make an official statement regarding Barcelona’s opening bid for Cesc, which was rumoured to be in the region of £30m. The response from Arsenal was very strong and definitive with regard to their resolve to not even consider the possibility of considering an offer, let alone make a counter-proposal to Barcelona. The full transcript of that statement is as follows:

 

"Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas is under contract with the Club until the summer of 2015. He is a highly-valued member of the team and part of our future plans.

We have followed recent speculation linking Cesc with a move away from the Club but as there has never been any official approach for him, only two informal exchanges, in which we made it abundantly clear that we have no interest in transferring Cesc, we have refrained from publicly passing comment. However, yesterday evening we received an offer from Barcelona for Cesc and in response, we immediately and resolutely told them once again that we have no intention of selling our captain.

To be clear, we will not make any kind of counterproposal or enter into any discussion. Barcelona have publicly stated that they will respect our position and we expect that they will keep their word."

 

That statement is about as resolute and definitive as you will ever get from a club and it seriously puts the onus on Barcelona to back off and show that they are the type of honourable club that they would have you believe that they are, but that we all know they aren’t. Summers of endless speculation about our players moving to them have shown us that they are anything but honourable. If there was a UEFA ‘tapping up’ league they would finish top, followed closely by Real.

 

If an Arsene Wenger analysis of Group A in the World Cup sounds like it might float your boat, click here. I’m looking forward to watching some decent games in the World Cup, but it is hard to be too enthusiastic about it when Ireland aren’t involved. I will be cheering on Holland in this year’s tournament. I would have supported Spain, but I don’t want that meddling little turd Xavi to win anything.

 

There are various reports, with sources unknown, claiming that Joe Cole has agreed a 3yr deal with Arsenal. However, The Mirror’s John Cross is fairly adamant that nothing has been signed yet and that Cole will wait until after the World Cup to finally sign for someone. I must say that I am getting used to the idea of him playing for us. My most vivid memory of him is from an FA Cup game (3rd round I think…or was it the 5th round…) against West Ham at Highbury that I went to with my brother and a friend and we were laughing how the size of Cole’s jersey made him look like a tubby midget. Anyway, we’ll just have to wait and see whether or not he decides to sign for us.

 

Elsewhere, Big Sol has been, not so subtly, more or less telling Wenger to get the finger out and sort out his contract or else he will be off. Hope we do sign him up for another year as it would be good to have an experienced head in the squad and someone that can actually teach our young players the art of defending.

 

The Sun is trying to make a big deal over the absence of Cesc from a picture that was embedded in a club membership renewal email. However, I wouldn’t go reading anything into that as Cesc is right there on the physical membership application form. Who knows why he isn’t in the email’s picture, but for me it isn’t an issue. The FA used Walcott to model the England squad’s World Cup suit and look how that worked out for him. So, whether or not Cesc is in the email’s picture is irrelevant.

 

Some seriously lazy journalism has turned a highly speculative ‘Barcelona have offered Chygrynskiy on loan as part of the Cesc offer’ into a ‘Arsenal are interested in Chygrynskiy’ story. That kind of laziness just makes me angry. There’s more chance of Theo playing in this year’s World Cup final than there is of that story being true.

 

Right, that’s about that for today. Take it easy.

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Taking it up the Barce…

May 27, 2010

Yesterday saw things get a little more interesting, just a little, mind, on the Tantric Cesc saga. Cesc himself said in an interview that he is more loved at Arsenal than anywhere else and that is probably true, too. If he moves back to Barcelona he won’t find that same love from the fans. He will just be another cog in the tapping up machine that is Barselona. There is a link to a video of said interview in yesterday’s blog. It’s not the best quality in the world, but is adequate.

 

Watching his interview, it was refreshing to see the respect he has and openly showed for the club in comparison to, say, Adebayor. Night and day. It’s a measure of both his love for the club and also a measure of the man. Whatever the outcome may be, Cesc wants it to be as clean and painless as possible. We will never know exactly what was said in that conversation between Arsene and Cesc at Colney a week or so ago, but our captain is doing everything in the right way, even if his bastardo suitors are not.

 

Later in the day, word came through that Barcelona had made an enquiry but had been, rightly, told to go f*ck themselves. I think the whole world knows that they are interested in him so, if you are that bloody interested then make a proper f*cking bid and quit fannying around. Cunt-faced bastardos. Apologies for the swearing, but that’s the beauty or writing for your own blog and not a newspaper.

 

The player himself said that his future is in Arsene’s hands. Thank f*ck it isn’t in Fabianski’s. So, you can read into it what you will. Either it is in Arsene’s hands because ‘Arsene knows,’ or it is in his hands because Cesc has said he wants to go and Arsene is left to do the deal between the clubs. I prefer to think it is the former. It could also mean that Cesc has said that he will stay on the condition that Arsene gets the finger out and uses that newly freed hand to also get the cheque-book out and sign some proper players in order to make us competitive again.

 

Away from the Tantric Cesc saga there isn’t really a lot going on. Things are beginning to ratchet up in terms of World Cup coverage, leaving the transfer mill a bit bereft of interesting Arsenal-related stories. There must be something wrong on Fleet Street as it has been at least 48hrs since I have seen us linked with the likes of Frey, Melo, Tourezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

The Daily Shite Mail links us with some centre-half called Laurent Koscielny. The bad news is that he has Polish roots, hopefully from a different bloodline than Luckarse. But, I have never heard of him before so that means there is probably an 80% chance that we will sign him.

 

Sagna has taken a leaf out of Barselona’s book by saying that Pape Malickou Diakhate, the Dinamo Kiev centre-half we have previously been linked with, would be a great signing for us. He says he is very dangerous at set-pieces, I’m hoping he means in terms of taking both ball and man while making a clearance.

 

That’s about all there is for today. A shorter post than yesterday, but I’m sure you’ll be relieved about that.

 

Talk to you tomorrow. I’m going to sit and bask for a moment in the glory that is Arsenal telling Barcelona to go fuck themselves. Enjoying it while it lasts. Maybe today’s title should have been ‘giving’ instead of ‘taking,’ but I think you got the point.

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A quiet Friday. No sensationalism here.

May 14, 2010

Where to start today? I’m not wondering that because of the plethora of news doing the rounds regarding Arsenal, quite the opposite, in fact.

 

Of course, I could talk about the whole Cesczzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It’s the same nonsense that crops up every summer, especially so when there is a presidential election at one of Spain’s big two. We all know that Cesc will return to Barcelona someday, but I would be pretty confident that it won’t be this year.

 

Therefore, like all of the years gone by, I am putting this story down to two things; the first being the Barcelona presidential election and the second being that newspapers generally print anything that they think will sell papers and when there is little else in the way of real news to print they invariably pull out the old reliable ‘Cesc to Barcelona’ story. Of course, if they do it enough, they will be right someday, but I think we will see Cesc in the Arsenal shirt for at least another season. Hopefully he will stay for many more seasons.

 

This whole story erupted again this week when Cesc was asked something along the lines of “If you leave Arsenal will it be for Barcelona?”, to which he replied “Yes,” no surprises there. Then, pressed further, they asked would he only leave Arsenal for Barcelona and he said ‘yes.’ Again, nothing new there. Only a fool would doubt that he will rejoin his boyhood club someday.

 

Of course, the part where he said that he is happy at Arsenal and is in no hurry to leave was overlooked or omitted from these reports, because that doesn’t stir any shit and, as we all know, shit stirring sells papers. It also leads to stupid websites printing sensationalist headlines in order to get hits. Well, if the type of people you want frequenting your site/blog are the ones that happily click on those sensationalist links, then good luck to you.

 

Right, that has helped me exorcise the lazy journalism and sensationalist websites anger that has been churning within all day.

 

Apart from that, there really is nothing else going on, not that I have come across anyway, so that’ll have to do for today.

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