Then there were 8…

Armand Traore has officially joined Pompey for a one year loan. That brings Arsenal’s total number of fully qualified full backs to just four (Sagna, Eboue, Clichy, and Silvestre). And brings Pompey’s total number of former/current Arsenal players to: well, damn near the whole team. Arsenal on the coast indeed.

The squad just got a little bit thinner in defense (not that Traore was going to have much chance of breaking in to the first team) so, do you all still want Wenger to ship Senderos? Doing that would leave just 7 defenders (8 if you count Eboue).

I guess 8 is enough?

Hey, also, I love this, there’s a transaction every 12 hours it seems. Come on, baby needs a new defensive midfielder!

Arsene in Switzerland

Rumor has it that the boss traveled to Switzerland to watch the Swiss dismantle poor Cyprus 4-1. Sure, he could have been there to watch Djourou (but not Senderos since he’s still injured) but, of course, the rumors are that he was there to watch Inler. I say this is all rumor because I cannot find any news reports putting Arsene in Switzerland last night and you’d think they’d be all over this story since they are the ones banging the ‘Inler to Arsenal’ drum.

There are some actual reports linking Djourou to Rennes for a season long loan.  I’m of two minds on this one: on the one hand, Djourou will only get better by playing.  On the other hand, he’d get even better by playing for Arsenal.  He really made an impression on me so far this season and frankly I’d love to see the kid stay and compete for a spot in defense or possibly in that midfield position he covets.  Of course, now with Song coming back (which is just a bizarre thing to say) and Silvestre an obvious and immediate third choice getting any spot in defense is going to be difficult.

The aquisition of Silvestre also makes selection and keeping all these players happy more difficult.  Because now Arsenal have 9-10 guys competing for 4 slots.  Obviously, the starters at full back are Sagna and Clichy and now they have cover of Eboue, Toure, Traore and Silvestre.  But the center of the field is a bit of a jam: Gallas is not going to lose his starting spot unless he climbs on the professor’s desk and takes a huge dump in front of him, that’s about as close to a guaranteed spot on the team as you get.  Which leaves Toure, Silvestre, Song, Djourou, and Senderos all fighting for that last spot.  I can see some games where he’ll rest Gallas and start Silvestre — but that can’t be more than a handful of matches, really.  So the million dollar question is; can you really see Djourou, Song, or Senderos dislodging Toure?  I really have a hard time seeing that.  No, it’s more likely that they too won’t get more than a handful of starts when Arsene needs to rest someone.  So, barring any injuries, I see 4 players who won’t split more than 20 games among them.  That’s why we’re hearing rumors that Djourou is going out on loan.  If he stays, it will be interesting to see how the boss balances that congestion out.

Meanwhile, I have to admit that the midfield is looking a little thin.  I just happened to cruise over to the dot com to refresh my memory of who’s on the team and noticed that they are putting up some rather strange divisions.  Maybe it’s just for the sake of having 9 defenders, 9 midfielders, and 6 strikers or maybe that’s how Arsenal see all those players, but they are now officially listing Eboue as a midfielder and Theo as a striker.  This means that 5 of the 9 midfielders currently listed are either injured or under the age of 19 and have never played a single professional match for Arsenal.  Wouldn’t it be funny if Eboue is Arsenal’s first choice defensive midfielder all season?  No.  That’s not funny, that’s nightmare fuel — because then I have to listen to all of us Arsenal supporters bitch and moan all season about how horrible he is.

Yesterday was International Friendlies day and just about every player for Arsenal put in some work.  Fortunately, not much happened in the matches — well, “not much” except Robin van Persie put up this spectacular goal.

I had to watch that over and over again.  Could it be that RvP is back to 100%?  That would be a pleasant surprise for Arsenal.

Before I sign off for the day (unless Arsene signs Inler this afternoon) I just want to rake over the dead coals of the Silvestre signing one last time.  It’s done now, the boy’s a Gooner and of course I support him 100%.  Also, as my regular reader knows, I am usually the first person to call for solidarity behind the player, the team, and the coach: just look at how I still want to give Senderos a chance!  I think the signing just took me and many others by complete surprise and my initial reaction was quite negative.  But, on reflection I think it’s a tremendous signing.  Gunnerblog gave me some perspective on the whole affair: we just traded Hoyte for Silvestre AND got £2.25m out of the deal.  Fair enough piece of business if you think about it that way.  A vastly experienced defender, superb professional, who is hard working and dedicated and will be great cover should anything befall our current back 4 in exchange for a kid with some potential who was going to have a hard time making the first team no matter what.  That’s smart business and good for our championship aspirations.

On that note, unless Arsenal sign Inler, I’ll see you folks tomorrow.  See, I can be positive about Arsenal signing a Manc.

P.S. reports are that Liam Brady is currently under observation at a hospital in Dublin.  Nothing more is known at this time, except that he felt “unwell” and checked himself in.  May it be a simple thing and Godspeed on a quick recovery Liam.

Silvestre signs, Tweety next

I guess Phillipe Senderos’ mistakes weren’t bad enough because Arsenal have officially signed Man U blunder boy, Mikael Silvestre. No seriously, that’s a link from the dot com. So, I was wrong, Wenger did have another signing in mind, the signing is a defender, and a premiership player at that.

Huh…

There you have it, the first transfer in 34 years between Arsenal and Man U has just taken place. Not since Jimmie “Sticks Stuff In Your Eyes” Binglebop have the two teams traded a player and this one is a doozy. A record breaking £750k transfer of an old man with a penchant for major gaffes in important games. Rumor has it, they paid £10k for every cm of circumference around his head (Dear Americans: 75cm is a very large ball.)

I admit that I am being hard on the guy, just like I gave Gallas some stick when he came over, and look how wrong I was there.

UGH

He’s not perfect, but he sure is cheap

If news reports are to be believed, Arsenal have swooped in and made a £750k offer for Manchester United whipping post Mikael Silvestre.  I don’t want to put too fine a point on this but my initial reaction is: don’t Arsenal have enough error prone defenders?  And, wouldn’t it be better to let our youngsters make mistakes than let a washed up old man (he’s 31) come in to the team and let teams like Watford score on us?  I mean, if Djourou or Song make a mistake, there’s an opportunity for them to learn from it.  But if Silvestre makes a mistake, well, he’s already had a career full of them I don’t see him getting better.

I guess you get what you pay for and £750k is just about the right price.  Because, on the one hand, Silvestre has won 4 League medals, an FA Cup, the League Cup, Jose Mourinho’s favorite trophy (the Community Shield), and most notably a Champions League medal.  And on the other hand, he’s also provided some comically bad defending in all of those tournaments; defending so bad that United often won in spite of the player.

Another thing that’s odd about the player is that whenever he makes a huge mistake in a game, it seems like he then redeems himself by either scoring a goal or providing an assist — in that same game.  That link isn’t the only example, just google him and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  It’s rather uncanny.

I guess, regardless of all this stuff, he’s damn near the perfect Arsenal signing: he’s big, pacy, versatile, French, cheap, and technically good.  He’d be the absolute perfect Arsenal signing if he was 16 and completely unknown.  Plus, theoretically, bringing in Silvestre will challenge Senderos and Djourou for the backup center half spot and provide needed cover for Gael Clichy at Left Back.  These are all good things and so, maybe £750k makes him a steal.

Oh yeah, one more thing…  signing Silvestre would prove me wrong on just about every front.  Wenger mentioned buying a Premiership player; I said he wouldn’t do it.  Wenger said he wanted a defender; I said he wouldn’t do it.  Wenger said he needed one more body; I said he wouldn’t do it.  It would be just like Wenger to prove loud mouthed bloggers like me wrong.  Go on, Arsene, sign the guy, it’s a bargain.

YOU LEAVE THEO WALCOTT ALONE!!!

Arsene Wenger made an impassioned plea for everyone to give Theo Walcott some room to breathe, much less grow. Sure Arsene, I don’t think I really criticize him, in fact I like the kid quite a bit.  If anything, I think the team doesn’t respect him enough: there have been whole matches where his teammates just don’t look for him.  But maybe that’s something he can work on, imposing himself on his teammates a bit more.  I don’t know, according to the boss, Theo’s a footballing genius, maybe he’ll figure all that out.

And that’s it for today.  If Arsenal sign someone I’ll make a second blog.  If not, see you tomorrow!

It’s a team, stupid

Oh Thomas…  just shut up already.

The World’s Least Reliable Newspaper ™ has reprinted a story from some Czech newspaper which quotes Arsenal’s ubiquitously injured Thomas Rosicky as saying

I hate everyone on the team.  Especially Gael Clichy because he lacks talent.   But also William Gallas because he is a huge baby.  Oh and Arsenal would have won the quad had it not been for those two.

…or something like that.  I don’t know what he actually said because A) I don’t read The Sun (not that I would trust their translation) and B) I don’t speak Czech so even if I were to see the original quotes I wouldn’t know what to do with them.

The important thing here is that Rosicky get on with rehabbing his knee/groin/thigh/calf/whatever and play some football and shut his pie-hole about the team and what went wrong last year.  It’s not his job to complain about teammates, everyone knows that’s why God invented bloggers.

Of course, this whole story could also all just be made up stuff from The World’s Least Reliable Newspaper ™ or a mixture of truth and fiction or… well, Rosicky is sort of denying it without really denying it.  If he were an American he’d just use the old “quotes taken out of context” canard.  Either way, this story is a non-story.  It’s not like Rosicky is actually part of the team, I mean, I haven’t seen him in an Arsenal uniform in a dogs year.

Speaking of injured players, Samir Nasri has been ruled out of the France friendly this week with a thigh strain.  What are the odds that he’ll be fit for Saturday against WoeFulham?

Transfer Speculation

After a summer where the press, literally, went alphabetically through the list of every decent player in the world and linked them to the team, the wire has suddenly and auspiciously gone dead.  This means one of two things; either Wenger is close to spending some of that pot of money he keeps promising us that he has or that he’s ready to stand pat because performances matter more than signings.

I have to admit that this whole juxtaposition of two equal and opposite stories on the dot com is a bit surreal at first glance but if you tease it out you can see what the grand scheme here is; that Arsene recognizes the fan psychology behind wanting a big signing and he’s trying to use that psychology to let you down easy.  In other words, there won’t be a £30m signing before the transfer window closes on September 1st.  There may be a small signing (>£5m), there is very little likelyhood of a medium signing (£5-10m), but there is absolutely no way that Arsenal are putting pen to paper with any team for any figure over £12m.  Here’s the relevant quotes to support my argument, they come out of both articles so bear with me.

Manchester United are in the £20-30 million bracket of the market, Chelsea are in an unlimited bracket, and we have to be in our own bracket – reasonable, but shrewd.

Basically, we balance the budget in the way we run the Club, I have the money available to buy the players, but we go into the competition with that target.

I think you always want to buy the players at the right price.

We have gone three or four years into a different policy [of bringing on our own players] which we have to see through.

Big signings reassure the fans, but performances are better.

And frankly, I agree with the man.  Football isn’t about wealthy patrons running around using the team as their personal prestige pot, outside of Chelsea that is.  For better or worse, Football is a business and it needs to be run as a business.  Right now, Arsenal’s business is in lean times, because they have just used a lot of capital to nearly double their capacity.  In a few years time, that condition will likely change and Arsenal will have bags of money (maybe) but until then, frugality is the name of the game.  Bringing in young men, molding them into team players, challenging for a trophy, and then selling them on for a profit if they ask to leave is what Arsenal is going to be about for the next 5 years or so.  In short, Arsenal are a selling club.  And so what of it?  Everyone says this like it’s a bad thing.

If Arsene Wenger’s talents lie in spotting a good deal and his nose for talent, then it behooves the business side of Arsenal to take advantage of that talent.  Just as any business uses the talents of thier best employees to maximize profits.

We, as fans, need to acclimitize ourselves to this shift in Arsenal because no, Arsenal cannot compete in the transfer market or salary wise with Chelsea and Man U.  That’s not the same as saying they cannot compete on the pitch: this is a solid team and though we lost two very important pieces from last year’s title race, we’ve replaced one (Hleb) with a player who’s not afraid to shoot and score and can put in a decent cross and we’re trying to find a replacement for the other.  Either that will come from the existing squad or from abroad. Either way it’s not going to cost the team £20m to do it.

And I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if next week we see the “This squad is big enough” story.  After all, if the squad were in need of bodies, would the team really let Hoyte and Nordtveit go?

Ade gets his wish

Emmanuel Adebayor penned a new deal with Arsenal today for a reported £80,000 a week.  The deal is also reported to keep him under contract with the team until 2012 or until he scores 32 goals in a season and demands a higher wage and Vincenzo Morabito shops him around to Italian and Spanish teams: which ever comes first.

One part Pires, one part Overmars, and a sprinkle of Zidane

Not much going on today.  It’s a slow news Monday, I have a bit of a hangover, and my pub team lost in the first round of the playoffs yesterday.  So, there’s a short blog in store for you.

According to Gilberto Silver over at Gunnerblog, Arsene Wenger’s promised signing looks like it may be off.  I’ll save the “I told you so’s” for the day the transfer window officially closes but I still firmly believe that the club isn’t really looking too hard for that signing that the handwringers (like Piers Morgan) want so badly.  I believe that because I keep seeing the boss say things like “Absences make the squad grow stronger” and “Not only do we make results but we develop players as well.”  Not exactly the kinds of statements you hear from a team looking for a big signing.  In fact, Man U reportedly put their desire to sign a “quality striker” right into yesterday’s match program, no wonder Looney was so pissed off yesterday.

Regardless of signing or not signing, the positive news stories this morning are all about Samir Nasri.  The boss likened him to Pires and I have to say that Pires was the first person that popped into my mind and probably a lot of yours as well.  Robert was a major contributor to the last double Arsenal won and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Nasri put in the same type of contributions.  I mean, imagine if Arsenal could get 15 goals from that spot: that would be 30 more goals than we got from Hleb.  Already Nasri has shown a willingness to shoot and so while he may not be as dribbly-steppy overy-pass the ball into the defense- as Hleb  (who Piers Morgan laughingly called “our best technical player”) I already think he’s a marked improvement over the Belarussian.

But for Wenger, Nasri also draws comparisons to Mark Overmars as both players were a gamble by the boss in that they were coming into the team after a poor season at their previous club.  Maybe so, but in order for the comparison to be apt, the boss will have to sell Nasri for ten times his purchase price — after they win the double.  Sorry but I can’t see anyone paying £110m for Nasri — well, Tottenham would if only he were English.  No, I’ll stick with the Pires comparison for now.

Maybe a little bit like Ljungerg? Let’s wait and see if he dyes his hair a red streak.

Oh and finally, I’d like all the handwringers and people who think they know better than Arsene Wenger to have a look at what Tony Mowbray (West Brom’s manager) had to say about Arsenal after their so called “pathetic” display.

Quality players cost money but I think the biggest factor is the mental capacity to take in what you are trying to teach. Once we get players who can do that, we will have a team which follows that philosophy — a passing, moving, thoughtful team. The secret is the way Arsene Wenger has done it. You don’t pay £30m for a player, you identify the talent very early and nurture it.

Look at that, someone appreciates Arsenal for what they are doing.  Must not be a “true” Arsenal supporter.

What the hell is wrong with you? Oh, you’re a Goonah.

A few months ago, I discovered Nick Hornby’s blog.  If you don’t know who he is, just do a Google search, you’ll no doubt recognize some of his work.  The point is, he’s a Gooner, and an old school Gooner at that.  He’s a guy who lived through the largely trophyless 1970s and 1980s and he’s still a Gooner.  It was a time when an Arsenal supporter’s only joy was winning one over Spurs.

One of the only certainties of that period was that Arsenal fans always had something to complain about and Nick writes about these fans in his book Fever Pitch.  Given that even in these days and times when Arsenal are a perennial threat to win and fans still complain I have to wonder if a certain type of person falls in love with Arsenal; like some kind of Myers-Briggs personality test where the last question is “do you support Arsenal?”  Oh yeah?  Oh forget the rest of the test, you’re a Never Satisfied Constant Whiner.

It’s the only thing that makes any sense!  Arsenal fans from all over the world are like this.  A win is never good enough.  The unbeaten season? They should have won the Champions League and the FA cup.  And, of course, yesterday’s win is a clear indication that Arsenal should sign 4 players; a striker, a midfielder, a defender and a keeper.  Clearly, a 1-0 win over W.B.A. is evidence that the wheels have come off the team, right?

Wrong.  W.B.A. is a good team.  They play good football.  They aren’t some team of shiat-kickers who lump and crunch, they actually showed some good movement, some decent defense, and a reasonable attack.  Besides which, on any day any Premiership team can beat any other Premiership team.  Add in that Arsenal are missing 8 players due to injury or internationals; Diaby, Eduardo, Rosicky, Bischoff, Fabregas, Senderos, Song, and Toure is just now recovering full fitness after battling malaria.  And maybe, just maybe a 1-0 win is looking pretty good.

But more to the point, Toure had Malaria for Christ’s sake.  When you say “we need a new center half” are you suggesting that Toure doesn’t cut the mustard?  The only reason he didn’t start is BECAUSE HE HAD MALARIA.

Or Senderos?  I know that a lot of people like to whip Senderos, but this kid is easily as good Squirtle, Vidic, or just about any of the second choice top center halfs in the Premier League.  You can argue that he isn’t, that he makes mistakes, but I’ve seen them all make mistakes.  I’ve even seen them all make big mistakes in big matches.

And what if I were to conceed that in some areas the team lacks quality?  What then?  Should Arsenal “open the coffers” and buy?  How?  By borrowing money like Man U?  To the tune of nearly a £1bn in debt?  Or maybe they should just have some oligarch pretend to spend money on the team while secretly loading up the books with bonds payable to him?  Or perhaps, Arsenal could overspend every season, drop to 12th place and win the Carling Cup (as Wenger suggested would define “success” so cheekily yesterday)?  Sorry, but money doesn’t buy trophies, ask Chelsea.  Money doesn’t buy quality, ask Spuds.  And borrowed money might get you temporary success, but the hangover is a bitch.

Nope, I like this squad and I have to agree with Wenger that at most this team needs one more player.  No need to panic, no need to crack open the checkbook and over spend, let’s just see what this team can do. It’s not like they got a pitiful 1-1 draw against a hapless team of misfits like Newcastle.  They WON!  And like I always say, why hangover when you can hang on?

An uneventful 1-0 win

I have to admit that I had some serious reservations about Howard Webb presiding over the opening match of the Premier League and the kickoff to the whole “Get on with the game” campaign; his track record reffing over Arsenal matches is dismal to say the least.  With 8 losses in 17 matches (most of them spectacular blow ups to boot) you’d think that the FA would have the same reservations about Webb that the Arsenal fans do.

Fortunately, like all my other “feelings” on football, they were proven wrong: Webb had a decent game and Arsenal got the win.

So, I guess, without any further ado, I’ll just give my Good, Bad, and Ugly.

The Good:

Nasri gets the first goal of the new season, on his debut, and he joins George Graham, Jimmy Brain, Ian Wright, Gilberto, and Ljungberg as Arsenal luminaries who scored on their debut.  Plus, this kid is not afraid to shoot: he’s already taken more shots and scored more goals than Hleb did in three years at Arsenal.  It is a tremendous way to start the new season.

Eboue in defensive midfield.  Setanta gave Eboue a 5.5 probably because his two shots on goal were awful, but I was tremendously impressed with Eboue at the holding midfield spot.  It’s way too early to tell but could this be another master stroke by the professor? Eboue’s work rate makes him a natural for that spot but still, who’d have thunk it?  I almost wonder if the idea came to Wenger in a dream or something.  Maybe he had that planned all along?

The replacements in general are really impressive.  What other team in the world could lose their starting central midfield pair and still play so impressively?  Or how about their first and second choice center half?  It really is a testament to Wenger’s system.

Speaking of replacements, Djourou did a great job in the center of defense, played his heart out, saved a goal, and all that despite Gallas’ tirade against him.  If he keeps playing like that, I think we can all say “Phillipe, who?”

Finally, Howard Webb didn’t screw Arsenal over.  I guess that’s good.

The Bad:

Walcott had a rough game, not because he didn’t work hard enough, but more because his teammates don’t seem to know how to use him.  There were a ton of passes that were too long for him, in the wrong spot, or just plain poor.  That and his inability to deliver a good ball to his strike partners and he looked like he was really struggling.

What happened to van Persie?  News sources say he was “rested” but he did come on in the 70th minute for Bendtner, and he had one insane shot where he tried to curl the ball into the net off the outside of he left foot.  But apart from that, RvP looked pretty poor.

Finally, what position was it that Toure was supposedly playing?  Right wing?  Huh?  You know the squad is thin when Kolo Toure is used as a right wing sub.

The Ugly:

Despite his flashes of brilliance, Adebayor had one of the ugliest games I’ve seen from him in an Arsenal uniform.  His passes were poor, and there was a stretch at the beginning of the second half where he missed two very clear chances and then got an offside call.  It was as if he decided to prove all of his detractors right all at once.  It would only have been uglier if he had scored and immediately turned around and asked for a new contract.

And finally, there was a moment when Gallas went absolutely mental.  I think what happened was he called for Djourou to step up and spring the offside trap and Djourou didn’t do it.  It nearly led to a goal, but fortunately, Djourou has the pure athleticism and mental awareness needed to get back and block the shot off the line.  Alumunia saw what had happened and went over and thanked his defender, but Gallas went absolutely ape-shit.  He started screaming at Djourou and carrying on, then when Almunia went over to break it up, Gallas started screaming at him too.  It was one of the ugliest scenes I’ve seen an Arsenal player engage in, and I can’t remember a captain ever acting like that. The captain needs to be the glue that holds the team together, not the wedge that drives them apart.  Moreover, he needs to teach the lads, and screaming at them after they just made a critical clearance is the 100% wrong way to teach someone something.  I have to wonder what it will take for Wenger to reconsider Gallas as captain?

And that’s it for today, more analysis tomorrow.  It’s a great day, I’m going to get some sun and hang out with the family, plus… Arsenal won 1-0.  Patrick is singing 1-0 to the Arsenal right now, I can hear it…

P.S.

That other top four team lost 2-1 to a very impressive Middlesboro team.  Boro looked very good on their debut, Tottenham looked, well, they looked like a load of Tottenham.

Divers, respect, and dirty play; the season gets under way

Arsenal are less than 24 hours away from their 12:45 home kickoff against West Bromwich Albion. There’s some good news (Nasri is fit), there’s some OK news (Toure is in the squad despite being “short” in the manager’s words) and then there’s the spate of news about cheating, diving, dirty play, and respecting the refs.

Let me get to the latter in just a second, first, I want to mention that the team seems to have brought back the 3pm Saturday kickoff — well, a little. Last year there were only a handful of Arsenal matches that kicked off at 3pm BST on a Saturday and almost no home matches. This caused a great deal of consternation among yours truly because, well, I didn’t name the site “sometime between 4am and 9am kickoff.com.” I love the 7am kickoff and I know that the British fans loved the 3pm Saturday match just as much. Yes, I know, kickoffs have been shuffled to accommodate television. I don’t care, can’t Arsenal get the 3pm slot? Every time? Is that unreasonable?

Regardless, it’s good to see the traditional home kickoff time being restored for 10 home games this year. Unfortunately, the first one of those doesn’t happen until October 18th against Everton. Can’t wait.

The other news is that, joy of joys, win or lose, relegation be damned, the Premier League season kicks off tomorrow! And what joys do they have in store for us at the corporate office! Huh? Yes, kickers, the boys at the head office have kicked down a new “scheme” they are calling “Get on with the game.”

The big rule change is dissent. Sick of seeing such shameful displays as Ashley Cole turning his back on Mike Riley, the entire Chelsea squad surrounding the referee when they don’t like a call or just want to disrupt play, or John Terry screaming at the ref when a call doesn’t go his way, the Premier League decided to get tough, to really crack down. So, they wrote up a charter, made a flag, designed a new handshake, and got the broadcasters to agree to have some ex-refs in the broadcast studio so that the referee’s point of view could be shown. They have also decided to hit the problem with a with a major — and I mean major — leaflet campaign, and while it’s reeling from that, they’re going to follow up with a whist drive, a car boot sale, some street theatre and possibly even some benefit concerts.

Look, signing compacts, shaking hands, and waving a flag around aren’t going to stop players like Cole and Mascherano from being disrespectful to the referees. Neither is allowing “just” the captain to talk to the ref. It’s silly, it’s a band-aid on the problem. It doesn’t address the issue of when the captain is the problem, and it doesn’t stop the players from being disrespectful.

If you want to fix the problem of dissent, you give one warning, one yellow, a red, and then further sanctions from there. Refuse to leave the pitch (Adebayor!) and get a 1 match ban for every minute the player refuses. You know, serious sanctions — I don’t know, I’m just throwing that out there to show that something could be done. All this scheme will do is make it look like the Premier League is doing something.

And what did they do about the dangerous tackles like the one that nearly ended Eduardo’s career? Nothing. It’ll be business as usual. “Go on get stuck in boys” will be the clarion call of all managers who are unable to teach their boys how to play football. You need look no further than Everton as the model that the middle of the pack teams should emulate. Moyes has craftily put together a team that has the best disciplinary record, is a baby’s breath away from a top four defense, and still scores goals. They are a serious threat to break into the top four because of Moyes and his ability to teach. Not because they go out and break legs to slow down technically superior teams.

Given that the League won’t do anything about dangerous play, is it any wonder that Adebayor is calling for Arsenal to win “dirty?” Ade says what everyone already knew:

Sometimes you have to be dirty to win some games. You need to do that because it is part of football.

I’d rather they didn’t cheat to win, but given Chelsea’s antics in every match and the fact that they get away with it, I’d have to agree with Adebayor. If the league is going to let it happen, well, you’d be a fool not to join them.

Finally, the other big rules change that I wanted to see was an end to the type of diving that 99% of football fans seem not to care about; that “I feel contact I go down (Ronaldo)” type of dive. I know I’m in the minority here, but I can’t stand seeing a 12 stone man writing on the ground in “pain” after some little striker reaches out and pats his cheek. My proposed amendment is even simpler than the respect amendment; if you couldn’t get away with it in a pick-up game, it’s a dive. Thus, a straight red for the “slapper” because, well, you shouldn’t touch another player’s face, dummy. And a yellow card for the guy on the ground for simulation. I’d also allow post match review for diving and retroactive match bans for particularly egregious displays.

And before the few non-Arsenal fans who read this blog get into a frenzy; yes, Cesc Fabregas went down too easily against Everton. So? It’s part of the game, right? You can’t have it both ways. In my “scheme” he would have gotten a yellow. If you really want fair play, you have to be willing to take on your own team, which most fans aren’t. Since no one, not fans, not managers, not owners, and not the League seem willing to take on the really big issues I expect this season will be more of the same, just with better looking banners. I guess I better just take my own advice and “get over it.” Eh?

That’s it for today, I am genuinely excited for the season. After all, it looks like Arsenal are ready to start playing the way everyone else does, there’s going to be a bunch of 3pm Saturday kickoffs, and the boss is promising a new signing. What more could an Arsenal fan want?