"I Have Seen Him On YouTube A Lot." - Theo

That is one of the best quotes in history from a professional footballer. Theo was talking to Arsenal.com about his rehabilitation on his shoulder, and he said he hopes to be back in the next month. He also talked about how he had a problem in his other shoulder that they had to fix as well.

"I am nearly there, and hopefully [will be back] by the end of this month. I am doing a lot of rehab work now with the shoulder, landing on it, and also in the gym with a lot of weights to build the muscle strength back. I just feel it will be when I am ready. Obviously I do not want to do it again, so I have got to be 100% fit.''

Then they asked him about Andrey Arshavin, which led to the best line ever.

"Hopefully when I am back fit again, I can play a lot of football with him. When he gets his [match] fitness back up, he will be a top player for us, definitely. I have seen him on YouTube a lot, watching how he plays, the balls he can spot. He can do unbelievable passes."

I effing love Theo already, but this just makes me love the guy even more. Can't you see Theo reading NewsNow, seeing that Arsenal are trying to sign Arshavin, then going and looking up clips on YouTube? I think that is amazing. I don't think you'd see William Gallas or Alex Song on YouTube looking at new signings. Theo, you are the man. Free beer on me if I ever happen to see you. And not just one either, you can have all the free beer you can drink. You're the best. Get well soon mate.

In other good news, Eduardo is going to be back in action this week, playing for Croatia. I think in this second half of the season he can be a huge player for us, one we've certainly missed. If he comes through this game without getting any injuries (cross your fingers) then he could be ready to play for us against Cardiff or at least Sunderland. That could especially be huge while Adebayor is out. We've been needing goals lately and this man can certainly provide them. I'll be watching that match on Wednesday and hoping for the best for Eddy.

There isn't a whole lot else to write about, there is an article about how Nicklas Bendtner hopes to make his place in the first team while Emmanuel Adebayor is out but honestly I don't ever think Bendtner will become a first eleven player ever, and I'm not complaining. I don't think he's that good and I think he has a terrible attitude.

And last but not least, the best band in the world, blink 182, got back together Sunday night at the Grammy Awards. It was also confirmed on their website that they are putting together a new album and a world tour. It's amazing that they are back playing together after four years of not talking, and I'm pretty stoked.

That's all I've got. Leave awesome comments. Cheers.

Tottenham 0-0 Arsenal, Eboue Costs Arsenal Again

Another North London Derby, and another draw. While not nearly as traumatic as the first match against Sp*rs this season at the grove, this one was no more fun to watch. Eboue is once again to blame, as he was sent off for two yellow cards in the first half. The second one was just a stupid, stupid thing to do, as he tried to trip Modric when Modric tripped him. They were both booked and Eboue was sent off. He's a clueless cunt that has no place in top flight football, and I really wish he would never play for Arsenal again. Every time I see him in the lineup I know it's going to be almost like playing like ten men, and this time I guess he just wanted an early bath or just wasn't feeling like playing a match at all. I can't stand him. He's a diving, cheating, mindless wanker who I wish had never stepped foot into Arsenal Football Club. It's hard enough to win derbies as it is, and having ten men for an hour of the match doesn't make it any easier.

Adebayor went off injured as well in the first half which meant Bendtner had to come on. While Adebayor hasn't been in great form, he still scores a ton of goals (8 in 8 matches) against the scum. Clichy later went off injured when that cunt Darren Bent thought Clichy's head was the ball and smashed his head into it. He went off bleeding and Kieran Gibbs came on for his Premier League debut.

I don't have time to spell out everything that happened in the match line by line, but I will point out a few things.

I thought Almunia was fantastic today. After the collapse of the defense and the goalkeeping last time against Sp*rs it was great to see such a good performance from Almunia today. I've been saying that we don't need to buy a keeper and I still don't think we need to. I think Almunia has earned his spot and see no reason why he shouldn't keep it. He hasn't gotten to play behind a great defence since he began starting between the posts, and yet he has a pretty good record. Big ups to Manuel.

I thought the defense was good in general as well. While Tottenham certainly had some chances, they were mostly long shots or half chances. We also defended the corners pretty well, which as we know is our weakest spot. Any time you keep a clean sheet after being down a man for so long, you have to say it's a good defensive performance. Kolo and Gallas may have finally found some kind of a working system because it seems to have worked well the last two matches. Let's hope it continues.

Alexandre Song, for me, stood out. When I saw him starting in the midfield next to Denilson, I'll admit I was a little bummed to see him in there. Our options in the center were limited though, so Song it was, and he did not disappoint. I thought he broke up a lot of attacks well and generally did a good job protecting the back four, but I was most impressed with his work rate. Every time I saw him he was running try to make a play, and it's something we haven't seen enough of from this team this season. If you've read my blog very often, you know that I have not been the biggest fan of Alex, but if he continues to play the way he did today, then I will be more than appreciative of his services. I think without him today we would maybe not have been able to hold on to the clean sheet, so full credit to Mr. Song.


While our attacking was certainly not what you would hope for, it's understandable in a way seeing as we are without our best player in Cesc, our true right midfielder in Theo, Adebayor went off injured in the first half, Eboue gets himself sent off, and Arshavin was not match fit yet. At eleven on eleven, we probably score the goal that gets us three points today. With Theo or Cesc in, you certainly would have liked our chances. Even if Arshavin had been ready to come on I think we may have scraped it. Nasri was good today, but there just wasn't a lot in our attacking and it's somewhat easy to see why. I think as Eduardo (who was on the bench today, woohoo!), Theo, Cesc, and Arshavin work back into the squad you'll see those goals start to pile up for us. Let's just hope the defense can stay solid when that happens.

I think, due to Eboue's absolute retardedness, that we have to count this as a point gained instead of two points lost. We're four points back of Chelsea with thirteen games to go, so it is certainly not an insurmountable deficit to get to 4th spot. That 4th spot is absolutely critical.

Leave your thoughts on the game, Eboue, or anything else. Cheers.

Arshavin Finally Signs For Arsenal

Photo Courtesy of Arsenal.com

Hello all. What a ridiculous day yesterday was, eh? I think the Arshavin deal was off and then on about five different times in the span of about three hours. When we went past the 5:00 pm deadline it looked like we weren't going to get him signed at all, but the news broke an hour and a half later that Arsene Wenger was confident we had him signed but the Premier League office had all gone home so they couldn't approve the deal yet. It sounded pretty strange but that was confirmed this morning when the Premier League confirmed that Arshavin is an Arsenal player. To quote Arshy:

"Now I can say only one thing - that if I play for Arsenal, it will be at number 23."

Number 23 huh? That's a big act to follow since the great one wore that number. That's right, I'm talking about Michael Jordan. I wish he would have said more than "only one thing" though, like that he was determined to help the team, was going to score 45 goals in this half of a season, and would once again kick John Terry in the face.

It's a relief to me that we were able to bring in somebody to help the squad out in this time of need. I would have prefferred a defensive midfielder or a defender as you all know if you've read the site before, but we do need some help with goal scoring lately so he should be able to help with that. However, I don't like that we've pursued this player since last summer and it took us until almost February 3rd to finally get him signed. Don't say it was to get his price down, because it wasn't. To quote Zenit representatives:

"The conditions of the contract are very favourable for Zenit," Petrov said. "The value of the deal is much more than £12million."

So chances are the deal is around the 12 million + 3 million in installments. So why did it take us so long and why were there not other options when it looked like the Arshavin deal had collapsed?

I think we really do miss David Dein in a way. Yeah, he has a totally different way of thinking than the rest of the board, but maybe he is half right. He is certainly wrong to team with someone like Alisher Usmanov, and I'm not saying we need a sugar daddy, but maybe we do need a board a little more willing, maybe even one that encourages, spending money. To me it seems like Arshavin was our only target and that does concern me because we haven't even adressed all the team needs. Maybe Arsene thinks that Alex Song is good enough...errrrrr...capable of playing in this league...errrrr...no he's shite. We needed a defensive midfielder. Gallas isn't getting any younger or any better either, so we're going to need a defender soon too, but no, we wouldn't want to go ahead and sign say, Micah Richards while his value is at it's lowest point because of his dip in form.

For now though, we must be happy to have Arshy the Gunner. I'm sure he'll help the team, especially while Cesc and Theo are out, and maybe with a little luck he'll win us the game over Sp*rs this weekend, who may start the old duo of Defoe and that cartwheeling cunt Robbie Keane. Sp*rs and Liverpool are really just a bunch of horrible cunts are they? Selling players back and forth six months apart, good business you wankfests.

I don't have much else today. Looking forward to seeing some pictures of Arshavin in training soon. Cheers.

1 Hour To Get Arshavin Deal Done, Big Transfer News Of The Day

Morning all. The Premier League extended the transfer window this morning, and it should go to about 5:00 pm London time. That gives us one hour to finalize the Arshavin deal, or any other deals we could possibly be making (good one I know). Reports say that Arshavin took a private jet into London to try to work out a deal, but his wage demands were too high and we broke off negotiations with him, but he couldn't leave because of the snow storm. Apparently the deal is back on now as of an hour ago, going by this article:

"The on-off-on-off-on-off transfer of Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St Petesburg to Arsenal is back on and "very close" to conclusion, according to Sky Sports. There is plenty of time for the £15m-ish deal to be off and back on again before the transfer window closes."

I've heard that Arshavin is asking for about 90,000 quid a week, which has to be about triple what Zenit pay him. I think he's mental if he thinks we're going to pay him that, and really don't want us to bother with him if those are his demands. I want signings for sure, to improve the squad, but not at that cost for that player in that position.

There is a slim possibility that we have put in a 7 million pound bid to Sp*rs for Giovanni Dos Santos, best friend of Carlos Vela. Two bids were accepted by the scum, one from Portsmouth, which has now collapsed, and one from an unknown club. I don't think it's us but as long as we have connections to the player then it wouldn't shock me.

Robbie Keane looks set to head back to the Lane for 15 million pounds, as Tottenham continue to buy all of their former players. Maybe next they will bring back Berbatov too, and Sol Campbell. Rafa Benitez only gave him six months at Liverpool before opting to sell him, and we've seen a lot more of that lately, like with Diarra last year for us.

I'm going to try to keep this undated every hour on the hour today so everyone is up to date with all the big happenings. Cheers all.

Serious Questions Must Be Asked About Arsene Wenger

That title for a post will piss off a bunch of "fans" who think they are better than everyone else, but I don't care. After another ridiculous draw at home against West Ham yesterday, I'm sick of the "In Wenger We Trust" bollocks. Yeah I think he's a good manager and we all know he's accomplished great things for the club but at some point he has to be told that he is wrong and things have to change. This is one of those times. His youth experiment or whatever you want to call it has led to no trophies in what will probably be four years and no titles since 2004.

The current squad that he chooses to put out there is not good enough, yet he refuses to strengthen. When we lost Diarra, we said, "Ok, well we still have Flamini and Gilberto." But when Gilberto and Flamini left, who did we bring in then? Nobody. Despite the fact that every Gooner from California to Russia knew we needed to bring someone in, Wenger bought nobody.

Cesc Fabregas is by far our most influential player, but did Arsene really think that it was impossible for Fab to ever get hurt? Why was there nobody who can at least fill in that role adequately enough? Diaby does not even come close to what Cesc can do, and while Nasri is good at creating, his moving into the middle leaves us short on the wing.

Emmanuel Eboue has never been good enough to play on the wing for Arsenal, or any Premier League club for that matter, yet there is a new contract in the works for him. Playing Denilson and Nicklas Bendtner out on the wings is just ridiculous for a team with title aspirations, because those aren't the players natural positions! Yet Theo Walcott goes down and we're running midfields of Denilson, Diaby, Song and Nasri. Yeah that looks like a team that can compete with the other top clubs...

What really got me questioning though was the fact that Robin van Persie started on the bench yesterday. He's been our best player (indeed one of our only good players) since Cesc went out, and yet the manager leaves him on the bench to start Adebayor (who has been absolute shite) and Bendtner, who clearly have never worked well together and even Stevie fucking Wonder could see that. He said the reason he left van Persie on the bench to start was because he didn't want to risk an injury. That's the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard. You don't not play your best player just so he DOESN'T get hurt, you assume that he will make it through the game healthy and will make plays for you. I have an apple in my fruit bowl but I won't eat it because it might turn into a core. I don't want to get a job because I might get fired from it one day. I don't want to get married because my wife might divorce me. Do those sound stupid and ridiculous to you? Because that is basically Wenger's reason for sitting RvP.

We've only scored four Premiership goals since we played United way back when, so you can see why Wenger is after Andrey Arshavin. Yet Wenger is nonchalant about it, saying he doesn't care either way.

"Nothing is happening - maybe, maybe not. It doesn't worry me either way."

It really should worry you Arsene, because you've had all of January to try to fix at least SOME part of this squad that's got us in 5th place and can't defend and has forgotten how to score. I'm not asking for big money signings. Bakary Sagna wasn't expensive yet he is a key player for us. Why can't we find some more signings like that to come in and strengthen the squad a bit? The reason is because Arsene Wenger doesn't ever want to be told that he was wrong.

I've been very very faithful throughout this youth movement for Arsene, but my patience is wearing thin. Draws against Everton away are acceptable, but draws against West Ham at home are not, especially when we could have brought in better players before now.

A lot of you will disagree and call me a cunt, but guess what, you can piss off and get hit by a bus. Wanting to win trophies does not make you a fake fan. I think Wenger deserves time to fix this because of all that he has done for Arsenal, but I don't think his position at the club should be there regardless of results. If he remains stubborn, if this Arshavin deal doesn't get done, and we miss the Champions League and go another year trophyless, then I think his time at Arsenal may be nearing it's end.

Leave your thoughts, although if they are not at least somewhat thought provoking I'll just delete them. Cheers.