Is it “Silly Season” or “Stupid Season?”

I didn’t want to make another post today but it seems like the papers have forced my hand, what with the crazy reports that Arsene Wenger is taking Cesc and leaving, that Kolo Toure is leaving, and that William Gallas is leaving. It seems everyone we love is leaving us — everyone we love except William Gallas.

Even people we don’t love yet, like Hoyte the Younger, Jay Simpson, and Nacer Barazite are all leaving Arsenal. Though for those three “leaving” means getting a chance to play first team football on loan to some crappy club. I’m very high on Simpson and I’ll put money that Simpson scores 5+ goals for West Brom before the end of the season.

Meanwhile Arsenal have confirmed that Havard Nordveit is returning to the club. I’m sure the 18 year old will fill in perfectly for William Gallas…

What a way to kick off the new year, eh?

In the link above you’ll see that Peter Hill-Wood has come out and said that they are refusing Kolo Toure’s transfer request. This is remarkable for several reasons. First, Arsenal are typically very tight lipped about all transfers. I was looking over the Diarra saga the other day and the club denied that anything was ongoing up until the moment that the player was transfered. Second, if they were all “players will honor thier contracts” then why didn’t they make Diarra honor his contract?  Maybe they have changed their policy?  It’s the only thing that makes sense because last year Wenger said publicly that Arsenal don’t refuse players who put in transfer requests.

It makes sense to deny Toure, because if Arsenal let Toure go they will have Havard Nordveit paired with the vastly experienced Johan Djourou, but I really wish they had found this steel last year when Diarra was bitching and moaning like a little child.

Maybe Arsenal have learned that you can’t let players like Diarra, Flamini, and Gilberto all go at the same time and still remain a viable Premiership challenger? I suspect that they have learned their lesson and will only let two senior players leave this time!

Djourou for captain!

If today was the start of Stupid Season I can’t wait for tomorrow’s transfer rumors — Wenger to take over Man City!

1 Year of Blogging from America

First of all, happy new year, I hope your year is filled with health, wealth, and happiness.  I also hope that this year sees all of our transfer dreams  fulfilled,  dozens of 3-0 Arsenal wins, a treble, and Sam Allardyce, Joey Barton, and David Bentley all permanently banned from playing/coaching/talking about football. That would be the perfect year!

Most of you don’t know this, but today also happens to be the one year anniversary of this blog. I don’t know what possessed me to start this insanity. I had been reading other people’s blogs and probably though “hey I could do that!” Or maybe I got frustrated that I thought the other members of message boards weren’t listening to me. So, my responses to them got longer and more detailed and better researched and I thought “why am I doing this for the guy who runs this place? I could run my own place!”

So I signed up with WordPress, picked up fingers and placed them on keyboard and started writing… Every day.

At first I justified it as me working on my writing but we all know that this is not an exercise in fine writing. This is madness. This is an obsession. This is one man yelling into the darkness, the modern version of the crazy man in the park standing on soapbox decrying the government cover up of UFOs.

And for the longest time, it was me, pretty much all alone: January of 2008 I had 955 views ALL MONTH! The numbers started slowly going up and up but I’m not sure how, maybe my two loyal readers told two of their friends and.. oh my god, it’s just like that movie “Pay it forward.”

It wasn’t until I got picked up by Gooner News that the numbers started really coming in. Which is how I have all of you. Well, all of you except the guys from Tacoma who my friend Russ is tirelessly recruiting for me (thanks Russ).

If there is anything I’d like for the new year (besides the aforementioned Arsenal sucess, oh and if Sir Alex Fergus could get an incurable case of Herpes on his face) If there was anything I’d like it would be to get a bit bigger audience. Like, if NewsNow would pick up the site. If you’ll permit me an emo moment: I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong by them. I think I’ve submitted the site according to their rules, I’m a better writer than 3/4 of the other sites they carry, and I’ve even emailed them several times asking what I’ve done wrong or what I could do different to get my site included with them: no response. It makes me wonder, after I cry in the corner and smudge my mascara.

Now that that ugly scene is over, I really just wanted to use this post to thank all my loyal readers, the lurkers and posters alike, you guys make this all worth while. So, thanks for reading and as long as you keep coming by and commenting, I’ll keep writing. After all, no one wants to be the crazy guy in the park talking to himself: those people are called “business men with bluetooth headsets” and they are shunned.

See you tomorrow with the #2 installment of the year in review — he he… #2.