The Latest On Charlie "Stanky Leg" Davies

Hello everyone. It's been kind of a sad last 24 hours or so for fans of the US Men's National Team, with the news that Charlie Davies, USA and Sochaux striker, was seriously injured in a one car crash Tuesday morning. A woman, named Ashley J. Roberta, was killed in the accident. Davies and Roberta were both passengers in the car, and the name of the driver has not yet been released. At 3:15 am Tuesday morning, the car Davies was in crashed into a railing in the suburbs of Washington DC, and the pictures of the crash are really frightening.


Yes, that is half of a car being taken away on a tow truck. The other half was carried off on another truck. Davies was airlifted to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery on his many injuries. First, doctors had to repair his ruptured bladder, then they inserted titanium rods into both his tibia and femur bones in his leg. The emergency surgery took about five hours, and National Team team mates did not even know of the accident until he was entering surgery at about 11 am, because there were no team functions before lunch on Tuesday.


Davies also suffered facial fractures and a fracture of his left elbow that could require more surgery in the coming week that he will be spending in the hospital.

The best news for Charlie Davies right now is that he was a young, fit, athlete, which greatly improves his chances of making a full recovery.

"Injuries of this nature usually require a recovery period of six to 12 months and extensive rehabilitation," said Dr. Dan Kalbac, a U.S. team doctor who collaborated with the doctors at the hospital. "Due to Charlie's fitness level, his prognosis for recovery and his ability to resume high-level competition is substantially improved."

There is, as of yet, no word on whether or not the driver of the vehicle or any of the passengers were under the influence of any substances, but the best we can all hope for at this point is the full recovery of Charlie Davies and pray for the girl's family who was killed. Apparently Charlie did break the curfew set for the National Team when he was out until 3:15 though. His injuries mean that he will almost certainly miss the 2010 World Cup.

National Team coach Bob Bradley had this to say:

“Obviously, as a team we were saddened to learn this news. Our thoughts and prayers are with Charlie and his family, as well as the people in the car and the families of the others involved. As a team, we are relying on each other in a moment that has for sure hit us all hard.”

As a tribute to Charlie Davies, fans have come up with the idea to have a full minute standing ovation in the ninth minute to recognize Charlie in the match tonight against Costa Rica. Davies wears number 9 for the National Team and his club team, so that is why the ninth minute was picked. The game will be televised at 8pm Eastern Time on ESPN2, and I encourage everyone to watch and give their support if you aren't able to get to the match.

If fans want to send cards their best wishes to Davies, they can mail them to:

Washington Hospital Center
110 Irving St. NW
Washington DC 20010

Also, you can email your wishes to charliedavies9@yahoo.com, and his family will be printing them all out and bringing them to him. Show him the love guys.

There are times when we all act like football is the most important thing in life, but things like this make you realize that it's not even close to that in the grand scheme of things. Get well soon Charlie, and I hope everyone will send their best out to him and keep him in your prayers.

Arsenal Need A Brazilian, 8 Youngsters Leave the Club

Morning all. It's been awhile yet again. I've decided I really do hate transfer season. It's the same every year for us. Teams are signing players for ridiculous fees that we would never ever pay for anyone, and we're linked with 34,592 players and don't sign any of them. It makes me not want to read about Arsenal, but I have been watching a lot of football lately in the form of the Confederations Cup, so I wanted to talk a bit about that today, so if you don't care about it then turn off your station.

First of all I have to give some credit to the US team. While I've been a huge critic of Bob Bradley, Landon Donovan, and the entire rest of the national team setup, I have never seen such a turnaround from the start of one tournament until the end of it. From losing against Italy and the 3-0 defeat to Brazil at the start to somehow getting into the semi-finals with a great show against Egypt, then going on to beat the best team in the world, Spain, was an amazing turnaround. Even in the final against Brazil, without one of our better players (Michael Bradley) we managed to go up 2-0 and had to withstand a second half barrage from a team that can attack as well as any in the world. Yes, the result was a loss, but the overall result is a lot of confidence to take forward to the World Cup next year.

Landon Donovan should have been named the player of the tournament for what he did. Off the ball he was amazing, and the counter-attack goal against Brazil was a thing of beauty. I've never seen the US score a goal like that.


Felipe Melo was a big player for Brazil in this tournament, and since he's a holding type central midfielder, he's been linked with Arsenal. I think he'd be a great addition personally. After watching him several times in the past few weeks I think he's the type of player we could really use. Problem is, he's just signed a contract extension with Fiorentina. It does say there is a buy-out clause in the contract, but who knows how much it is. If we could get him for 12-15 million though I'd be all for it.

Some youth team news today as eight of our young guns will be leaving the club and four have signed professional terms. The list is as follows:

Released:
Amaury Bischoff
Paul Rodgers
James Dunne
Rui Fonte
Abu Ogogo
Rene Steer
Vincent van den Berg
Anton Blackwood

Signed Professional Terms:
James Shea
Craig Eastmond
Luke Ayling
Cedric Evina

No real surprises there then. I'm glad Bischoff is gone. What a terrible waste of money he was. I know he was signed for free, but he still got paid, so don't leave comments telling me it didn't cost any money.

That's really about it. There's some bollocks in the paper about how Andrey Arshavin would love to play for Barcelona. So would I. But it doesn't mean they'll be signing me any second now, and the same is true for Arshy.

Leave a comment or follow me on twitter. Peace.

Arsenal In Bid for Ramsey

Morning all. There isn't much for news today honestly so this may be a short one. If you haven't joined the Euro 2008 contest, you can do so here. Just pick the two teams to make the Finals at Euro2008 and the final score and you win.

We'll start with the England-USA friendly which if you don't live in England or the States you probably don't care about but I do and I watched it yesterday. A couple of observations from the game: Is Jermain Defoe really the best option to be leading the English strike force? There have to be better options than that. I don't know who exactly but I think maybe Young, Agbonlahor, Ashton, or maybe even Theo would be better than Defoe. The fat scouser Rooney and Gerrard were both great behind him though. As far as the USA goes they couldn't manage shite. I hate saying it because I'm no fan of Landon Donovan but we missed him yesterday. Our strikers looked lost all match and while part of that is because of good defending, some was just because it wasn't the first choice strikers. Oh and one other thing on England, why is Wes Brown playing at all? He is absolutely terrible. Hope he gets hit by a bus.

Ok enough of that, now on to Arsenal. According to reports Arsenal have put in a £5million offer to Cardiff for Aaron Ramsey. Cardiff rejected the offer because they want more money up front. Arsenal's offer was based on incentives for appearances and the like, similar to how we got Theo Walcott from Southampton. Ramsey is a good young player, and this was shown as he just got his first call up to the Wales squad for the friendlies this week. They say we'll go back with an improved offer but I'm not so sure how highly Wenger rates him. It may just be a, "Well if we can get him for this much we might as well." But I guess as always we'll have to wait and see.


Alex Mcleish of Birmingham says he hopes to keep up the relationship with Arsenal so they can keep loaning our players. I'm not sure Alex, but that relationship may have been hurt a little bit by that cunt Martin Taylor breaking our striker's leg.

Goonertalk is having a poll of sorts to see who everyone's all time best Arsenal players are and is going to put them in a book. So if you're into books and voting for things then go ahead and do that.

Alexander Hleb says that he's never said he wants to leave Arsenal. Very crafty there Alex...but we know that you told your agents to find you a way out and they have been essentially begging for it for the past month. I'm so sick of Hleb honestly, I hope he's gone sooner rather than later and I couldn't really care where he goes. Be nice if he went to play for Tottenham. Then when we kicked the shite out of him all the time he'd not think it was so bad at Arsenal.

Jose Mourinho is just about in as manager of Inter Milan, and I can't see Hleb playing for him, so I think if he's going it's going to have to be Madrid or Barcelona. Hopefully the report is true and he's agreed personal terms with Barca and all that needs to be worked out is a transfer fee. Like I said yesterday, I'd take 10 million quid for him. What would be your selling price for Hleb?

That's about all I've got today. Remember the Euro 2008 prediction contest! We had a great start to it yesterday with people getting their predictions in so let's keep it up. Remember all you have to do is pick the two teams that will be in the finals and the final score. The winner gets a free ArseNole Stein Mug. That way you can drink Newcastle Brown Ale, which along with Yuengling are my top two beers! Sign up by posting your prediction in the comments, the forums, or emailing me at ArseNole@arsenole.com.