More Adebayor, Eboue and first rival analysis

Hello everyone, or no one as the case may be.  Adebayor has been trying to convince Mark Hughes to go in for King Kolo.  What a fuck head.  This is the last straw, like Arseblog said, any affection for Adebayor, any soft feelings for him being a dopy sports star manipulated by agents is off and he can fall off a cliff and get eaten by seagulls for all I care.  I hope we kick the shit out of Man City next season and that Adebayor gets a career ending injury trying to tackle Nik Bentner.  

Eboue off to Fiorentina for 10m Euros, I guess fair business in trade but I don't want to see him go unless it's in an exchange for Momo Sissoko.  I think he's a good right back and a fair utility man.  He's the same age as I am and I know in the last year I've done some serious growing up and I think after his poor fan treatment last year all the malarky will stop and he'll be more professional, I hope we keep him.  Apparently negotiations are underway and if he wants to leave we all know what the outcome will be.  

Another quick thing before I start the analysis is that I don't think I gave Sissoko enough justice yesterday.  I watched some highlights videos and did some research on him and he comes from a serious football family.  His brother looks like he's on his way to England from some French team and he's being well touted, while his cousin Keita scored a great goal against us for Sevilla in the champions league last year and is now Yaya Toure's back up at Barcelona.  His uncle was African footballer of the year some years back.  It's in his blood and you can tell when you watch him.  He is a fierce tackler, a serious athlete.  He drives attackers crazy and is fast and can get forward.  

One last quick thing: Vieira to Spurs??  Fuck off, I don't think he'll risk his legacy at Arsenal to play for Tottenham.  

Anyway, here we go:

I’ll start our rival analysis with the team I’d like to see us rival the most, the way we used to, Man. United. 

 

Ferguson has said that they’re done making signings.  He said that last week when they signed that French kid, Oberten or Obertin or something like that but he’s made one more.  Obertan, I think is 22 and a winger.  He wasn’t a huge hit at Bordeaux where he was loaned out twice, but I don’t doubt that Sir Alex knows what he’s doing.  Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic looked a pair of bumbling morons when they were first signed, but by the end of the season turned out to be the terrific signings we see them as now. 

 

They’re new boy is a dude from Senegal who plays in Norway.  He cost something like 5.7 million dollars.  His name is Diouf and he’s 22 and will be loaned back to his club immediately until January.  They also signed Valencia from Wigan, a seeming like for like replacement for Christiano Ronaldo, who of course went to Madrid for a staggering 130 million bones.  With Man. U’s debt quite large, although clearly manageable, much of that 80m pounds will go towards managing it, while 16m went to Wigan for Valencia. 

 

They’ve brought in Michael Owen on a free from Newcastle, shocking to be honest, but it may not be so bad in the end, we’ll see.  His scoring record, even through all the injuries, has always been good, he’s a poacher and a finisher, no doubt about that, in his hay day something like a potential Fernando Torres.  Unfortunately for him it never came to be and after he left Liverpool nothing went right for the guy.  He was way down the pecking order at Madrid and didn’t often play, but managed to score something like 13 goals, which made him the best minute for goal striker in Europe.  After that he suffered injury after injury, failing one comeback after another. You feel for the guy really.  We’ll see if he can work out under Fergie at Man U, I suppose he’ll be 3^rd choice striker, although Danny Welbeck and Kiko Macheda looked good prospects at the end of last season.  Ferguson said: 

 

"We weren't intending on signing anyone else after last week - we feel we have a full squad ..."

 

With their 4 signings, a slew of youngsters coming good, including Brazilian right back dynamo Rafael and his twin Paolo who plays on the left side, plus the returning and versatile Owen Hargreaves, it’s hard to argue with him, with or without the best player in the world, and that hideous Argentine.  I shouldn’t disrespect Tevez though, if we all worked as hard as he does, the world would be a better place.  But you have to say that it is funny that he wouldn’t sign for Liverpool because he respects Man U too much and then went on to sign for Man City. 

 

Even without Ronaldo and Tevez they’ll be dangerous with Rooney and Berba, but with an injury prone Michael Owen, a 17 year old Italian and a 19 year old Danny Welbeck as cover, perhaps those absences will be as devastating as we all hope.  With Scholes and Giggs on their last legs they’ll have to share time and with some youngsters and other squad members and won’t have the influence they had last year. 

 

Carrick and Fletcher formed a good partnership in midfield last season and with Anderson and Hargreaves coming off the bench they’ll be difficult to penetrate down the middle so we’ll have to come at them from the outside, and with the pace and quality of our boys on the outside we should be able to hurt them this way, particularly if the likes of Park, Valencia, Nani and Rafael and Evra get caught up the park.  The trouble with that will be having men in the middle to finish off the good wing play against Vidic and Ferdinand and they’re able replacements.  They have a very good keeper in Van Der Saar, who seems incapable of making a mistake and so they’ll be difficult to score against but with their possession limited by the absence of Ronaldo it may be a bit easier to build something up against them, like with our second goal against them in our first league game at The Grove. 

 

For all this talk and analysis, we can beat Man U four times next season, I just can’t see us winning a trophy without signing a center mid, perhaps we should have signed Carrick from West Ham when we had the chance after they were relegated some years ago.  Or payed the extra million pounds for Xabi Alonso or forked out the cash for Melo before he signed for Juventus, or offered Edu a contract in time to see him stay, or done the same with Flamini, or kept Diarra, or fucking Gilberto, or done anything other than the things we did with our central midfielders!  Goddamit!!!

Highbury86