Tag: fabregas

Hleb’s Future In Doubt, Calderon Mumurs About Fabregas

On By jamesgillespIn Transfers3 Comments

The Times thinks that Hleb is on his way out of the club. They claim that his ‘representatives’ have agreed a four-year deal with Inter, and that he has told team mates that he will join Inter.

Again this seems speculative, with no quotes and nothing official, but it may happen. Hleb could leave, and we would be in a bit of transfer trouble were this to happen. Wenger would have a bit of a midfield crisis. I’m waiting to hear more on this one.

A player who is linked with a transfer is Fabregas, and this is one I’m sure won’t happen (bar something totally crazy occuring in the next few months).

Ramon Calderon, the Real president has Fabregas as one of his main transfer targets, and said:

“Something nice about Cesc is that he is Spanish and this is one of my objectives – to make Real Madrid more Spanish.”

Only two weeks ago Fabregas said that he was totally comitted to Arsenal though:

“My future belongs to Arsenal, and it is the truth.”

“I have always said I want to play for Arsenal, it is the best team I can be at, the best club for me.”

So I doubt Calderon’s wishes will come true at this point!

Meanwhile, Sagna is set to sign a new contract after only a season at the club, maybe Wenger is getting wary after the situations with Flamini and Hleb.

Wenger also said that Adebayor needs to keep improving:

“I believe if Ade keeps his work ethic, there is still 20% more to come from him. Does he want it enough – to get this extra 20% out?

“Well that is where his future lies. If you lose that desire, you quickly become a nobody.”

Adebayor should be able to keep up his form next season, I don’t see any reason why not, Wenger just wants to stop him getting too comfortable!

I hope we can hold onto Hleb at least, because otherwise we will start the transfer season weakened, rather than ready to strengthen the squad. I think it is more likely he will stay than Flamini, but if he does leave we might have a confidence problem on our hands.

Arsenal Players Look to The Future As Theo’s Girl Slags Off WAGs

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal2 Comments

Cesc rues the dropping of points here

“For us, it is already next season now”

He said we would come back stronger:

“because we are young, because we want to play, because we are hungry for titles”.

I can see where he’s coming from, you can see in the desire we showed the season that next year we will be raring to go, I am sure the team will want to put this disappointment out of their minds.

Adebayor echoes his sentiments here:

“What was also important is that we sent out a message to our rivals that despite all the disappointments we have had in the past couple of months we are sticking together and showing that we are getting better and better.

“This season we may end up with nothing – but it will not look the same this time next year.”

Meanwhile Wenger believes we were “one game away” from being champions this year:

“I feel we were one game away in this championship. If we win at Old Trafford, we are champions. It’s just one game, and in that game we were 1-0 up and we had two or three chances to score the second goal, so you cannot say we had a bad season. We have 77 points and we have won championships with 78.”

This is so true, we are only 4 points off the leaders, and if we had won at Old Trafford then that would put us on 80 and Man U on 78. Anyway, no point thinking of missed chances, just take the desire into next season and unleash our amazing football on the Premiership!

Wenger was pleased with Adebayor’s performance against Derby, and had this to say on his 30 goal man:

“There is more in the locker than what he is doing at the moment, but how much I don’t know. If he repeats that year in, year out, that’s a mark of class.”

Adebayor deserves the praise a top class striker, he is young and in his first big season he has been excellent. If you agree then say so, because Ade gets a bit of stick on the web!

He had a less positive comment about the Flamster, who is probably going,

“I’m waiting for him to come back to me and tell me whether he’s going”

In other news, Theo Walcott’s bird, Melanie Slade, has criticised the so-called WAGs:

“I hate the stereotype – the shopping all day long, the short dresses and massive sunglasses.

“The wannabes who are so desperate to sleep with a footballer have no respect for themselves, no ambition, nothing.”

Apparently Theo calls her “waggy” when he wants to insult her! Haha, very good, nice to see some sensible comments about people like Cheryl Cole…

Thats all from me!

Let me know what you think about Adebayor and his 30 goals!

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Cesc, Clichy, Sagna And Ade Do Well At PFA. Derby Preview

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal2 Comments

Well done to Cesc Fabregas, who last night won the PFA Young Player of the Year Award. He had this to say:

“To win a personal award reflects the season we have had as a team,” he said. “Everyone said that it is disappointing not to win anything but we have made a big step forward in experience, physically and mentally. One of us deserved to win something because we played some very good football.

“What matters at the end of the day is a trophy. We didn’t win one this season but we will be up for it next season. I think we will win something, of course.”

 That’s what we want to hear Cesc! He also gave his support to Gallas:

“You have to respect William for what he has done in football and what he is doing now, for me he is doing a good job. For me, the most important thing is giving everything on the pitch”

I think that is a fair statement, Gallas has done a good job on the pitch apart from a few slip ups, although I’m not sure he’ll be captain next year.

Cesc Fabregas, Bacary Sagna, Gael Clichy & Emmanuel Adebayor were also named in the Premier League Team of the Year, the most from any team. Wenger reacted to the praise here saying:

“If you ask any Arsenal fan what they think of Clichy and Sagna I think you will have unanimous praise.”

Derby preview here. Fabianski will start and we may see some other younger faces, Bendtner might start, and Walcott will too I guess. Eboue has said he wants to repay Wenger’s faith in him, maybe we will see him tonight too.

Wenger’s Main Priority: Keep The Squad Together

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal1 Comment

Arsene says here:

“My first target of the summer is to make sure what we have here stays here, and after, if there is still money available, to buy players,”

“Maybe we have to add a bit of experience to all that – but we have done the main job.”

“I believe at some stage you need to strengthen the team, but changing the team means kicking some players out and replacing them. That is not the feeling I have. I feel this team has been absolutely tremendous.”

Right now I think that should be our main aim, Flamini and Hleb are rumoured to be leaving as everyone knows. Hleb may have played his last game for us seeing as he got a 3 game ban for violent conduct, see here.

Flamini only has a week to sign a new contract within the deadline that Wenger set. Hleb can buy out his contract this summer. They will be hard to replace if they go.

Wenger doesn’t tolerate disrespect:

“People say you make mistakes, well that is professional. When people say you don’t know what you are doing, that is a little bit disrespectful.”

“At the moment I am trying more to protect the players so they don’t lose their self-esteem and their confidence,” he said speaking before the weekend. “I feel that is important for the future of the team and for themselves.”

Wenger is doing the right thing. He knows that confidence is a very important attribute, and we need to keep our spririts high to be able to start well next season.

The critics seem to forget that we had our best start to the season in the Premiership ever this year and we have great potential for the future.

Who Will Be Captain?

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal9 Comments

Morning All,

It seems Fabianski will get his chance in the next few games, with Lehmann almost definetly leaving this summer.

There’s a report here that Flamini will stay, but until we hear anything official it can’t be a done deal.

There is also some debate over the captaincy see here. Wenger:

“I want to analyse the season after it has finished. At the moment he will be my captain until the end of the season.

“I believe he has learned a lot this year and I can only say that his commitment and desire to do well was exceptional. For the rest, I wouldn’t like to go into any individual assessment at the moment.

If Gallas isn’t captain next season I can’t see him staying. I don’t know who it would go to really, maybe we need to bring in someone who can really lead the team. Love him or hate him, Gallas was good in the first half of the season, but the Birmingham game really sums up what happened to our season and his actions there were not those of a leader.

Who else do we have who can captian a side?

We need some reinforcements, Nick Townsend talks here.

Wenger says he’s targeting to quality players, that might be all we need I think, a winger and a defender, maybe a striker too?

What positions do you think we need to reinforce??

Manchester United Vs. Arsenal, Line Ups. It’s Make Or Break Time

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal

Morning all,

Looks like we’ve got:

UPDATE:

Lehmann

Toure Gallas Song Clichy

Eboue Fabregas Gilberto Hleb

Adebayor Van Persie

Lehmann has come in for Almunia and Song replaces Senderos. It is his first start for a long time, and I hope he can replicate some of those excellent performances he put in for Cameroon in January. Eboue again sarts ahead of Walcott, why not put Toure and Gallas in the centre and Eboue at right back, it seems to make more sense to me, then we would have our stringest possible lineup in my opinion. Arsene knows? Pretty standard line up, I think this is quite strong, the only problem is Flamini’s injury. Gilberto I hope can nullify the threat from United’s Midfield, especially Ronaldo when he cuts in from the wing.

Wenger knows that the whole season will now be probably defined by the result at Old Trafford today. Click here.

“It will be the greatest achievement of my career to win the Premier League now because we are swimming against the stream at the moment,” said Wenger.

“For us the game on Sunday is the game of the season. If we do not win this game we have no chance.

“We will fight until the last second of the championship.”

Fighting talk from Wenger and it’s all true. Exactly what yopu want to hear at this stage and I hope he can inspire the players today!

He comments here on the refereeing recently:

“In 11 years [at Arsenal] it’s the worst I’ve seen,” he said. “It is in every game. It is difficult to understand. It damages the confidence of the team and then you become more vulnerable, but it is like that.

It is true that the decisions that we have had go against us have hit the team hard, but we can only fight back, we can’t blame refereeing decisions for our loss of form, and I don’t think Wenger is, but they haven’t helped us.

He knew about the risk with his youth policy he tells Sky Sports.

Theo Walcott has garnered a bit of positive attention after his run against Liverpool, attention which is well deserved.

Cesc says a draw today would be as bad as a loss. That is true and I think we are going out for the win as always.

RVP agrees, saying that we aren’t going to change our style of play today.

So make or break time today. I m pretty cautious about the match, but I know we can achieve if we play right on the day.

Arsenal Out Of The Champions League and Highlights

On By jamesgillespIn Champions League3 Comments

Two injust decisions cost Arsenal a place in the Semis. First Kuyt’s blatant foul on Hleb in the 1st Leg – Definitely a penalty –  not given.

In the 2nd Leg after a wonderful Arsenal goal – Arsenal had just pulled back to 3-3 on agg. (in front on away goals) Toure brushes Babel in front of the Kop, given! Liverpool go on to win the game. The highlights: click here

Match Report:

Liverpool

Hyypia 30
Torres 69
Gerrard 86 (pen)
Babel 90

 5-3 agg.

4-2
(1-1)

 Arsenal

Diaby 13
Adebayor 84

We started the match very well, good passing play really put Liverpool on the back foot. We had a few close chances where Liverpool managed to escape.

Diaby got his goal after 13 minutes, he took one touch on Hleb’s pass down the side of the penalty area and then placed the ball between Reina and the near post, Reina got a slight touch but it was in.

I thought then that we could do this and by all means we could have.

We then dominated the match, until the 30th minute when Liverpool got a corner, Senderos lost Hyypia who headered towards the post, over Fabregas’ head.

Liverpool back in it.

10 minutes Flamini went off after a knock to the ankle, on came Gilberto, I wasn’t thinking positivily about this! It looks worrying.

Anyway 1st half ended 1-1, Liverpool started the second half closing every ball down, not giving us any time to settle on the ball.

Then a lull in Liverpool’s play and we were attacking, a long ball forward by them was flicked on by Crouch to Torres, who turned and shot from just inside the corner of the penalty area, his shot went into the opposite top corner. Senderos shouldn’t have given him the room.

2-1 Liverpool (3-2 agg.)

Minutes later an attacking change. Theo Walcott and Robin van Persie on. Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Eboue off.

Adebayor came close later, put through by a pass by Hleb, which had slipped trough the Liverpool back line. It caught him by suprise and he sliced it wide. Horrible to watch this missed chance.

Then with just a few minutes to go Theo sets off on a wonderful run. In my head all I could hear was “its up for grabs nowwww!!” as he skipped past four Liverpool players, ran the length of the field before squaring the ball for Adebayor to slot home. Ecstasy!

Then the worst thing that could have happened did…

Within 90 seconds Toure had a penalty harshly awarded against him as Babel fell in the area.

Gerrard slots it away and I know there’s no way back, our moment of magic was over. Theo’s wonderful assist cancelled out.

We pushed forward trying for an 3rd, at a free kick we left it exposed at the back, Ryan Babel broke, held off Cesc’s challenge and put the ball past Manuel.

Game over.

It was sad to see, we had come so close, but victory was snatched away from us. Even Gerrard admitted afterwards that Liverpool were ‘passed off the park’ by Arsenal, and hinted that they were lucky to win.

If it hadn’t been for the penalty I’m so sure we would have won, but it sums up our season, defensive errors have cost us everything this year.

It was commented here on my preview about the line up, and it didn’t work for us.

  • Top marks for Walcott, Adebayor, Hleb
  • Diaby, good, Flamini, good, Clichy good.
  • Fabregas looked tired.
  • Almunia performed pretty good, went the right way for the penalty, the goals weren’t his fault.
  • Eboue proved that he can’t play in the final 3rd of the field, he is not a right winger
  • Van Persie looked lost.
  • Toure has made a few mistakes but was alright.
  • Senderos was also ok, but at fault occasionally.
  • Gilberto was variable as well, sometimes good touches, sometimes poor.

Click here for Wenger’s comments:

“I felt the game was over at 2-2. Then there was a dodgy penalty and we started to lose concentration.”

World of Arsenal is devasted too – click here..

Manchester United on Sunday at Old Trafford.

Middlesbrough loss means a low Monday for the Arsenal

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal, Champions League, Injuries

A disappointing result yesterday, we lost 2-1 to Middlesbrough. I listened to the match on the radio in the car. From the sound of it we were pretty unfocused and they were much sharper.

We created little all day and their early penalty gave them the confidence to go on and get the win. Rosicky’s last minute goal was a mere consolation. It’s bad, and depressing, our unbeaten record is gone, but we are still top of the league by a point. Wenger took the defeat well and it looks like we might be able to put it behind us.

We need to forget about the bad result now and think ahead. Steaua Bucharest is our game on Wednesday in the Champions League, Wenger will most likely field a weakened side, fingers crossed we get top place in the group, but we are through anyway.

Looking to the next League game, we have Chelsea in the so-called ‘Grand Slam Sunday’ as it has been dubbed by the media. I hope that a few of the injured quartet: RVP, Flamini, Fabregas and Hleb are back. We have had a tough week without them, drawing and then losing in the North East. The backup we have is decent but not good enough, Gilberto has been quite poor in the games he has had, but Diarra has looked promising.

In any case they will all really need to be up for it against a Chelsea side which has been quietly progressing under Avram Grant, we really need to maintain our position at the top, and a Liverpool win or draw with Man Utd would be great too!

Sevilla vs. Arsenal tonight in the Champions League

On By jamesgillespIn Champions League1 Comment

Arsenal are playing Sevilla away tonight in our penultimate Champions League game. Arsene is resting Gallas and Adebayor, he defends his choice here. He makes a good point, that those two have played a lot of games recently, and the players coming in should be almost the same standard. Clichy has also not travelled due to a thigh problem he picked up at Wigan.

Against Slavia he made 8 changes and the team looked very unincisive, but tonight there is the incentive that a win will mean we top the group (and therefore play our first second round match away). Having said that even a draw leaves our fate in our own hands, with Steaua Bucharest at home to beat after. The younger players will hopefully take this as encouragement. I trust Wenger on this one, the players coming in are of good quality and fatigued and injured players are no good to anyone. Wenger says:

“Bendtner will get a start. He has played well when he has come on. But he had not the best game in Prague so I want to give him another chance.”

This is great, I think that Bendtner has looked really good when he has come on in games, especially against Wigan, he can win headers and is tall and powerful, as well as having passing, pace and goalscoring ability. Steve Bruce, who had him on loan last year with Birmingham, said he would love to have him back, so I reckon he has the potential to be a first team player. Lets hope he takes this chance to impress!

Kanoute says here that he is ‘relishing the challenge’..

Congratulations to Hleb, he has won the Belarus Player of the Year award, he must be getting used to it as he won it in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006 and was the 2004 runner up!!

Keown, the old stalwart has commented on Fabregas and I couldn’t agree more with him when he says:

“Cesc is the orchestrator of everything. He’s developed into an outstanding player and looks like a natural winner,”

What more is there to say!!!

According to the Mirror Henry wanted Tevez at Arsenal…

An interesting link here about Arsene’s rebuilding..

Ok then, here’s to a win tonight!!

David Beckham at Arsenal? Ade gets the 1,000th

On By jamesgillespIn Arsenal, Transfers

ArseSpeak, my first blog launches today with this first post!

So, a quick overview of the news from the 14th of November before I go to bed..

There are reports that David Beckham may train with Arsenal for the Christmas period to keep his fitness up as the MLS season has now finished. Arsenal are one of a number of clubs rumoured to be allowing Beckham to train with them, we shall see what happens.

After Monday night’s 3-1 win at Reading we are sitting nicely at the top of the table going into the international break. I didn’t see the whole game, due to annoying problems with my computer while I was streaming it. It looked like we were playing good football, Adebayor’s disallowed goal definitely was not offside. in any case he scored our 1, 000th Premiership goal, his first for 8 games which he admits was starting to worry him. Wenger says on http://www.arsenal.com the victory showed we had the patience to keep going while Reading shut up shop. A little disappointing to concede the goal at the end but top of the league with a game in hand; I’m not complaining!

Stupid comments by Coppell about limiting foreign players playing in the Premiership. These just keep on coming.. Mourinho has also targeted Arsenal about this with some totally unfounded claims about Wenger’s transfer policy. Platini has also been sticking his nose in recently (nice to see his proposal for more cup winners in the CL getting kicked off the park by UEFA the other day). These people need to understand that limiting foreign players won’t make English players play better it will only lower the standard of the league. Wenger points out that between 1966 and 1996 there weren’t many foreigners and our national team performed worse than it has done since 1996.

On the upside Kitson speaks nicely about Arsenal, saying that we play excellent football and deserve a reward for it. Its nice to hear some praise for a team playing brilliant football instead of all the crap about foreigners.

The Ferguson abuse saga continues..Wenger has spoken out, saying that he could make some dossier on the crap that he gets at Old Trafford. Really this is one of the most stupid cases I have heard of. There is abuse at every football match directed at players/ staff, and I’m sure that Man City give just as much to Fergie and Man Yoo as he got at Arsenal.

So probably a quiet few days till Wigan at home, on the 24th. Hopefully this pesky international break won’t disrupt the side too much and I will be praying for no more injuries like Van Persie’s.

That’s all people, thanks for reading, see you tomorrow

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