Well, our pre season is underway. Our long standing friendly with Barnet has been and gone and our next game is at the Austria camp on Tuesday against SC Columbia. Of course all these games are for our boys to get back to fitness and to let some tiny teams have a chance to play some big boys and maybe meet one or two of their heroes, although now that our team is made up of middle schoolers meeting their heroes might not be part of the deal.
We drew 2 all after Arshavin scored a tap in and Barazite scored a great curler. You can see highlights at 101goals.com. We let in two goals from set peices because of some sloppy defending but whatever, this game doesn't really warrant any analysis because it's something of a formality. Perhaps what warrants a bit more talk is the fact that one or two players who were originally included in the squad were pulled out.
Silvestre, Senderous, Traore and Vela were all dropped from the squad. Vela picked up a foot injury while playing for Mexico and looks set to miss pre season entirely, although he said himself that it may not be so bad and he may be back in time to play against Haiti, which I imagine isn't too far away. There'll be more on Vela later on.
The other three were left out without reason but you have to imagine it's because we plan on seeing them out of the club and don't want to risk them being injured. I wrote a hugely in depth blog on this yesterday but like I said before it was deleted by my terrible internet connection. I'll try and recreate what I wrote but I doubt it'll be as fluidly insightful, which I suppose doesn't matter since nobody'll be reading this anyway.
Now, we have 4 players who can play at left back and 6 established center backs on the books at the moment and those seem obviously too many, particularly when you consider wages, potential transfer fees and a cluttered dressing room, potentially stopping some quality youth from coming through.
Traore has come back from a loan at Fratton Park and it doesn't seem as if a return is on the cards after he was displaced by Hreiderson and Belhadj, who I admit is pretty good, certainly better than Traore. With Clichy our obvious first choice left back and Gibbs having come good towards the end of last season to push Clichy on I can't see Traore fitting in, particularly since Eboue looked capable of deputising at left back when needed. He's only 18/19 and apparently the fastest player at the club, although it's hard to imagine he's faster than Walcott. Either way he's pacey and young and could be a good signing for a bottom half of the table type of club, although we may just loan him out so he can build some stock and we can get some type of significant transfer fee.
Senderos gave an interview earlier in the summer where he stated that he couldn't see much of a future at Arsenal, and with four players ahead of him it's hard to dissagree. I doubt his wages are very big but we'd probably get about 8 or 9 million dollars for him. He's not the worst defender in the world, I've seen him have some wonderful performances, like against AC Milan in the Champions League, which is I guess why they borrowed him. Plenty of awful mistakes and poor showings mean that those performances were never enough. I think he'll be a big player, he certainly has the potential and for some reason I see him coming out on top, I just don't think it'll be in England.
Silvestre for me is an interesting case. I don't think there's a football fan alive that would call him a good player. To be honest I never liked him, even when he was younger. He covered for Gael Clichy a couple times and was terrible. When Gallas got injured and then Djourou we had to play him at center half for a couple of important games against Man U and Liverpool and he was ghastly. I don't know that anyone would be sorry to see him go. HOWEVER... I think it was Sami Nasri who gave an interview where he made the respect Silvestre gets in the dressing room very obvious. The guy's won everything in England, the league several times, the FA cup, maybe the league cup and he's gone far in Europe, plus a bunch of internationals with France. He knows what it takes to survive a run in and come out ahead. He's played with some of the best in the world.
Silvestre is one of the three oldest squad members, along with Almunia and William Gallas. I think Almunia is a top professional and leads the team well but he doesn't have the experience of the other two. Gallas is a total fucking lunatic and lost lots of respect this past season so nobodys going to be listening to him. We've got King Kolo and Cecs to help lead the team but a wise voice with tons of experience couldn't hurt. I'm sure his wages aren't substancial and any transfer fee we'd get wouldn't pay a months wages of a top earner so we might do better keeping him.
There's the African Cup of Nations coming up in January and with Kolo and Eboue gone for a month we'll be light at the back should we sell both Senderos and Silvestre and what happens when Djourou gets injured. That leaves no cover for Gallas and Vermaelen should something happen to one of them, although Song can always be called on. Now given the circumstances and given a choice between keeping a young and potentially capable center back, prone to bad performances and mistakes, or an absolutely terrible over the hill horse face with a great voice for the youngsters, I may be obliged to choose the latter.
Wenger talked about Adebayor in the press and some news papers in England will have you think that he said the fans pushed Adebayor out, but he didn't say anything of the sort. He basically said it's been coming since last summer when Adebayor pushed for a move in the way he did and of course the fans didn't like it, he had just scored 30 goals after being plucked up from nowhere by Wenger. He didn't do himself any favors during the season by putting in half the work he had the year before and so the fans were never going to respond favorably to him. He backed himself into a corner and when it came time there was no more Barcelona who won the treble without him and there was no more AC Milan who have a huge sum of money to spend after selling Kaka and obviously need an attacker. Nobody was left but Man City. It's all his fault, him and his advisers who have turned a hard working, skillful, strong legend in the making into a scummy money grubber. The original Arseblog at Arseblog.com has a good peice on that today.
Wenger was asked about a replacement and he doesn't seem in a rush to get one.
"We have Van Persie, Arshavin, Rosicky, Walcott, Bendtner, Eduardo. We are not in a hurry. We just want to prepare for the season and see if we need to add something. Chamakh is one of the players we've followed and if we need to go for a striker he's a possibility. We're keeping an eye on him."
There are a few interesting things here. One is that Vela wasn't mentioned. Maybe he just forgot but you can't imagine that Wenger would forget about one of his players. Maybe he's planning on using Vela out wide, but with Walcott, Nasri, Rosicky, Arshavin and I suppose Eboue to fill those spots, plus his fantastic natural finishing ability I can't see Vela deployed there anymore. He could be thinking about a loan but he spent 2 years on loan in the Primera Liga where he established himself as an international, I can't imagine he needs more loan time so perhaps l'Boss sees him as surplus and is preparing to off load him. I hope not because I really like Carlos Vela (so does my girlfriend), but I like him because I think he's a good footballer. He missed an easy chance in some big game last season and had a couple of games where he didn't quite perform up to his billing after scoring that stunning hatrick in the Carling Cup but the boys a talent, no doubt about that.
Another interesting thing is that he talks about monitoring Chamack. He doesn't often do this and usually when he does we don't sign. Man U signed some Senegalese guy from a Norwegian team the other day because other teams were making moves for him but I can't see Wenger putting in a bid for Chamack because Sunderland or Blackburn put in bids. If we do sign Chamack it's believed that Bordeaux want Silvestre plus 7million pounds. That seems like a good deal for a cheap gamble and so we'll see.
We all know that the money needs to go into buying a center mid and if we need that 7million to do that then I'd say forgoing a forward is the only thing to do.
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