Barnet Preview: Flamini to stay? Wenger to speak?? MartEns to sign???
297 comments July 14th, 2007
It’s quite an exciting day really – our first pre-season friendly and I’ll be there. Arsene has suggested there could be quite a strong squad on show, though new signings Eduardo and Sagna are almost certain to miss out:
“Basically the players that are back in training are available, so you could see Kolo Toure, Manuel Almunia, Gael Clichy, Mathieu Flamini, Denilson, Theo Walcott, Robin van Persie and Emmanuel Adebayor. They are all likely to be included so it should be a very familiar side.”
It’s interesting to see Wenger name Flamini – if he was on the verge of leaving you somehow doubt he’d be included in our pre-season plans, so perhaps he has indeed performed a u-turn and is now staying. It’d only be a good thing if he did, especially when you consider that we could lose yet more experience in Freddie Ljungberg.
Cesc Fabregas won’t be in the side, although he will be in the Arsenal one for at least next year. Although we’d rather hear Cesc saying, “I’m at Arsenal for life”, he’d be mad to rule out a club like Madrid so early in his career. At least he’s done us the favour of putting the rumours to bedfor now. And plus, who was the last player to say they’d finish their career at Arsenal? Thierry Henry.
It’ll be interesting to hear Arsene interviewed after the game. He’s been very silent all summer, and tomorrow will the first time he faces the media about the sale of Henry and his plans for next season. We all await the “The cheque-book is closed” speech with baited breath.
Finally, this monstrosity of a story from the Online Gooner. This is the equivalent of taking your credibility and setting it on fire. Apparently Arsene “had to submit a list to the board showing last season’s squad and who would replace who next season from his 28 man first team squad”. Oh, and it’s fallen into the hands of the Online Gooner. Of course: perhaps he left it in his suit pocket when he went to the dry-cleaners. Perhaps he texted it to the wrong person. Perhaps he absent-mindedly made it into a paper aeroplane and threw it out of the window.
So, we can expect Arsene to be signing “Obafemi Martens” to compete with “Niklaus Bendtner” anytime soon.
I decided, after some deliberation, the story was missing something. A daubing with my own fresh faeces.
