Own up: who rang Tony Adams pretending to be Wim Jansen?
1 comment June 3rd, 2009
Well it’s a late blog today, and there’s plenty to say. A big reason it’s so late is that doing anything at all today is taking a vast amount of time due to the untimely kick I received playing football last night, which has left me fearing that I will follow Bob Marley in dying of a toe-related football injury.
For now, however, I’m still with you – which is the precise opposite of what Gareth Barry said to Aston Villa fans last night, throwing £50 notes out of his car window as he sped off towards Manchester City. Opinion is divided on whether or not Arsenal should have moved for the £12m midfielder. Personally, I feel he is far superior to our other options in the position – including Samir Nasri, who I still regard as a ‘non-axial playmaker’ – and would have added some much needed quality and steel to our midfield. Whether or not Champions League football would have compensated sufficiently for the millions of pounds Barry would have lost out on by choosing Arsenal is another question entirely.
Tony Adams is behaving very strangely. Stranger, even, than usual. Claims he was on the verge of being appointed Celtic manager under Wim Jansen’s Technical Direction have been rubbished by both Celtic sources and now Jansen himself. The whole situation is so bizarre, and perhaps the best explanation was provided by a friend who suggested to me that Adams may have been the unwitting victim of a cruel and alarmingly successful wind-up.
That doesn’t, however, excuse Adams coming out with vague and inflammatory claims about the board’s relationship with the manager. I still value Adams’s contribution as a player enormously, but his increasingly erratic behaviour since his retirement does worry me. In another interview yesterday, he said that if he wasn’t Arsenal manager within the next ten years he would consider retirement – in which case, one fears his management career may be cut rather short.
One man who is coming back to the club, somewhat surprisingly, is Mart Poom, who may combine filling in for the injured goalkeeping coach Gerry Peyton with some Womens’ Team duties. Whilst Poom played only a handful of games in an Arsenal shirt, he was reputedly a very popular man behind the scenes and will be warmly welcomed back at Arsenal.
Arsenal will reveal a new third kit in July, and there are strong suggestions that it will be the white offering you’ll glimpse if you follow this link. I don’t know about you, but I’m distinctly unimpressed.
Arsene Wenger wants Ikechekwu Uche’s phone number. Elaborating on that will only make the story less interesting.
Till tomorrow.
