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).