1. Article by Perry Groves (no, not that Perry Groves - Arseblog user Perry Groves)

So the new Premier League season is less than a week away, the transfer news is lukewarm, and Sky are hyping up our first game of the season, against West Brom. And for once, I’m not really all that excited. Sure, I’m looking forward to coming out of Arsenal tube at about 12:30 on Saturday, into a hopefully warm summer’s day, realising I’m going to be late if I don’t get a shift on. Then strolling up the stairs over the railway, surrounded by singing fans all celebrating a return to normality, seeing the stadium resplendent and the crowds outside, doing the usual queue hopping to get through the turnstiles as quickly as I can, avoiding the people who don’t know how the card system works (still, in our third season!).

Then there’s my two-steps at a time run up the stairs (a superstition) – just about the only exercise I get these days – a quick stop to grab a slice of pizza (another superstition), and then going through tunnel 102 to my part of the ground (yep, another superstition – for an atheist, I sure am superstitious, at least when it comes to the football) and the final, painful climb to the top of the stand. I’m now on my third season as a season ticket borrower - it’s not mine; I’m lucky enough to have a friend who’s sold it to me for the past couple of years - and it’s been nice to see the same familiar faces week in, week out, in the same seat, even if it is so far back it’s like watching ants run round after a poppy seed.

But the pleasure of the ritual aside, it’s been a bittersweet experience for the last two years, and especially the last few months of the last season. The Birmingham game, no matter what we tried telling ourselves in the aftermath, did end up defining our season. It was all there – appalling tackles from the opposition, bizarre refereeing, an inability to defend set pieces, an even more unforgivable inability to take chances handed to us on a plate, blatant penalties not given to us, and the mother of all strops from our Captain.

Ah, our captain. When we signed him a number of my Chelsea supporting friends believed they got the worse of that deal, and for the first six months of last season (his second, after his injury-plagued first season), I would have agreed with them. His equaliser against Man U at home was worth it alone. But since then he showed a worrying line in emotional outbursts, a lack of concentration on the pitch, and a general lack of leadership. By the end of the season it was pretty clear that it was Cesc that was the leader on the pitch, and indeed it’s been Cesc that has been making the soothing noises to the press, especially the comments about FC Barcelona’s behaviour. More about him later.

Back to Gallas; as other people have noted, he appears to be an experiment that went wrong (a bit like Frankenstein’s monster) and it’s a worry for the new season that Gallas is still captain. Maybe he’ll learn and grow from the experience, and I can’t imagine him taking demotion gracefully, so it seems like we’re stuck with him and hoping he has managed to suppress his emotional tendencies. Speaking from my own experience, you don’t become a good manager overnight, and last season could have been instrumental in making Gallas a great leader on the pitch. Even toward the end of the season, he was not congratulating Bendner for scoring a goal against Liverpool that could have revived our flaccid title push – behaviour that caused Cesc to go and have a word with him (and it didn’t look particularly friendly).

Anyway, back to Birmingham. The sheer ridiculousness of that game, which took out our best practitioner of our Plan B football, cast a funk over the team that took pretty much the rest of the season to shake off. The first half of the season could be summarised as large swathes of brilliance dotted by patches of idiocy, and the second as large swathes of idiocy dotted by patches of brilliance. Let’s not forget that in the second half of the season, Arsenal were beating, away from home, Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool and could, and should have, beaten all three fairly comfortably. We again showed we can outplay anyone, yet couldn’t win when we needed to. Of course, in all three games we can point to poor decisions (all three winning goals in each game came from dubious refereeing decisions, especially so in the Liverpool game), but we can’t ignore the fact that we fail to kill off games. And that’s not even starting on the appalling run of draws after the Birmingham game.

What stopped us from killing those games off? As ever, it’s the people we’ve got on the pitch. Our success in the first half of the season came down to the ability of some players to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and get goals. Two players in particular; Cesc and Eduardo (though Flamini did also contribute, again more on him later). Eduardo was a great buy last season and one of my favourite moments last season was at the West Ham game, where my erstwhile friend M (who’d missed most of the games thanks to working abroad, asked at the kick off “So what’s this Eduardo like then?” and I replied “He’s amazing, he gets the ball and he just knocks them in…..like that!” as he slotted a cross in.

We all just know that if the ball had been with Hleb, or Eboue, the ball would have been passed around until the defence got hold of it and it was hoofed away. Cesc scored some vital goals early on in the season. And Flamini got a few too; including one absolute blinder against Newcastle (definitely in the top ten of favourite Arsenal goals). But the problem of not scoring enough really could be down to two people – Hleb and Eboue. Hleb’s gone and whilst he’s a fantastically skilful player, he has almost no end product. Early in the season, he was looking like the kind of player that could make the difference, but he quickly fell back into his dribble, dribble, jink, dribble, lose the ball, run round like headless chicken style that so endeared him to Arsenal fans the world over. As for his attempt to say that he was tired of the hectic lifestyle and pressure for playing for a top club like Arsenal – frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard such total guff. He looks pretty likely to be yet another player to leave Arsenal and not fulfil his potential (from Anelka and Petit, to later departures such as Pennant and Bentley).

And Eboue. What is there to say about Eboue? He’s quite possibly the most unpopular player ever to play in an Arsenal shirt (at least whilst he’s still wearing it). Opinion on Eboue is divided; some Arsenal fans want him sold off immediately, others want him beaten up a bit first and then sold. I've yet to meet anyone recently who has a good word to say about him. His time had come at the Spurs game at the Grove; at one point, Robbie Keane brushed past him and Eboue took the opportunity to roll around on the ground as though shot. Keane wandered over to him to berate his gamesmanship, and Arsenal fans started shouting at Keane to give Eboue "a shoeing", "a kicking", and I heard one bloke shout "kick the diving cunt!".

Now, Keane isn't exactly a popular player amongst Arsenal fans but this is ridiculous; asking him to kick one of our own players must be unheard of. Random behaviour aside, he provides few goals, and few assists. Though assessments of a players performance can't be done solely from statistics, an attacking midfielder is there to create and score goals. He simply doesn't do this. Worse, his antics have caused the team to lose concentration at vital moments and we have conceded because he's too busy faking an injury than doing his job. And even worse than that, he often goes missing and doesn’t bother to track back and defend (which Hleb, to his credit, did do, and did more than Pires). I really can’t see why he’s still playing for us, except that maybe we can’t find anyone stupid enough to buy him. Maybe we should get him an English passport; some stupid club in the North-West would probably throw about £15m at us for him.

Whilst I’m on the subject of the playing staff, this summer has seen a hilariously inept attempt by Adebayor to boost his pay packet. Now, this seems to be over and he’s staying with us, but to try and engineer a pay rise from £35k a week to £80k by proposing a move to Barcelona, or AC Milan, whilst saying he needed it for his retirement (he’s 24), is up there with Ashley Cole’s “I nearly crashed my car” statement. Empathising with footballers is tough enough without them coming out with this sort of guff; do they not realise that almost all the people coming to watch them every week – and paying their wages through season tickets, Sky subscriptions, merchandising etc – earn less than that amount each year? How on earth can they even begin to get any sympathy (as this is an Arsenal blog, I won’t go into the Ronaldo transfer here, except to say that slaves generally didn’t get £120k a week and their pick of the prettiest prostitutes in Manchester)? Sadly, football being the way it is, he’ll score a hat-trick in the first game (to beat West Brom 3-2, our final goal coming in the sixth minute of injury time, of course), and everyone will be singing that bloody awful song again.

So these three players have contributed to making me wonder why I bother shelling out a grand or so to watch them, although one of them has moved on. Some people have said recently that the days of liking and respecting players have gone. I wouldn’t necessarily go that far; after all, Adebayor was a nightmare at Monaco and is a known troublemaker; Hleb has something of an interesting background (growing up in Byelrus with a father dying of cancer from the Chernobyl cleanup can’t have been a barrel of laughs), and I’d like to see a psychiatrist report on Eboue; I suspect it’d be fascinating reading. In some ways, I quite like the way Flamini left – after all, if the company I work for had tried getting rid of me a year ago after dumping me on the bench, then decided to keep me for a season, I’d be a bit wary of signing a new contract with them, especially if an Italian firm came in offering to more than double my salary and move me to a city with rather more sunshine (and better food) than London.

Let’s not forget that the Flamster comes from Marseille and would likely find the culture of Milan more to his suiting, and quite frankly I don’t blame him at all. He never slagged off the club, or London; he was gracious and thanked the fans; he finished his contract without any dark threats to play badly, and should we play him again at some point (assuming AC Milan actually qualify for the Champions League at some point) I’d happily applaud him.

But that’s not to say we won’t miss him. Flamini is one of those players that many fans like to see – like Ray Parlour, Oleg Luzhny, and going back to my namesake – that aren’t necessarily the most talented or skilful (in the case of Oleg, not talented or skilful at all), but make up for this with hard work, constant running, determination, and the occasional lovely goal (ok, Oleg didn’t do that either). They are the kind of player many fans can identify with. The question is now, who will replace him in midfield?

Diaby, whilst on a good day looks disturbingly like Vieira, is absolutely shocking on a bad day, and those bad days happen far too often. Part of that is that he’s been played out of his natural position out on the wing, but being on a strange bit of pitch doesn’t stop your ability to pass the ball to someone with the same colour shirt on, or stop your ability to run back up the pitch to chase the ball you’ve gone and lost. As for the other options, well, we’ve sold Gilberto, Alex Song is improving but still scary, and Denilson who’s not bad, but too much like Fabregas to make a good partnership, mean that we’re still lacking a strong core to the team. I can only hope that we’re about to make a move for a strong defensive midfielder or that Wenger has as trick up his sleeve. The fact that we’re only a few days away from the start of the season proper without a strong, tough defensive midfielder worries the pants off me, and the fact that we’ve not signed anyone yet, and not giving a new signing time to meet up and train with the team for a couple of weeks before the pressure is on, worries me more.

As for the question of killing games off, with Nasri and Walcott we’ve got some interesting alternatives to the usual pass pass pass pass pass pass shoot oh-no-it’s-been-blocked tactics so favoured of Hleb and Eboue. I hope that the lack of urgency and imagination was down to those players, rather than the training they were getting, but I’m not too sure. I believe that the team’s natural tendency to want to look good rather than want to win showed through a bit too strongly last season; hopefully the fresh blood of Nasri and Vela, and greater experience of existing players like Walcott, will tip the balance more in favour of actually winning.

Other than that, the season ahead could be an interesting one. Wenger’s been making statements that he’s trusting in youth, which is all well and good, especially since in recent years it’s the senior players who have gone bonkers – Cole, Campbell and Gallas, I’m looking in your direction. Just like the start of last season, there are fundamental weaknesses in the team, and again it’s not clear they have been addressed. And in general, there are things that concern me, both with the club and the game in general. I’m hoping for a season in which:

1. Van Persie stays pretty much uninjured. He’s fantastic; I really think he’s one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen in the flesh, and he’s also got what’s euphemistically called “character” – in other words, he’ll kick and fight to get his way, even if that means the occasional elbow. I personally think that those crazy Dutch people have cloned Bergkamp. But he keeps hurting himself in strange ways, which is no use to anyone. I said to a number of people at the start of last season "If Van Persie stays fit, he'll win the league for us, as he can do things no other footballer can do". But he didn't. So we didn’t. Let’s try again, shall we?

2. We stop making stupid defensive mistakes. Clichy and Sagna are fantastic, the best players in their position in the league (though Evra comes pretty close), but both Gallas and Toure make basic errors that they really shouldn’t be doing any more. Senderos still looks baffled on occasion, but is better than many fans think, and both Song and Djourou are too raw. But not conceding really, really stupid goals would help that panicky last twenty minutes that so enthralled us last season.

3. Rosicky plays some games. He wasn’t too bad, when his balsa-wood frame wasn’t splintering all round the pitch. He might even win some matches for us. Ok, that’s a long shot.

4. That we get Eduardo back. He really was something special before his horror injury, and let’s hope it doesn’t cause those knock-on injuries that have blighted Diaby, and that psychologically he’s ok. Saying that, he seems a pretty tough cookie. On that note, it’s interesting to find out that all the stories about Martin Taylor having spoken to him in hospital were totally fabricated; Eduardo himself was said to have responded “If he did come to visit me, I’d tell him where to stick his apology”. Good lad. Anyway, he seemed to be just about the only person in the Arsenal team who understood the fundamental, basic law of football – get the ball in the back of the net and don’t worry about the details. Some of his goals, such as the two against Everton, were wonderfully simple. Run faster than the defender, send the keeper the wrong way, that sort of thing. If we do get him back, fit and well, he’s our plan B and hopefully an inspiration to the rest of the team.

5. Nasri and Walcott fulfil their promise. Walcott still needs a bit more confidence in front of goal, but he’s fearsomely quick and seems to get on well with the team. Nasri looks like a good buy, but then again, as Arseblogger has pointed out, we thought that about Hleb. And Reyes. Let’s hope he’s more like Sagna or Eduardo.

6. Bendtner and Adebayor grow up and get on. I’m not asking them to be best buddies or anything, but acknowledging each other on the pitch would be a good start. Passing to each other might be better. At least we now know, with hindsight, that Bendtner might have had a good reason to be pissed off with Ade. Saying that, Bendtner does seem to have that special Scandinavian way of being able to enjoy making enemies (see Raikkonen).

7. That Adebayor realises what a twat he’s been, and makes up for it by scoring 60 goals. Ok, that’s another long shot. But improving his shots/goals ratio is vital, as he didn’t look too smart for large periods of last season.


8. That Eboue stops being a cock and puts all that energy he spends being a cock, with the falling over, pretending to be injured thing, into playing football as well as he possibly can. That’s a very, very long shot.

9. That Almunia carries on being quietly good. I suppose having a defence in front of him that remembers it needs to actually defend, rather than watch as opposition strikers saunter past them, then complaining it was someone else’s job to stop them, would be a help, but he hasn’t looked too bad. He’s certainly cut out some of the rash mistakes he used to make, but I’m still not quite convinced.

10. We buy a decent, tough, central midfielder. Barry would probably suit me fine, frankly, as he’d get the job done, but £18m is a ridiculous sum. Alonso’s just as good but he looks like his star is on the wane, and again, stupid money is being asked for. Speaking of which, there’s some really crazy money doing the rounds these days - £13m for Andy Johnson? £19m for Robbie Keane? I wonder what kind of drugs are being consumed in club boardrooms around the country. I’m beginning to wish I was a football agent.

11. Fabregas doesn’t get injured (see, I said I’d get back to him). He’s a gem, one of the players that comes along once every decade or so, that’s just so good he operates on a different level to everyone else on the pitch (our last one was Henry, so we’ve been pretty spoiled in that respect). His ability to make space with a quick turn, his rapid thinking and ability to pick out a player on the run, and his tenacity in chasing down the opposition make him one of the finest midfielders I’ve ever seen. I was lucky enough to see his home debut and still remember that after about ten minutes, people started turning to each other saying “He’s a bit good this one”. He’s also much tougher than meets the eye; he can bundle much bigger players off the ball, and then has the skill to get away from them. He’s the life and soul of the team, an example to the younger players, and represents what is good about Arsenal and Wenger’s philosophy. Please don’t get injured. Oh, and one more thing about Cesc – my favourite memory from last season was him telling Rio Ferdinand to "Fuck off!" after the equaliser at home to Man U, which was hilariously shown on the big screens to huge cheers. More of that, please.

12. Keep scoring goals from set pieces. We actually starting getting ok at this last season, to the point that a corner became a chance to get a goal rather than just a way of getting the ball back to the oppositions keeper in new and interesting ways. And, fact fans, apparently Bendtner has the record for the quickest goal by a substitute – 1.8 seconds, against Spurs last season. Bet you didn’t know that.

13. Someone sorts out the transport from Ashburton Grove. It’s ridiculous – 60,000 people into a couple of tube stations, all on the same line, just doesn’t fit. I suppose the East London extension (from 2011) should help out but until the Piccadilly Line can run more than one train every four minutes, we’re doomed to spend half an hour outside queuing after each match, and getting armchair fans complaining that everyone leaves early. I don’t leave early except under exceptional circumstances, and have supported us for long enough to know you should never leave a match early. Saying that, I understand why some people are tired of queuing. Maybe I should go down the boozer more, but I suspect family life might take something of a downturn.

14. And one last rant – referees. How can they ask for more respect, when on the first game of the new season, a Manchester United player grabs a Portsmouth player by the throat and doesn’t even get booked? It’s pretty typical now, and it’s one of the reasons why players simply have no respect for the referees. Why accept a decision against you when you’ve seen the ref ignore other, worse infringements? We’re so far behind some other sports now – such as Cricket, Rugby Union, American Football, Formula 1 – in using action replays that it’s making football a laughing stock. The more paranoid amongst you would say that this is done deliberately to favour certain teams, but you’d be a fool and a Communist to believe that the English game is in any way corrupt, unlike those foreign leagues in Germany, Spain, Italy and France. In any case, action replays aren’t totally foolproof, as shown in the Rugby World Cup Final in 2007 (in which the footage was ambiguous), or in Formula 1 (where the footage seems to be used to make preferential rulings in favour of one team, Ferrari). But they are still better than nothing; the modern game is too quick, the stakes are so high, and the pressure the players are under to perform, mean that it’s in players interests to bend the rules in their favour as much as possible. That’s not to say that this can be stopped – merely that when they do this, they should be punished, fairly and equally. Action replays can help cut out the more egregious refereeing decisions (Kuyt vs Phil Neville being my favourite from last season) and should be implemented as soon as possible.

15. That, this season, those worries we have had at the start don’t come to pass, and we win the league. Champions League I’d like, but frankly Liverpool winning it by being spawny gits debased it for me. We only failed by four points – four points! – and by stopping some of the basic mistakes we keep on making, we’d go a long way to winning the league. Four points really isn’t much, especially since Man Utd really struggle without Ronaldo and don’t seem to have done anything about a Plan B over the summer. And the Chelsea issue of trying to play Lampard and Ballack in exactly the same part of the pitch doesn’t seem to have been resolved, new manager or not, which could cause trouble on and off the pitch (as it did last season). So I’m hoping for a long-term injury to Ronaldo and another civil war at Chelsea.

So that’s my hopes for the season. Not much to ask, is it? So we start off the new season and I’m starting to wonder if it’s still worth it, what with the annoying players, defensive mistakes, the pass-the-ball-289-times-before-trying-a-shot-on-goal tactics, the lack of a killer instinct, and all those other faults, but then I know that as I finish my dodgy pizza, wishing they still did the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels (on which note, why can’t they do those – they were fantastic and a nice little nod to the club’s largely unsung Jewish heritage), I’ll start shouting out the names of the players along with everyone else.

Maybe it’s that I’ve started to come back down to earth after ten years of winning something almost every season, and need to get back to where we were in the mid-nineties, or even to the eighties, where doing ok in the league with a good cup run would be the mark of a good season; back to where most football fans spend their lives. But then again, this is Arsenal – we’ve got the best manager in the world, a great board, a superb stadium, a mixed, generally easygoing and funny fan base (who, in fairness, are a bit quiet) and some of the finest young players in the world playing the best football you’re likely to see in this country. Keep working hard, play as a team, take the chances handed to us every game, cut out the stupid mistakes, hope that we don’t get too many injuries, and we can win.

We can do better than third, you know.

News reaches Arseblog this afternoon that we are close to agreeing a deal for Lebanese midfield enforcer Khalil Gibran.

He currently plays for Lebanse side al-‘Awāsif and is well known for his crunching tackles and no nonsense approach to the game. His robust style has earned him the nickname 'The Madman' and last season alone he picked up nine yellow and three red cards.

A fee of around £1.5m has been reported and he is expected in London towards the end of the week for a medical.

His agent is quoted as saying 'I know the al-‘Awāsif fans are in the tempests saying this is the death of a prophet but it is merely the next logical step in Khalil's career. He has certainly got the vision to play for Arsenal'.

We'll wait and see what develops.

A hastily arranged article appeared on Arsenal.com earlier today with the following quote from Emmanuel Adebayor. He said:

I don’t know why people want to put words in my mouth. As I said on Friday, I love Arsenal and I will be here next season. I am off to Togo tomorrow but will return to Arsenal for pre-season training in July.

It was a reaction to an interview which appeared in El Mundo Deportivo in Spain today. Here are some selected highlights.

El Mundo - Now you are happy at Arsenal, but I don't know if you know that Barcelona have made a bid for you.

To be honest, I only found this out from you. Nobody has spoken with me for now, neither the club or my agent. Maybe things will change tomorrow, I don't know. For the moment I must wait but it's clear that I would be very happy to play for Barcelona because it's one of the biggest clubs in the world. But now the most important thing is to keep working the same way on the pitch.

Nevertheless, you can't close the door on Barcelona.

I can't close the door because I don't know what could happen tomorrow. If Arsenal tell me I have to go then I will go. But for this to happen Barcelona has to make an offer. Meanwhile, I will not worry and I'll enjoy my holidays.

What things attract you to Barcelona?

Many things. If Barcelona made an offer to Arsenal and came to an agreement I would happy go to play there because Barcelona is one of the best clubs in the world. But today I am an Arsenal player. We have to wait for an offer and see what happens.

Would you like to have a reunion with Henry at Barca?

Why not? It would be a pleasure to hook up with him again. I went one to Barcelona to see him. He is one of my best friends, I would love to play with him again, but perhaps as well he might come back to play for Arsenal (smiles).

Would you be happy playing in the Barcelona system?

Of course. They play good football, lots of touches, very offensive. They've had great players like Romario, Figo, Ronaldinho ...there is no player who could say no to Barcelona. I don't know if it will happen now, in two or ten years, but I would really like to play there.

Do you know the city? Would that also attract you?

I came one time after 'Titi' signed. I liked the city. There's always sun, good temperature, the beach. I am African, these things I value a lot.

Do you believe that if Barcelona were to make a final bid for you to Arsenal that they would make it difficult?

If you are good they don't want you to leave. It's normal. It would be something between the two clubs and we would see what happens because Arsenal would ask for a lot of money to see if Barcelona would pay. After they could reach an agreement. Arsenal signed me from Monaco and gave me the opportunity to be in the first team. I am very grateful for that, so if I had to leave I would really like if it were on good terms.

-----

Source - in Spanish.

Someone told me a good one today. “How do you know it’s spring?” he asked, smirking like a moron, “because Arsenal’s season is over”. I could have protested that the league was still mathematically possible. I could have pointed out that Arsenal have only been around since 1886, whereas mankind has acknowledged the passing of the seasons with great success at least since the birth of agriculture, around the time of the emergence of homo erectus. I could have punched him in the face (forget homo erectus, neaderthals understand only one thing). But despite the fact that that joke wouldn’t even have got a decent chuckle out of Teddy Sheringham, the point of telling it is simply to compete; reason being that the bloke telling it is a Sunderland fan. It’s not like he’s going to get that many opportunities to rub anything much in my face for the rest of his life.

I know it hurts the players to lose. After all they sweated for it. But they also have plenty of ways to get a sense of perspective about it. Firstly they usually know, and often socialise with, members of the opposition team. I don’t. As soon as football conversation breaks out I get so partisan I’m impossible company. I’ve seen them shaking hands and catching up in the tunnel beforehand. I have to say it’s a nice aspect of the game, that sportsmanship and camaraderie. Shame that special bond they share across the divide might just as well be an athletic girl called Tina who does a peculiar trick with a brandy glass.

Second, in their mind it’s often just a bad day at work. For me it’s a bad day out - one which I had really been looking forward to and which cost me half a weeks salary all in. Or it’s a bad time down the pub - one which I had really been looking forward to and can cost a fair bit as well. Or, worst of all, it’s a bad day at home, which no one in my family looks forward to. Our new cat has learned to climb out the window when Sky Sports theme tune comes on.

Thirdly, can I just jump ship and be on someone elses side, like they can? If I was lucky enough to suddenly improve beyond my wildest imagination and get picked for Manchester City’s first team (yeah I know, but Ronaldinho though? It might as well be me) and we were drawn against Arsenal; I’d score in my own teams goal…repeatedly, and deliberately, as often as it was possible, until Richard Dunne chinned me. It’s not just Man City. That goes for any team that picks me. I’m a bloody liability if we come up against The Gunners.”Better off leaving me on the bench for this one, Gaffer”. I must admit at this point that I did go with some local lads to support Peterborough United in a crucial away tie at Milton Keynes Dons and was heard to sing some songs using more than one form of personal pronoun. But it doesn’t count because the Posh IS my local team and I DO want to see them go up (despite their coach being the allegedly wifebeating son of Beelzebub) and also because Milton Keynes is a made up town with a borrowed football team, and also because the coach down there was laid on free; kind of an obligation to bellow “Shoot the Cambridge Scum” out of the bus window…be rude not to.

And one thing I don’t get at work, if I fail, is such a huge fucking paycheque that I can outright buy a brand new Merc for cash at the end of my first week. It’s a truism but its true - supporters must be short changed if footballers are to be lavishly compensated. If someone offered me £100,000 a week for the next 10 years of my life to be their slave I would probably lap it up. That Demi Moore would be out on her backside and I’d be hoovering Robert Redford’s shagpile wearing nothing but a smile quicker than you can spell Woody Harrelson.

But suffer we must. The league actually is still a mathematical possibility as I write, but it’s daft to imagine the possibility. We failed to beat either Manure or Chelski and we’re behind them in the league. I absolutely detest Old Trafford by the way. It rains. It’s full of some of the worst people from Manchester and some of the worst people from Guildford. You’ll never get a fair referee, their fouls cost you double in injuries, yours cost you double in cards. The pitch is miles away. The acoustics are crap. That mancunian accent like they swallowed a wah peddle. Have I mentioned how much it rains? It really does. The Devils’ Urinal it is. Winning there was like needing the bull to give you an out when your opponent has three darts and just one double to aim at — it really wasn't on.

So my suggestion is to make your summer plans now. I have an allotment and that is a constant whirl of planning, digging, cursing and digging. Really I don’t have time to think. I also haven’t been fishing for a few years now, so that’s another one you could consider - although the reason I jacked it in is that too much time to contemplate your life near deep water is slightly tempting fate if you happen to go after a particularly painful defeat, so maybe not. The Mrs or Mr and and Masters and Misses in your life will be very grateful if you could turn your attention to booking a holiday, perhaps. My suggestion as a destination would be America. The dollars worth a pittance right now and there is guaranteed to be no proper football being played anywhere that you might accidentally wander in to and even if you did, no one will be talking about it.

If you really have to have a dose of sport up your schnoo, there are other sports you know. Not proper ones, but some of them help pass the time. For my part I was particularly cheered by the smack of willow on leather lederhosen that signaled the opening of the Formula One season. There motor racing is a loss leading sideshow to the main event — intrigue, perversion and greed that makes the Colby’s look like the Flumps. The sound of leather on polycarbonate encrusted stump camera will alert you to the fact that New Zealand are in town. The great thing about England v The Silver Ferns is watching two teams competitively outunderperform each other (there’s a word for Ian Dowie to conjure with). Keystone Cops Part Deux is brought to you in association with that luminous bat handle tape specially designed so that Chris Martin knows which end to grab. The county cricket season should be good too. Unlike in the football, the denizens of the more genteel side of Old Trafford are taken right to the wire and then ritually eviscerated every year by anyone who wants it. In the last couple of years it’s been Sussex who had not won anything at all before that, not even an egg cup, for well over 100 years and still managed to pip them. Martin Johnson is in charge of Englands Rugby Union team. There’s plenty of talent there but leadership is needed and Johnson could lead a bull elephant up a ladder (and if not, he could probably push it up). I won’t mention rugby league, since it is a northern pastime and therefore not a proper sport (and neither is sheep worrying or ladies tandem gruntfuttock, in case you ask, even if you play Keighley Rules). Forget Wimbledon. Footballers are selfish and egotistical enough without watching Andy Murray try to sulk the moon into orbit around his own head. And no one should have to listen to Cliff Richard whilst trapped on a cramped bench in the rain by a detachment of Royal Naval Reserves; that is a special punishment we ought to save for Roman Abramovich once someone finds out what he really did to get all that lolly.

The important things is not to dwell on Arsenal whilst they’re on a break. They won’t be thinking about you at all.

I don’t imagine that we’ll be buying any dream players, despite this season proving to most of us that a squad with two internationals in every position and a perversely risk free and conservative playing style is the sine qua non of Premiership and European success. This season really did Arsenal and us fans a big favour you see. My 10 reasons why this season was actually a success:

1. Adebayor came of age. Without Henry to hide behind he had just one season to go it alone front up or we’d have to rethink. He got it straightaway and is an absolute terror. Brilliant.
2. We had an easy fixture list at the start and a tough run in. We forgot that rather quickly in the excitement. A bit of realism is good for us. It is a long season.
3. Therefore perhaps we’ll get a deeper pool of talent to wallow in? I am fed up of looking at the benches of other no-mark teams in the Prem and seeing players who would so look the part in red and white. Big Club = Big Squad. That’s the maths. Maybe Mr Wenger has now to admit that paying £22m for a player of the class of Fernando Torres is NOT too much money and will take the plunge if someone that good and that young is in range next time. You have our money, use it with our blessing, Sir!
4. Flamini. We must sign him up for a new deal. The man sweats blood for us, runs like a Duracell bunny, never backs out of a challenge, and his the beating heart of Arsenal right now.
5. And Theo. What can I say? The brightest star on the darkest night for Arsenal for many a year. A star of hope. I’d follow it.
6. RVP and Rosie can’t ever have a year as bad for injuries as this one just gone. They’ve both got years ahead of them to make up for it. I reckon they will.
7. Being written off again. I love that teams just don’t see us coming. I can’t believe memories are that short, but they are. Class IS permanent, people.
8. Our Home record. An unbeaten league season at home is still a target. Should shut a few people up if we do it, and will lodge in the mind of next season’s visitors to the Grove quite nicely.
9. The crop of youngsters coming through the reserves. Apparently the coaching staff are in raptures and we’ve have never had it so good. Bring ‘em on. They should now know, after the last few years, that there is no need to flounce off if you don’t get first team football straight away. Arsenal are patient — we can take a few years without a trophy whilst you perfect you art. And if you’re good enough, you’re old enough. Look at Cesc
10. Last and best…Fabregas. The complete midfielder? I believe so. I think Gallas was just wearing the armband in for him this year. He should be seriously considered for the captaincy and I’d ask for that more than for all the other things I want us to take out of the season put together. Cec can lead us to glory; I’m convinced of it.

So really this has been a pretty good season. In fact it is comletely fair to say that we plus maybe Cristiano Ronaldo, but mainly we, made this Premiership season one of the best in years. Without us it would be a mundane, conservative, staid, and pedestrian battle of the wallets. They shouldn’t make jokes. They should thank us.

P.S. If this article looks familiar, that's because you paid £2 for a Highbury High. Well done you.

Arsenal News Review is a popular site amongst Arsenal fans. Myles Palmer writes the bulk of the stuff and his ...erm... idiosyncratic style is like car crash reportage. You don't want to look but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

However, he's gone way overboard in his criticism of Emmanuel Adebayor in the last couple of days. In this article he refers to him as a 'clown' and here he slags him off for needing more chances than most to score a goal.

Marc Overmars did not need eight chances to score a goal. Nicholas Anelka did not need eight chances to score a goal. Dennis Bergkamp did not need eight chances to score a goal. Jurgen Klinsmann did not need eight chances to score a goal. Fernando Torres does not need eight chances.

True, perhaps, but let's look at the facts for a second and stop dealing in myths.

Marc Overmars - season best goal total - 16 (97-98 and 99-00)

Nicolas Anelka - season best goal total (England only) - 19 (98-99, Arsenal)

Dennis Bergkamp - season best goal total - 22 (97-98)

Admittedly Torres has 28 or 29 this season but go find me a Liverpool fan, any Liverpool fan, and they'll tell you he was profligate earlier in the season. Klinsmann had a 29 goal season for Sp*rs back in 1995.

So we can see that Adebayor's 26 goals this season beat Bergkamp's best ever season, Overmars' best ever season by 10 and Nicolas Anelka's best ever season, the man who has had more money spent on him in transfer fees than any other player. Maybe they didn't need as many chances but they never scored more goals.

Palmer then goes on to suggest we buy a Senegalese striker called Mamadou Niang who plays for Marseille, seemingly on the back of a YouTube video. He cites 15 goals in 21 starts. Does nobody remember Sylvain Wiltord scoring nearly 40 goals one season in France. He hardly set the world on fire at Arsenal despite doing a decent enough job.

Anyway, the main point is Adebayor. Arsenal have played three big games in the last 10 days, Adebayor has scored in each of them. Nobody is suggesting he's the world's greatest player but he deserves far better than to be dismissed as a 'clown', especially when the alternatives suggested are some bloke nobody has ever heard of or Nicklas Bendtner who looks decent as a substitute but appears to believe his own hype rather too much.

The big man's goals won us game this season, he's not perfect, but he has improved and the slagging he gets is out of order, in my opinion.

If this article proves anything it's that the clown writes for Arsenal News Review.

Update: Michael from the Gooner Forum provides the following info:

Stats as of March 29th
Adebayor 23 goals in 106 shots (57 SOG) - 1 goal/4.6 shots
Ronaldo 34 goals in 216 shots  (109 SOG)  - 1 goal/6.4 shots

The fact is that Adebayor puts a higher percentage of his shots on goal than Ronaldo and also scores more goals per attempts than Ronaldo.  Ronaldo had only 9 more goals but TWICE AS MANY shots as Adebayor.  He's not nearly as wasteful as Ronaldo.   He also puts a higher percentage of his shots on goal.

Thanks, Michael.

In his Belfast Telegraph column the Liverpool loving BBC commentator whinges about Arsene Wenger's alleged whinging. The fat man says:

I, too, thought that Dirk Kuyt fouled Aleksandr Hleb in the first leg and that it should have been a penalty but to imply, as the Arsenal manager seemed to, that it wasn't given because the referee was Dutch - like Kuyt - was feeble.

However, let us look back and find out exactly what Arsene said about the suggestion that the ref favoured Kuyt because he was Dutch. Here it is from Arsenal.com:

"There is no credence in [the reports],” said the Frenchman. “A referee is like a manager - you want a clear game and to do your job well. I have no suspicion at all. You have to accept he made the wrong decision but he is honest.

Hardly an implication of any kind there. In fact, he has quite clearly said any such suggestion is wrong. But don't let that stop you, Alan Green, you useless, non-fact checking, cake eating, bloat hound.

Cheers to vivb for the spot.

No doubt many of you will have heard about Liam Brady's argument with Eamonn Dunphy on RTE television last night.

To see what made Chippy so irate you can view via the RTE website by clicking here - then choosing the clip second from bottom 'The studio panel continue to debate tonight's game at Anfield'.

You need Real Player and you need to forward to about 6'30 in to get the beginning of it.

Reports earlier in the week suggested Cesc Fabregas had broken off from his long-time agent Joseba Diaz. Some people speculated that this was because Diaz was angling to get him to move to Real Madrid or Barcleona all the time.

Now it has emerged that Darren Dein is Cesc's new agent (Spanish link). The same Darren Dein that rang up Barcelona last summer and said 'Do you still want Thierry Henry?'.

Given the links between Dein and Henry, and Henry being at Barcelona, it would hardly be a surprise if there was an increase in the amount of speculation regarding Cesc's future this summer. It's tiresome enough anyway, it's bound to get worse.

It may be that Dein, as part of the SEM group, can open up new doors in terms of commercial deals and sponsorships for Cesc, but the article also says he'll be handling all his contract negotiations as well.

John Harris has the enviable position of being a music writer for the Manchester Guardian. Writing in the G2 supplement on Tuesday he took exception to the Conservative party - in particular David Cameron personally - co-opting music that he considered to be left wing. The catalyst for this was a photo op that Tory Boy asked for outside Salford Boys Club. The local Labour party picketed this event in the usual Student Union way and Cameron had to go in the back entrance (one pun in ten that made it). Lovely Hazel, MP for Salford, was triumphant that she could have her own pic taken in from of the building unmolested. Bully for her. What animated Harris was the idea that Cameron can like The Smiths, The Jam and The Clash and even has a particular fondness for Kirsty Macolls version of Billy Braggs, “A New England”. That’s just wrong, says Harris.

What? They’re all great, you twat. What right thinking person couldn’t pick any of those out of a line-up and say to a chum “here have a listen to this, classic!”. I got quite animated about this article because it brings to mind directly the kind of mindlessly loyal tribalism that has been the bane of anyone trying to think for themselves, unshackled, in the United Yeah Right Kingdom since the year puff. What really captures the attention of the media, more than anything else, is conflict: Afghanistan, Iraq, Heather Mills. And in any conflict it is important to know which - or whose - side you are on. [As an aside, no one is on the side of Heather Mills. As you were]. Tribalism is a part of being British. English, I mean. Yeah, you fuck off as well. And I quite like some aspects of it. That I can tell you to fuck off for instance and probably buy you a pint and forget about the whole thing later. “I might break your leg, but I’ll visit you in hospital”. That kind of thing. But a tribal stance in no way stands up to intellectual examination. It falls over because it is one-eyed and doesn’t have a leg to stand on (that’s not knocking Heather, you understand, she has a leg. It’s now worth £8m). In almost all conflicts both the most naïve and the most partisan feed the cannons. The cynics are at the back directing operations. And the critics are even further back telling us all just where we've gone wrong. A recent study of criticism indicated that the majority of people focus on negatives. I think this is because to accentuate the one positive, say, in response to a diatribe from an ardent critic about one's general shoddiness, might add to the mind of that critic the impression that not only were you shoddy, but you were also an over-optimistic simpleton with a distressing lack of self-awareness to boot.

I drive a Vauxhall Zafira. It lugs seven people (or five plus luggage) economically enough. The new one is over priced, but the old one is good value. I have an 03 plate that cost me shy of ten grand at six months old and has (apart from a spectacular exhaust explosion on the M25) given sterling service. But when you assess the worth of something it must be as the sum of its parts. I hate the stupidly low first gear that makes every Zafira driver leaving a T junction look like he’s auditioning as a Top Gear presenter. I hate the ridiculously thick corner pillars that can block a whole car from your vision at a roundabout. And I hate the frankly laughable design of the rear wheel holder that allows some scally with strong fingers just to lift it straight from the underside of the rear and flog it down the market, perhaps whilst you are still driving it.

Is unquestioning loyalty very helpful to me when I decide to buy a new car? I would say not. In fact I would go so far as to say that anyone who is brand loyal, in modern times, is a fucking ignoramus. As an illustration take the story of three generations of distribution managers at the opening of a new multi million pound cannery line. Whilst marvelling at the increased efficiency of the machinery they discuss scheduling and the incumbent manager bemoans the fact that all long distance work takes place on a Friday. It’s so hard to get drivers willing to encroach on their weekend with a long tiring run. His predecessor from the sixties adds to the weight of the complaint by pointing out how bad it was in those days when haulage was a good deal more onerous an occupation than it is now. His pre-war predecessor then indicates that their travils were a mere bagatelle compared to his time; when drivers used to rest their horses at the weekend and do deliveries locally mid-week, in order to keep their Drays fresh for the Friday run, and by so doing keep the shops well stocked for the Saturday rush. Does a little light go off in your head hearing this story? I hope so. “Because we’ve always done it that way” is a shit reason for almost everything it has ever explained. The sad fact is that many of the people who always do it that way like to always do it that way. But too much missionary and someday someone runs off into the jungle.

Why is David Cameron allowed to like the Smiths (the lead singer of whom famously said what he would really, really like was for the handbag swinging prime minister of the day to be dispatched in the way revolutionary France reserved for the worst criminals, and the aristocracy)? Because eclecticism is something to be cherished, I feel. I would go so far as to say that I distrust the opinions - on any kind of art - of any person who fails to have broad, varied, inconsistent, contrary and quixotic tastes. Those who espouse commitment to a cause, or a tribe, or a viewpoint often use it as a filter through which they sieve the worlds offerings. And then they sup the consommé which that produces, whilst happily dumping the chunky, dirty, vital, ill-fitting lumps that get left behind into the bin.

Music is not all about anarchy, sticking it to the man, style, attitude or belonging. Before all that it’s a noise that you like having in your ear. There is a visceral quality to the best music. I don’t mean the connotation whereby one is eviscerated by music (although a download single by Celldweller that my 10 year old son suggested I listen to recently made me think twice about that). I mean when you feel it strongly in your mind and your body and your soul (and not because you are standing too near the speakers at British Sea Power either). I stopped liking music because someone I admired liked it when I was 14. I stopped liking music because it espoused a certain idealised lifestyle when I was 19. I am enormously nostalgic for music that I never understood the first time round. Example: I like Ian Dury and the Blockheads all the more because, like a blockhead, I never noticed he was disabled at the time. I get it now. But I liked it…then.

Whilst I’m on a roll here, I also object most heartily to the crap way that RE is taught (if at all) in schools. Belonging to a religion is no box ticking exercise any more than supporting a football team or choosing a political party (at least not for the real believers). Whether you put religious studies in either the box marked "bonkers outmoded ideas" or the one marked "important tools for to get to know your local community by understanding their weird ways", both do a massive disservice to a central part of the human experience - namely what people think and believe and what they think about what they believe, and what people learned by thinking about what they believe now, and since people first started to think. Imagine doing a law degree and spending three years on court procedure and no time at all on the fundamental philosophy of law. Imagine being ignorant, at the end of your LLB, of the basic tenets of why people need governance, why the executive, legislature and judiciary are separate, and why it’s wrong to stab someone hard in the eye with a pen. But that is how it is with the teaching of the major religions though. The last century’s worth of really quite mediocre thought in the humanist tradition apparently overrules centuries of hard yakka at the coalface of metaphysics, social and moral philosophy and semantics by people quite prepared to suffer all kinds of hardship and indignity in search of the truth (albeit their truth). The best educated of us (by that I mean privately educated at personal expense, the ungrateful little twots that they are) learn the classics. Who for a minute thinks the benefit of this is in the allegorical nature of myth? No, those people really believed that shit. And it had meaning, and relevance and power and the western world was shaped by them and the generations after them who believed all kinds of other different shit. Teach kids that some people set great store in the importance of the right way to wash out the inside of your nose before prayer and you polarise them into two camps: one saying “nutters”, and the other saying “yeah my dad’s one of those nutters”. Teach people about why hygiene became a central aspect of liturgical practice in many of the worlds major religions and you might actually learn something. A digression, yes, but it has been getting on my tits for a while.

Anyone still reading is probably a veteran rambler on the gorse furnished bridleway that is my very occasional Arseblog column. I mean, of course, to put all of this in the context of the “club that can do no wrong.” My loyalty to Arsenal (and this has been remarked upon questoningly more than once and so is worth restating) is utter. I am generally not taken seriously by some of the Arsenal hardcore because I do not know, like it were my own life, enough about the inner workings of the club and the machinations of its various actors. I am always looking on the bright side of reversal in our rather substantial fortunes (see I did it again) as well. And that is plastic like polyethyelene. You might first consider, perhaps, that the levity with which this “person” approaches the business of Arsenal’s fortunes in the league suggests a certain laxity in other areas where one would demand probity of a correspondent. What, you therefore may be curious enough to be lead to ask, are his views on promiscuous bottom sex with the wild ponies of the New Forest? (I can assure you that I have the upmost respect for the preservation of their virginity, vis-a-vis surprise coition instigated by any other non-equine species including mankind, and most specifically including my own self).

I have of late (and I know exactly from where) been disposed towards melancholy. After our exploits at the San Siro, the return to the drab premiership of witless draws (which are reminiscent, in their abject futility, of the quest of the moth to navigate its way to the embrace of a well fit lady moth by means of a 60W bulb) has got me really fucking down. I even had a type of flu (Thai flu, I’m told by the barrack room doctor; lot of it about) that I think can only have got me because I weakened my own immune system with a tendancy to fatalism and weeping. End-of-season exasperation is, of course, the sign that ones disposition towards Arsenal is in rude health. But I have actually lost faith. I think we may not win anything this year. I have now said it (and those of you who have met me know that I am someone who gets his round in, tells it like it is, and couldn’t pick a winner if Curlin was entered in a Donkey Derby and the jockey was my brother-in-law). So despair not, it is not a preditction of any worth. I just wanted to share it with you. Feels good to say it out loud. But I am English, so this was an aberation. I will now bottle it up tight.

The point I think I am trying to make (I hope there is one) is that those of us who chose to support Arsenal by saying, for instance, that we could do a darn sight better if we “dropped Hleb”, “put Senderos up top”, “sack the lot of them and buy big in the next transfer window” etc., are completely entitled to that view. They are no less of an Arsenal fan for saying so (whatever you think of their ideas). I love Arsenal because of the broad college of our support. There is no Arsenal equivalent of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” that you can play that will make everyone together forget that they are not a persecuted epileptic boy in a cardigan from a grimy industrial shithole with no prospects, but actually seated in the head office of a thriving multimillion dollar franchise (and actually from Surrey as well). We don’t need it.

There is no need for anyone to feel left out when supporting Arsenal. If players are good enough, regardless of their various nationalities, that is a matter of pride for me. That is a meritocracy I can get behind. The “more Arsenal than thou” cadre can kiss the rest of our arses when we win the league because playing in front of all 5,000 (an estimate, but not an unfair one I don’t think) of them on their own just don’t pay the bills.

You can like Arsenal and like jazz. You can like Arsenal and love cross-stitch. You can love Arsenal and choose not to love New Forest ponies so much, when they finally let you out. The important thing is not your blind loyalty. The important thing is that those 11 players lucky enough to wear your hearts on their sleeves know that you really think they can do it (whatever your anxious demons tell you). Please don’t bother going if you don’t plan to let the Arsenal players know you love them, no matter what.

Okay the important thing IS blind loyalty, of course, regardless of how we appear to be fucking it up recently. But blind loyalty in a worthy cause. We have a league to win.

So say your piece. Goodness knows it’s better out than in. And let your fellow gooner say his piece to. He’s wrong (as you and I know), but let’s not judge his loyalty on that. Lets judge it solely on the only criteria one must take to be decisive in this matter: how much noise you make when the match is on.

P.S. Tony Blair likes Oasis (which Harris failed to mention). Nuff said!

Eduardo has just given his first interview to Croatian TV since his horrific injury. Arseblog forumer Kesky has provided the bullet points:

• He'll be going to Brazil soon, probably this week, and he'll begin his rehabilitation there.


• News of The World interview was made up. He never spoke to them.


• He feels fine, and hasn't watched the pictures or the video of the injury. He is very calm, and thinks his family suffered more than he did, and that he spent the last few days reassuring his wife and kid that everything will be okay, and that they need not worry.


• Before the interview, the reporter had to agree not to ask anything about Martin Taylor. The only thing Dudu said was that Taylor did not visit him in the hospital to offer an apology, like some papers reported (note - this is what the TV anchor said despite Eduardo's wishes that no questions about Taylor be asked).


• It's too early to say when will he be back, and whether he'll be better or worse than he was before. There is a long way to go, and he stressed that it will be important to be mentally prepared to get back in to the game, and not just physically.


• Eduardo thanked all of the Croatian and Arsenal fans for the support they have given him, and reiterated how important it was for him. He also thanked his teammates, and all the people at Arsenal.

Cheers to Kesky and good luck to Eduardo.

Update: Here's a transcript of the interview:

Q: First, tell us how you feel right now, eleven, twelve days after the injury?

A: Well, it is much easier now, at this moment. I feel much better, in my head, now it's time to forget what happened. I will spend the near future without football, but I will have more time for my family.

Q: Could you please describe what happened? The tackle?

A: In that moment, lying on the floor, I looked at my leg, couldn't believe what I was seeing, and turned my head the other way. I felt nervous, very scared, and spent all the way to the hospital in great pain.

Q: We have heard that the Arsenal medical staff, and especially the physio Gary Lewin reacted greatly, and that Gilberto also helped a lot.

A: Yeah, they immobilized my foot, and Gilberto came over to translalte and tell me what to do. I could barely understand even him, my head was everywhere, I was barely holding on. I think it all went the way it should have, now.

Q: The pain? Was it unbearable?

A: I can't really tell. Sure, the pain was huge, but it's the panic, fear, and nervousness that I felt the most. I can't really recall the pain itself.

Q: Some players have said that you were just too quick, and that you moved the ball too fast for the other player to catch it?

A: I touched the ball away, but didn't have the time to move my foot away, and his studs were already there. I definitely didn't expect what happened to actually happen that way. Everybody says it looked really ugly, and they tell me not to watch it — so I don't watch it. I wish I had my leg in the air, and not planted on the ground. It would have been a foul, but not an injury.

Q: The pictures have been printed in most newspapers around the world. Have you seen any of them?

A: No, I haven't really. I've seen one picture of me lying on the ground, but all you could see is my back, and my head turned the other way. Generally, I don't really watch football as much as i should. I just watch Arsenal games.

Q: Have you read what Kaka said? He asked for more protection from the referees, and claimed that the top players are constantly handled with dangerous tackles.

A: Yes, I heard that, and I think he's absolutely right. If that tackle happened to somebody else, I'd still feel very sorry for the player. We'll see what will happen in the future.

Q: Do you think that football has become such a rough sport, and how much responsibility lies with the managers, and club officials, who stress the importance of winning?

A: Well, everybody wants to win, that's normal, and things like this happen.

Q: What are you plans now? Rehabilitation? How long will you be wearing the plaster cast?

A: Four weeks, probably. The club will organize something concerning my physical rehabilitation, and it should all start in about month and ten days. I'll start the rehabilitation process in Brazil, with the doctor who worked wit Ronaldo, Ronaldinho,, and Roberto Carlos.

Q: I see you're in a rather good mood.

A: well, yes. I've been spending a lot of time with my family and friends, and that has helped me a lot. Things like this happen, this time it happened to me. I have to move on.

Q: The NoTW interview with you? Is it real?

A: I guarantee you that it's completely made up. This here is my first interview after the injury. I asked them to clarify that it was not an interview with me, and they did, so it's okay now.

Q: Here, in Croatia, your injury was the most important news. Have you been harassed by the media while you were in the hospital?

A: Well, it was difficult sometimes, because i needed peace and quiet most of all. I understand them, but it was difficult for me, because something bad had happened. You have to understand me, as well.

Q: What's the prognosis?

A: It depends. Could be six, months, could be nine, could be a whole year. There is a long way to go, and it will be important to be mentally prepared to get back in to the game, and not just physically.