The Goon Blog

At todays press conference Arsene Wenger faced a barrage of questions over the delay in announcement over the Sebastian Squillaci deal, he confirmed that the defender has signed for us:

‘he’s a good player, at the right price and is a good signing for us.’

via MirrorFootball’s John Cross, (@johncrossmirror)

Squillaci is currently in Spain sorting out his personal situation ready to re-locate to London. He will not be available for the game against Blackburn on Saturday lunchtime.

Instead Laurent Koscienly is set to start again alongside Thomas Vermaelen as the manager confirmed that he will return to the squad for the game and “will feature”. Denilson will also return to the squad.

Arsene Wenger also confirmed that he is looking at bringing in one more player – though in-keeping with his usual style, didn’t give any specifics away.

At last we can concentrate on the weekends football without the Squillaci situation dominating the press and with the good news on the injury front with Denilson returning, the squad just keeps getting stronger and stronger.

I feel we need one more signing, and that it will happen but it wouldn’t surprise me if it went down to deadline day which is always manic. Of course, it does seem like it is going to be Mark Schwarzer that is going to be brought in. However, his comments were not the most encouraging you are ever likely to read:

“I do not rule it out, but at the moment I say I am not in a position to sign anybody. At the moment, it is all dead.”

I guess we will just have to sit tight and see what happens – one goalkeeper signing and I think we are very strong title contenders, but that has been the story of the last few seasons.

I have real faith in this team now. Lets hope we get that signing though.

Yesterday, Arsenal’s biggest shareholder – both in terms of shares and financially (and not fatness) – launched a full takeover of NFL side St Louis Rams, costing him in total a whopping £292 million just to complete the full takeover. Overall, the Rams are thought to be valued at just short of £500 million.

I think that whilst us fans see Stan Kroenke as the more friendly face of a potential takeover rather than the Uzbek metals magnate Alisher Usmanov, we still don’t really know what he is all about. Stan was present at the AGM but failed to say a word; the claim was that he couldn’t under legal grounds but a quick ‘hello’ might have helped a bit. Its a choice of the two unknowns still, and after quite a few years of takeover talk we know precious little more than we do the day Usmanov and Kroenke came on the scene.

One thing this purchase does mean for Kroenke is that we will not be seeing him invest in Arsenal any further for now – he is tantalisingly close to the share percentage that if he surpasses (29.9%), he will have to make a full takeover offer.

It is clear that whilst Kroenke loves to invest in sports he also likes to maintain a controlling stake before launching a takeover, and thus far, he is yet to sell any stake in any sports club he has owned. There was big talk earlier on this year about the possibility of him selling his stake in the Rams to finance a complete takeover of Arsenal but it seems he is happy with his lot for now.

On the subject of a takeover there were some interesting stats not so long ago suggesting that the majority of fans were against a takeover and were happy with things are now (will look for the stats and update). It surprised me to be honest, there are forever people, sometimes rightly, shouting from the rooftops about Arsenal not spending enough money on players or reinforcing the squad to make it stronger to challenge on four fronts every season – and a takeover would give the club the resources to finance that, and buy pretty much any player in world football if they offered enough money and were an attractive enough proposition. It doesn’t appear as if, when push comes to shove, Arsenal fans want to part with the last bit of tradition in their ownership.

Sadly though at some point there will be an issue where there will be a large chunk of Arsenal up in the air – Danny Fiszman’s chunk. He is gravely ill, and if the worst were to happen to him very few people, if any, know what is going to happen to the 16.1% he owns. Now, I sincerely hope that Danny keeps on fighting his illness and life is of course much more of an issue than a football club, but this does add a degree of uncertainty to the current regime even if you do not consider a takeover into the equation.

Personally, I do not welcome a takeover – the main reason being that I think the sacrifices the club have had to make in the last ten years to secure the move to a new stadium, one of the world’s very best, will be undermined. We have gone without players, have had to sell players and try to stay in the top four on a shoestring budget all with the aim of securing the financial future of the club and enabling it to compete with the biggest clubs in the world financially (before Citeh came on the scene). I’d hate for us not to be able to see what all the sacrifices were for and for some billionaire (or someone claiming to be one) to arrive on the scene, use his American Express card to purchase the club and pile all that debt back onto the club which has fought tooth and nail to secure its financial future by perfectly managing debt to become an organic club. A club which can be self-sustaining and a big financial power at the same time.

Time won’t stand still and things won’t stay as they are now – but lets hope that whatever happens the last 8-10 years have not been in vain.

Up the Arsenal.

Will it happen on Monday?

Ok, it will definitely happen on Tuesday…

Right, its Wednesday – it must happen today!

oh…

The club are under no pressure to officially announce the transfer of Sebastian Squillaci, he is not scheduled to carry out any interviews like Marouane Chamakh was; Arsenal didn’t want to announce his arrival on a Friday but were pushed into a corner.

I’m sure everything is fine, there was no issue with the medical and all the registration and paperwork will just have added more time onto the announcement. Add to that the pictures, video interviews and the like and its never going to be announced quickly.

The club are renowned for making their announcements when it suits them, remember the delay in the announcement of Adebayor’s departure? We didn’t see a word about it on the official site for two of three days.

If Arsenal want publicity around the deal then today was not the day to announce it, Spurs play in the Champions League tonight and if they go through they would dominate the back pages.

Then again, if we all wish hard enough it may just be a double unveiling alongside a brand spanking new goalkeeper..

Don’t worry folks, everything is fine. Squillaci is ours.

Last night there was a lot of reminiscing going over on Twitter and it brought back a few memories of my own.

Now being slightly younger than a fair few of those people who I was chatting to my memories are obviously pretty limited – but there was one memory that came quickly flooding back, the first time I ever got to see Tony Adams play.

It came as a surprise, I was just getting on with my usual Monday night routine and my Dad came to pick me up.

“Where we going Dad?”

“Going to watch Arsenal son.”

“But its a Monday night?”

“You just wait and see”

Off we went to Sixfields stadium in Northampton to watch Arsenal reserves v Northampton Town – as far as my memory can serve me it was a cold night and there was hardly anyone there. Tony Adams was just coming back from injury (presumably that back injury he had?), and was in the starting line-up.

So there we were, my Dad, an old friend of mine and a much, much, younger me. We sat in the Dave Bowen stand, the one closest to the big hill where, if you are sneaky enough, you can watch a game of football without having to pay for a ticket. Great business sense that.

I think Arsenal reserves lost 2-0 last night, but that didn’t really matter to me. It was the first time I got to see a player who’s name I had only read (or tried to) in the official Arsenal magazine. There were no Arsenal games on TV, and it was long before you could find a cheeky stream on the internet.

There isn’t much I actually remember of the game, no passages of play, nothing. That is how young I was. It doesn’t help I have a bad memory at the best of times but I do wish some more of the night would be recollected. Sadly not.

Overmars 11

I have so many memories of our club, from having a crystal clear recollection of Marc Overmars and Nicholas Anelka scoring in the 98 FA Cup Final, the pictures of the parade and open top bus after. Hell, I can even remember a commentator saying “Arsenal haven’t just won the double, they have won the double double”. You may also see the “the cream of the crop” quote in the top graphic. That was also a line from a commentator during the game. I had the TV coverage on tape, it was watched over and over and over again.

I only had one Arsenal shirt at that time, it was the 1996 away kit, I eventually had “Overmars” printed on the back and wore it everywhere.

From that there is the memory of nearly managing to seriously injure myself before the FA Cup Final in 2002, I fell of a table in the garden and straight onto a wooden garden cane. It went in just behind my ear and in all seriousness could have got very messy. Still watched the game though.

Have you got any memories similar to mine? I’ve got so many more than the ones I have written here but I’d be here all day trying to write them down.

Til tomorrow

When we signed Andrey Arshavin one of the first things that had Arsenal fans in stitches was his high pitched voice and feeble grasp of the language, then came the comments about women drivers being given separate roads to drive on. The fans loved his bluntness, the fact it wasn’t an error in translation, he said it meaning what he had said. No excuses or apologies.

‘I would never give driving lessons to women. We need to build new roads for them. Why? Because you never know what to expect from a woman on the road. If you see a car behaving weirdly, swerving and doing strange things, before you see the driver you know it is a woman. It is always a woman.’

His bluntness has brought those moments, and caused the opposite too. On a few occasions he has got on fans nerves with his negativity about our transfer policy, lack of recruits and his views on us not winning anything were pretty strong too. We didn’t hear anything along the lines of ‘I believe Arsenal can win the title’ alongside those blunt and honest comments about women, or the tax laws in this country.

That is why now his latest comments have delighted me, it is clear that he has faith in this team and particularly as Cesc is staying; maybe now we will see a bit more effort from him at times, and to be fair against Blackpool he did cover a lot of ground. The fact he looks knackered after his first sprint is a sight we have all come accustomed to, as have we the strolling 5′7 mercurial star, ambling along as if he has not got a care in the world. He said:

“I think all the young players have become, not old, but they have experience now, Arsene works with them for a long time and that’s why he knows them better and he knows what to expect during the season from the players.

“It gives me belief that we can get something this year.”

You know when he says that he is not just paying lip service, towing the party line like so many players around these days. This guy is old school, and that is why Arsenal fans love him.

But with that love there is so much frustration, its almost like he just can’t be bothered sometimes, not in a disrespectful way like Adebayor, its just as if he knows he can do one magical thing a game so he doesn’t bust a gut for 89 minutes and 55 seconds because he doesn’t have to. Its a privileged position he is in, his talent is sublime, he is one of the most talented players on the planet, but he could be so much better!

We are going to need him on the top of his game this season, hes a match-winner, a player with experience of winning a European competition and the Russian Premier League, and in a squad where trophies have only been won by a few, that is vital. He is one of the senior players and when given the responsibility I think he thrives. The game away at Portsmouth sticks in my head, the way he communicated more with the other players when he was the captain – he oozed maturity and calmness, the performance matched.

And those signings he has called for in the past? Well it looks like we are going to get them this summer. Sebastian Squillaci is set to be unveiled as an Arsenal player today after completing a medical, just. It is said that a groin issue very nearly got in the way of him passing the medical but it has gone through without a hitch I’m told.

There are only seven days of the transfer window remaining thankfully and those seven days look like they may well start to get manic. It seems the market at the moment is just waiting for the one move to start the cascading of dominoes, nearly every single transfer this summer is linked with another, the money that is in short supply with some clubs is another reason why the domino effect is so eminent this summer.

Lets sit back and watch it though eh? At least you don’t have to put up with Sky Sports News coverage if you operate with Freeview, that has been taken away and is now not a free-to-air channel thanks to Rupert Murdoch and his team of brainiacs. Depending on the situation I might run updates on here, I’ll keep you informed of any plans.

Anyway, let the madness commence….

Arsenal are finally starting to get moving in the transfer market as last night Sebastian Squillaci was on his way to London to undergo a medical, put the finishing touches to his personal terms and, all being well, will ink a three year deal for a fee of £5.5 million initially but with add-ons taking it to £6.2 million, or so I have been told.

Given the long, drawn out transfer saga’s that have run this year (Chamakh, Cesc, Koscielny lasted a while too…), this deal has been refreshingly short and painless.

To be fair I know very little about the guy, my basic knowledge is that he is 30, right footed, a center back, good in the air and apparently a hard nut. Those attributes tick the required boxes so lets pray that he doesn’t get so me sort of injury during his medical and signs on the dotted line. We should have some form of announcement by Tuesday afternoon by the latest I would think – nothing to back that up just a hunch.

A comment made by Arsene Wenger the other day shows that there is more than just the option of bringing in Squillaci, as I wrote the other day there are numerous targets that Arsenal have been in dialogue of some sort with whats believed to be six targets as a whole. The boss said ‘We might be able to sign more than one, it depends on the opportunities’; I think we will sign another player in addition to Squillaci, maybe even another center back, but the next position on the managers mind must be a goalkeeper, there has been too much going on to turn back on that now. It may well be Schwarzer or bust so Arsenal will have to go out of their way to get him.

Yesterday morning there were rumours all over the place that there had been some sort of talks going on with Real Madrid and there has been a bit of contact between the clubs but the role was reversed and Arsenal were interested in buying from Real rather than the other way round. It is believed,and this is far from confirmed, that Raul Albiol was the subject of some very tentative inquires along with a defensive midfielder. There was a name mentioned to me but I’d be laughed off the net, and again, its pretty unsubstantiated stuff.

Overall I’m glad that after Wenger saying for most of the summer that we need new recruits, especially in the defensive areas, we are starting to really get rolling. Man City look done in the buying market so that has allowed for a bit of normality to return and it seems that we are picking up Squillaci for a decent price, remember that we are also buying Champions League experience and experience of winning titles from his time at Lyon.

– — –useful links + other news — – –

It seems that despite scoring the second hat-trick of his professional career at just the age of 21, Theo Walcott still can’t please some people. There is an article by David Hytner in the Guardian having a go at a few well known TV pundits *cough* Alan Hansen *cough* for kicking when he is down and trying to kick him down when he is on top of the world. It is typical though, that on a weekend where two young England players, one just left out of the World Cup squad, and one player set to be called up sooner rather than later in Andy Carroll, they can still find a reason to moan.

A rather perky Arsene Wenger talks after the Blackpool win on the official website.

There was a lot of kerfuffle yesterday over an alleged failed medical at London Colney and was said to be that of Mark Schwarzer. It isn’t true. At first I reported that there was a chance it was, someone I trust mentioned that there is a chance it is true and that its a knee problem that caused the failure, the same issue I reported a couple of months ago when he underwent checks by a third party doctor with the consent of Fulham and Roy Hodgson. Thankfully it was a false alarm. I believe he will sign.

Right, that’s it for another day.

Til tomorrow

Arsenal 6-0 Blackpool

That should lift the spirits.

An electric performance gave us the biggest win at the Emirates so far as a Theo Walcott hat-trick, an Arshavin penalty and Diaby’s fine finish well and truly battered a lively and refreshingly un-fouling Blackpool team.

All afternoon Theo found himself in the space that teams so rarely give him to cause absolute mayhem, give him a yard and he will take a mile, literally, as hardly anyone in the game is able catch him.

The first finish was nice and easy, just getting the ball out his feet and sliding it into the corner – not easy when you haven’t played all that much football but it really got him going. His second was a thing of beauty, a brilliant turn and clinical finish into the corner showing why the manager does class him as a clinical finisher.

By the time he had wrapped up his hat-trick the game was well and truly over as a contest, the core of the team had held firm and the central partnership of Abou Diaby, Jack Wilshere and the brilliant Tomas Rosicky were the hub of most of the attacks, Rosicky in particular was at the the best I have ever seen him in an Arsenal shirt, his passing ability is sublime and he again showed his quick feet to wriggle through players as if they were training cones. We really do have an embarrassment of riches in that area of the pitch.

Jack Wilshere had one of those games where you don’t really pick up on what he is doing, he held back showing the maturity needed at the highest level, and went forward when he was needed – he put the odd pass astray but its a testament to how good he is that he doesn’t by any means look out of his depth in the center of midfield. At that age Cesc Fabregas was still played out wide on the right in a 4-4-2. Now, I’m not comparing him to Cesc but it is an interesting observation.

I don’t think this is the time to talk about negatives, and there weren’t any. Alex Song looked very dependable as he partnered Thomas Vermaelen and Manuel Almunia’s distribution was good for the whole 90 minutes, pretty accurate and despite him having nothing of real note to do, he seemed to keep his concentration pretty well.

There have been people crying out about how its ‘only Blackpool’ but its not easy to beat any Premier League side 6-0 despite the few results like that so far this season, if it was United or Chelsea they would be described as imperious and title favourites.

It was a brilliant day for us, the fans got to see a brilliant performance, a clean game with none of the snide tackles we have become so accustomed too, Theo Walcott got three, Diaby scored a brilliant goal on the half volley, and Chamakh got his first goal for the club.

He had a decent afternoon did Chamakh, he was involved in pretty much all the key moves and does get into the right positions and more goals will come. He was guilty of a horrendous miss from 6 yards out but on another day he would have joined Theo in the goal stakes, the Blackpool goalkeeper was on top form and it looked for 83 minutes like it was just not meant to be. That wasn’t the case as we know and it will do wonders for his confidence – we know he will stay grounded and put in the hard yards, he seems a very dependable player, you know what you will get from him.

There is no point me going into great detail about the game simply because I’m writing this over 24 hours after and you have probably already seen it and heard some thoughts on it so please excuse the briefness of this blog.

A better blog tomorrow, I promise.