Monthly Archives: July 2006

Serie A: From Bad To Worse For Old Arsenal Captain…

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Arsenal’s current captain Thierry Henry had been contemplating a move away from Arsenal over most of last season, but thankfully stayed. He’s lost both the Champions League Final and World Cup Final but will be a stronger player because of it. Arsenal’s future is bright with the new Emirates Stadium as our home and some brilliant young players coming through the ranks.

But with the latest revelations coming out of Serie A things aren’t looking so good for our old captain.

Basically Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina have been demoted to Serie B, and Juventus will start next season with a 30-point deduction – almost certainly confining them to the second division for at least 2 seasons.

Lazio have been deducted 7 points and Fiorentina 12, so they have a slightly better chance of getting back into Serie A within one season. That’s if they don’t lose all their players!

All the teams involved in the scandal (Juventus, Fiorentina, Lazio and AC Milan) have been barred from European competition, meaning Inter, Roma, Chievo and Palermo will benefit and appear in next seasons Champions League.

And the bottom 3 teams in Serie A – Messina, Lecce and Treviso will stay up as a result.

And Juventus have been stripped of their last two Serie A titles.

Who said the grass was greener on the other side?

 

Wingers, Wingers, Everywhere….

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The latest transfer speculation confuses me – we’ve been linked with numerous wingers, including Javier Saviola, Franck Ribery (although now his agent denies it), and the latest transfer talk is a £5.5 million bid for Chievo Verona winger Franco Semioli.

Although we’ve lost Robert Pires in the summer to Villarreal, we have brought in Tomas Rosicky who can either play in the hole or on the wing. We also have Jose Antonio Reyes – who I think will still be at Arsenal this coming season, Alexander Hleb, Freddie Ljungberg and even Robin van Persie can play wide.

So it doesn’t make sense to me.

After having decent World Cups, Rosicky and van Persie will be looking for first team places this season, Hleb has gradually improved throughout his first season in England and even Theo Walcott will be getting a few first-team opportunities this season.

We don’t need anymore attacking players – Wenger has been grooming the likes of van Persie, Jose Reyes and Walcott to make an impact soon. And don’t forget they’re still kids!

In other news, the new Real Madrid President is yet talking b*llocks again after he said Cesc Fabregas would sign for them. Cesc has turned around and told basically told Real that they can f*ck right off and he’s staying at Arsenal.

Good lad!

And it appears that Cashley Cole is getting married to Girls Are Loud singer Cheryl Tweedy tomorrow, but he has apparently snubbed Arsene Wenger and not invited the Arsenal Manager.

A real nice way to thank the man who gave him his first ever start for the Arsenal first team.

With his upcoming book where he apparently blasts Arsenal for their treatment of him during the Chelski scandal you really have to wonder what the f*ck the guy is doing.

He’s not exactly a fans favourite anymore and to keep pushing Arsenal and their fans just seems totally ludicrous thing to do!

He’s a decent player and at the end of last season things seem to have settled but if he wants to keep taking the p*ss then Wenger should kick him out of the club.

But he’s only one of two English players in the squad isn’t he?

If it was up to me, like most Arsenal fans I wouldn’t be bothered if the versatile Mathieu Flamini was our left back for the start of the Emirates Era.

Cashley can go and join the Galactic Olds!

 

Exclusive: Emirates Stadium Photographs

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The Emirates Stadium: It Looks Phenomenal!

I’ve just found a couple of links that show some great photographs of the New Emirates Stadium. Not sure if you guys have seen these but I thought I’d post them up for you anyway!

Emirates Stadium Photographs – 12th June
Emirates Stadium Photographs – 20th June

And there’s also some great shots taken by the Official Arsenal Photographer that can be seen here.

There are two galleries, dated the 12th and 20th of June so you might have already seen them but I haven’t so I thought I’d share them just in case you haven’t.

From the pictures it looks totally state-of-the-art and I’ve been to places like The Nou Camp and The Millennium Stadium but Arsenal’s new home looks better than those!

I’ll be seeing you guys at Mr Bergkamp’s testimonial! 😀

 

Who’s The Villain: Zidane or Materazzi?

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A lot has been said over the last couple of days about the now infamous head-butt given out by Zidane to Materazzi.

There are reports that Materazzi’s insults were personal and racist, while Materazzi says he didn’t say anything like that at all.

But watching the incident again on this video, you can tell that once the insult has been said that Zidane had made up his mind to pole-axe the Italian. He runs past Materazzi to get a good enough distance, turns and then attacks the defender.

And in this exclusive angle, you can actually see Zidane smiling before he issues the head-butt!

I’ve always know Materazzi was a dirty defender – hell, he was sent off several times at his brief time at Everton! But as this video shows he doesn’t mind trying to hack a players head off!

Looking at the clips of Shevchenko I’m not surprised he’s moved to the Premiership!

But on a serious note who is the real villain here?

Yes, if Materazzi said something which was racist or personal then I suppose Zidane had a right to retaliate but with a vicious head-butt?

And doesn’t taunting happen all the time on the football pitch? Ian Wright has talked many times about opposing defenders would wind him up but that just motivated him to score goals. And I’m sure the insults Wrighty received were personal and occassionally racist… (you can ask the ‘Great Dane’ about that one).

In the grand scheme of things you could hardly say that Zidane cost France the World Cup – he got sent off when penalties were inevitable and the only miss France actually had was a shot that hit the underside of the bar from David Trezeguet who would have been certain to take a spot kick anyway.

Zidane probably thought “F*ck this, the Italian twat has been taunting he throughout the whole game with racism and it looks like it’s penalties anyway so I’ll pole-axe this m*therf*cker and show him…”

People have said that Zidane has a tendency to go over the top and although it’s reported that he’s had 14 red cards in his career I cannot really think of an incident in recently times that was that violent.

In fact I can’t think of any.

But the question is regardless of what was said – did Zidane have the right to attack another player on the football pitch?

Surely if that was the case then all hell would break loose every week across the footballing world!