Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would love to see Bischoff actually do well at Arsenal. Alas, he opened his big mouth didn't he and that was that. His appearance against Wigan wasn't bad but then again even we can excel in a team that is winning 3-0. all the best to amauri though, he might be a NUT but we aren't.

WEG said...

Organistion gets you far in an international tournament. Kudos to the US.

Lord Nacho said...

funny shit, courtesy of arseblogger.
http://www.oleole.com/media/main/podcasts/arsecast/ADE_BROCHURE.pdf