August 9th, 2007
William Gallas is Arsenal’s captain. More about my opinions on that tomorrow.
But my immediate reaction was a return to something that has been simmering away in the back of my mind for some time now: are we about to sell Gilberto? If he was going to be in the team this year, he should surely wear the armband.
Throw in the rumours of a £10m bid for Gilberto from Valencia, and the link with Makelele-a-like Lassana Diarra, and it’s all starting to look odd.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: letting the Brazilian go would be foolish in the extreme.
More tomorrow. I’m somewhat in shock about the Gallas news.
August 9th, 2007
It was good enough for Patrick Vieira, so why not Gilberto?
Two stories have broken today, one of which must be false: that Gilberto is officially our new captain, and that Juventus want to sign him for £4m. I think we can be pretty certain that if either is true, it’s going to be the former, though I can’t really see where Sky have got this “official” news from. It’s not on the website, but that means very very little.
Perhaps it was from the bottom of this article in The Sun, written by Mark “Palacio” Irwin. This time he’s recycling those Lassana Diarra stories. I’ve still got an inkling there may be some truth in this one, especially when I tell you that L’Equipe has revealed that Claude Makelele is to extend his contract at Chelsea until 2009.
Steve Bruce is still barking up a Johan Djourou-shaped tree. I can’t see Arsene just lending people our defensive cover for no reason whatsoever, but there you go.
That’ll do for today. Is anyone else a bit gutted we’re not kicking off at 3pm on Saturday?
