Greetings Gooners,


I am back from my summer hiatus, so whats been happening over the last 2 months?


Not much in the way of new signings, with only Thomas "Little Mozart" Rosicky arriving. We have said farewell to the Ice Man, Bobby Pires, and the Sol Campbell who was leaving us to play abroad, and ends up in Portsmouth. Ashley Cole could still be on his way out of the club, but at the moment, no bid has been accepted for him.


Events on the pitch so far have been mixed.


We have secured qualification for the Champions League, and now end up in a group along with CSKA Moscow, Hamburg, and FC Porto. We kick off the Champions' League campaign with a tricky trip to Hamburg on the 13th of September, followed by a premiership trip to Old Trafford to play Man Utd on the 17th.
Click here for the draw in full.


Talking of the Premiership, we are 2 games in, and so far have only picked up the one point. I did get back to see the Man City game, and though the result was a huge dissapointment, our passing and movement was good, but we lack sharpness in front of goal.

A fit Henry would have scored at least 1 of the chances that came his way on Saturday.


Next up is Middlesbrough at home, hopefully we get our season going the right way with that game.


Its good to be back.

Arsenal 3 v 0 Charlton
The 3-0 win over Charlton, was one of the easier games I have watched this season. The scoreline could have been more, were it not for our wasteful nature in front of goal. Charlton offered little, but that should not take away from how well Arsenal played. At times the football was as good as we have played, and its encouraging to see how the side is maturing.


Wenger Said:

We dominated the game. We scored early on and sometimes it became too easy for us.
But the confidence is back in the team and we have found the way we want to play the game.

It is enjoyable to see how quickly the young players have improved and how strong they look. I am very, very happy for them and for the club.

Hleb again had a good game, and it was nice to see him rewarded with a goal. This can only be good for his confidence.


The run-in is going to be close, all the other teams chasing the 4th spot and Livepool also picking up 3 points at the Toon, so with 2 wins in a week, I think Wenger's hopes of catching Liverpool are a little too ambitious.


Watching the game on Saturday, I would also like to give Gilberto a special mention. He comes in for a lot of (often justified) stick from Arsenal fans, but Saturday he was excellent, one of the best games he's had for a long time. Senderos also played well, very commanding in the air; winning every ball that came his way.


Adebayor, is so Kanu-like its untrue. Just like Kanu he seems to miss the easy chances and score the harder ones. One miss on Saturday had Henry beating the ground in frustration because the big Togo forward chose to shoot instead of pass for a simple tap in. Having said that, he was involved in the first goal, scored the 2nd, and he certainly gets involved in the play, but its too early for me to form an opinion how good he'll turn out.


So another promising display, and its on to Portsmouth next weekend, who've hit a bit of form themselves, I think if we keep playing as we have these last 3 games, we should not have too many problems down on the south coast.

Well I woke up to a huge pile of it this morning. Being 5 hours behind the UK, I found a ton of rumours for me to have a comment on:


Any Gooner following the 'Thierry Henry to Barcelona' transfer saga will be well aware of the current story doing the rounds.
Today I cancelled my subscription to the Times, not because they ran the story about Henry going to Barcelona, but because as Arseblog commented this morning, the source of the story is FC Barcelona Blog and as he puts it that's 'lame'. I mean - was that the best you can do Matt Hughes?

They're not the only one, The Mirror also ran the story almost word for word - even down to formations to be used next season!
Martin Lipton you are a lazy twat.

Online, both Teamtalk and Sky Sports run the story too.


So what's my take?


I've been asked by quite a number of people about the story, especially as we are both on the big blog media network. In fact, one muppet even thinks we are the same person, which would be kind of hard when I'm 4,500 miles away from Barcelona.
The only thing that surprises me is that people now think there is something to the story, simply because it appeared in the Times and the Mirror.

That's crap - if the story was Bullshit on Tuesday when they blogged it, just because the papers re-print the same thing does not mean its any more or less a 'load of bollocks' today.
The Barca bloggers stick to their story, they're adamant - but that's not to say their source isn't talking crap - he might well be. We do come back to one thing though: It's easy for all this rumour stuff to stop: Henry only has to sign the deal.


My guess is he is not sure what to do, but as you can see with Gerrard at Liverpool last season when it actually comes to the time to leave, sometimes its just too tough to do it, I hope Henry finds when the time comes it is too hard to go.


As for the British Press, I won’t be reading your back pages anymore, I'll stick to blogs - at least they're honest.

I don’t know what's worse: not quoting the source of your story, or being lazy. This shows why blogs are taking over and newspapers are dying. The guys at the Mirror and Times, you are a fucking disgrace to your profession. You have zero credit WE ALL KNOW WHERE YOU GOT THE STORY.


The one thing that is a "Fact" (as that seems to be the word of the week), is that Fran Merida has gone from Barcelona to Arsenal. He was the trialist that played in the friendly against Brighton the other day. Let's just hope that the ''Barcelona players joining Arsenal' trend continues and not the other way around.

Sol Campbell and Robin van Persie made successful comebacks from injury as Arsenal beat Brighton 1-0 in a friendly played behind-closed-doors at the Club's training ground on Tuesday morning according to the clubs website


Campbell in his first appearance since he suffered bruising to his ankle on February 1, played the entire 90 minutes while Van Persie, who has been sidelined with a broken toe, played for 72 minutes.


Freddie Ljungberg is likely to be out for 10 days with his calf injury, so will miss the home game to Charlton this weekend, it is expected he could be back for the Portsmouth game the following week.