My Clubcall Hell

It’s been a strange few days. Two games and two three nil victories in four days over Newcastle at the Emirates, punctuated by the transfer that never was on Monday. We were suitably clinical in both games, with Adebayor and Eduardo particularly superb on Saturday, and Mathieu Flamini putting in a truly heroic box-to-box performance last night. There was no Jonathan Woodgate though , oh no, he was gearing up for the dramatic race to partner Ledley King at White Hart Lane, rather than being triumphantly introduced to the Emirates faithful as many (ahem) had predicted. The wide-scale fervour which greeted Woodgate’s apparently inevitable move to the Emirates told us a lot about transfer speculation, and what it does to us.

When I was 12 years old, Bruce Rioch faced his second summer as manager of Arsenal, I had just seen Euro 96 and was positively salivating at the great players our magnificent leader was set to move for. Having finished 5th the previous season I was convinced that we were just a few players away from winning the Premier League for the first time. But nothing happened, I searched through the tabloids everyday of that school holiday, and when the papers offered nothing substantial I searched elsewhere. I had toyed with Clubcall and Teamtalk a few years previously, they would advertise on teletext with headlines like ARSENAL: MIDFIELDER SET TO SIGN and I fell for it. You can imagine my disappointment when some jumped up ex-hospital radio DJ read out some soporophic ‘club’ news before finally announcing that David Hillier was rumoured to be starting talks on a new contract! David Hillier? A rubbish player who already played for us was going to ‘sign’. But I couldn’t resist returning to the premium lines when rumours emerged that Rioch had handed David Dein a transfer wish list headed by the tenacious Jamie Pollock, wow, I thought Jamie Pollock!! So each day of those long holidays I guiltily picked up the phone and dialled the numbers. Then, out of the blue Rioch left, and suddenly Johann Cruyff or Bobby Robson were set to step in!! My excitement was uncontrollable, and my dialling increased. A few months later, our BT bill arrived, (it was quarterly back then) and my mother calmly but sternly explained that I wouldn’t be getting anything for Christmas that year.

Eleven years on though, and the totally irrational excitement remains! Thankfully the world wide web and its scores of blogs, fansites and digital newspapers has usurped the financially crippling phone line for fanciful transfer gossip, but we still get sucked in. On Sunday night, I checked on Newsnow, and saw that Wenger had intimated he may be in for a new player if Kolo’s injury was serious. Then on Monday morning I got to university and checked my emails, my exciteable blogging partner Mr. Webb was full of the Woodgate rumour. Keith Lamb had suggested that a third club was in for him, and the Guradian, the Telegraph and the oracle Myles Palmer had all said that the club was Arsenal! Wow!! A top quality, experienced English centre-back was coming to Arsenal, and we’d nicked him off Spurs!! Brilliant!! An hour later, both Lamb and Wenger had rubbished the reports, and deflated, I got back to reality.

The whole business got me thinking, what is it about transfer speculation that makes us regress into excitable pre-adolescents? I decided that whatever your team, however good, you always hold on to that Roy of the Rovers dream, that this player could be the missing piece in the jigsaw, having the dream debut; coming off the bench and scoring the winner; becoming a legend, it never happens like that, but we can but dream.

Dave Forrest

Eggy faced blogger retracts tittle-tattle

Although I will not retract my statement regarding how highly I rate Jonathan Woodgate, or any of the comments regarding our hap-hazard replacements, I do have to, rather embarrassingly, retract any comments I made regarding the actual move, as Jonathan Woodgate is now a Tottenham Scumspur player. This reactive blogging went against our ethos and is hence why I now have a good dollop of organic free-range egg on my face. Apologies. I am incredibly disappointed that we didn’t make more of an effort to sign him, although I will always bow down to Mr Wenger’s transfer policy, as it (nearly) always comes good.

I do, however, stand by comments regarding the Newcastle game and I intend to put some of my limited funds where my mouth is with a cheeky punt on a -2 handicap for an Arsenal win.

By A rather eggy and red-faced Martin Webb

Arsenal to pinch centreback from Spurs –again!

We’re joint top of the league, through to the next round of the FA Cup, and about to play AC Milan in the knockout stages of the Champions League. Life is very good if you’re an Arsenal fan. We are not playing at our beautiful best, yet we are level on points with a team who are playing at the top of their game – sign of champions surely, although the media would be more willing to call our form ‘ominous’ or suchlike if we were Man Utd or Chelsea.

Let’s try and forget the Tottenham game. They have only beaten us once in nine years, that’s still a somewhat dominant record. They were better on the night, and wanted it far more than us – that for me was more disappointing than the scoreline. I didn’t see Adebayor and Bendtner’s scuffle as being detrimental to the Arsenal team, I saw it as a furious senior player making it clear that it was unacceptable to beat so soundly by their North London rivals in the semi-final of the cup.

I’m going to talk about the centre-back situation and a very exciting rumour. As any Arsenal fan is aware, after our first-choice pairing, we are lacking in depth in that area. Senderos and Djourou promised much as youngsters, but that potential is not being reached. And as much as I love Willie and Kolo (surely the most athletic centre-back pairing in world football), they are prone to the odd error and are not the biggest defenders. Therefore the news that Arsenal could be set to hijack Tottenham’s bid to sign Middlesbrough’s Jonathan Woodgate is truly music to my ears, and will delight all Arsenal fans. Wenger has always been a fan of Woodgate, a combination of his pace, defensive abilities and comfort on the ball naturally made him easy on Mr Wenger’s all-seeing eye. He is cultured, fast, good in the air, intelligent and positionally sound. But can Arsenal guarantee him first-team football when Kolo returns, and are his injuries truly behind him? To the first question, I don’t know the answer, which makes me worried he could still could go to Tottenham as they can guarantee him a starting place (Dawson and Kaboul and are a pair of oafs). To the second question, he seems to have steered clear of serious injury for the last couple of seasons, and has looked very good in a team full of no-hopers and haven’t beens, so hopefully his injury nightmares are behind him. With Woodgate, we will be signing an experienced English centre-back – the last one of those we signed? Sol Campbell – and he helped us win a fair few trophies – pinching centre-backs from Spurs is becoming a hobby of Arsene’s!

Newcastle prediction – more comprehensive than the FA Cup match. Hleb, Fabregas, Eduardo and Adebayor will murder them, with Fab4 being the focus of the destruction. Newcastle are not a good team, Keegan has no idea how to play against Arsenal as he hasn’t played a team anything like this current crop, and his players fold as soon as they let in a goal. I think it could be a rout on Tuesday night. I just hope Woody is sitting in the stands cheering each goal (he is a Boro fan after all).

Outplayed Youngsters Get Away With it

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been on my holidays.

I watched last night’s game with my Spurs supporting friend, we don’t tend to watch derbies together but we made an exception, needless to say I got a bit of stick. Rightly too, we were comprehensively outplayed. Spurs were excellent and should have won the game convincingly; we were awful. Out thought, out run, and out passed, I can think of no one who put in any more than an average performance last night, with some such as Gilberto, Djourou, Senderos, Denilson, and Diaby truly poor. Theo did very little, and I can’t actually recall him retaining the ball on more than one occasion (including his goal!) but score he did, and it was heartening to see him in the right place at the right time after a savvy run onto Eduardo’s clever pass. Robin’s return was premature, one beautiful concealed ball was central to our only decent piece of play in the first half, but he was knackered by half time. Let’s hope suggestions of another injury are pure cautioun. More worryingly our defensive pair looked shocking, both were at fault for the goal and Berbatov and Keane should have capitalised on their abject positioning and weak clearances. Crucially, Spurs dominated the midfield. Denilson’s peripheral performance allowed Malbranque, Jenas and O’Hara to run the game with ease, I’m not even gonna talk about Gilberto Silva anymore than to say: ‘You’ve been great for us, but your time is up.’

With reports of injuries to both Djourou and Senderos, and Toure and Eboue off on their African adventure we’re looking incredibly light this morning. It now appears that Lassana Diarra will leave. I wrote an impassioned defence of this player a month ago, and I truly believe we would have been much more competitive with him in the side last night. He was central to our impressive victories over Blackburn and Newcastle earlier in the competition; his drive, aggression and passing ability would have provided is the total opposite of what our Brazilian duo offered. But he is clearly a fool. He would have positioned himself as the third choice midfielder at the club in the short term, and would genuinely have challenged Flamini for a place next season. Moreover, with our looming defensive problems, right-back, the position he holds for his national team could have been crucial: a back four of Diarra-Sagna-Gallas-Clichy looks more solid than say Sagna-Hoyte/Gilberto-Gallas-Clichy. I for one am genuinely disappointed at what now appears to be an inevitability, I can only pray that the manager and/or the player himself has a change of heart.

Despite last night, we still have a chance at White Hart Lane in two weeks time. We can’t get much worse than that, and it’s not as though Spurs have turned their home into an impenetrable fortress; I can safely predict that they won’t be playing for a 0-0. Arsene promises to keep faith with youth so let’s hope they learn from the first leg and nick it to make the final two years running.