Sol Campbell will be sitting down with Arsene Wenger at the end of the season to discuss his future. The current first team have all benefited from Campbell’s arrival so you can only imagine that he would be a great person to have around for the youngsters
Now that the dust has settled and the pain has died down somewhat, I feel much better. I spent the day with the missus and my kids at a children’s adventure park and managed to forget about Tottenham, Barcelona, injuries, transfers etc. So apologies for the lack of blog entry but my batteries have been well and truly charged.
Arsene had his pre match press conference which gave us some very interesting topics to chew on. The inevitable transfer questions were fired Wenger’s way and the typical Arsene Wenger answer was batted back at Dictaphones, laptops and pens and paper.
We want players, but we will not be overpriced is the yearly mantra and I see no reason why that either should or need to change. There is a good reason why we are one of the best run clubs financially in the Premier League and as long as we stick to our structure then that should never change. If you asked supporters of Manchester United, Liverpool and a majority of clubs if they could start again would they follow the Arsenal model then you can be sure that 99% would say yes and the other 1% would be lying through their teeth.
Wenger spoke of the need for defensive reinforcements and that is about as obvious an answer as you are likely to get. I would be very shocked if Mikel Silvestre would be offered a new contract, in fact I would eat my hat so a player will have to come in for him. Philippe Senderos is pretty much no longer an Arsenal player so a squad vacancy has opened up. The rest depends on William Gallas who I believe will no longer be at the club come the summer and as much as I want him to stay, it is fair enough. He has the right to one last move before he retires.
Now on the defence topic, I do not agree with many who suggest that buying for example Hangeland (or insert whichever player that the media print for others to subconsciously feel an emotional attachment to) will all of a sudden fix our defence. It is not as simple as that. Our first choice back four Sagna Gallas Vermaelen Clichy are all great individual defenders. Gallas and Vermaelen have been consistently good when they have played together yet we have continued to concede goals. Bringing in player x or y will not fix everything, I struggle to think of a center half who can come in and do a better job than Gallas has this year.
For me Arsene has to sit down and look at the overall team, he needs to fix the balance between offensive and defence, he has to get his system working in the better way to stop us conceding goals at the rate that we have. What is a little disappointing is that Arsene highlighted the area that the team needed to work on at the end of last season, then we started defending as a team wonderfully well. We did let a few silly goals due to lack of concentration but at least the team were working from the front all throughout the side. He will have to look at why that stopped or reevaluate why he wanted that to stop.
From what I gather, Arsene doesn’t make major changes during a season, well not very often. It seems like he sticks to his guns then has a long look when the season finishes he tweaks and adjusts his plans.
Wenger got very aggitated with the press about their ‘campaign’ to drive Cesc away. He asked why they wanted to get the best players away from England and a deafining uncomfortable silence fell around the room. I cannot be bothered to talk about it. It will come up so often during the summer that I shall save my energies until then. Cesc is contracted to Arsenal, Arsene doesn’t want to sell. End of.
Arsene was asked about the goalkeeping situation and gave a very interesting answer.
Wenger said:
“I don’t think it is the best moment to talk about that, I never said that he [Almunia] will be my long-term No 1. I think he is a great goalkeeper and he is in competition with Fabianski. But I want to see how we finish [the season] now so I don’t think it is the best period to talk about individual players.”
You would imagine that if Arsene was asked about Bacary Sagna then he might have given a more definite answer. We will have to wait and see what happens during the summer months because we do not know what our manager is thinking at this stage. It wouldn’t surprise me if another goalkeeper was brought into the squad to challenge both Almunia and Fabianski. Fabianski is at a very good age to take over the reins from Almunia but hasn’t as yet been able to show consistency with his decision making. Perhaps that would come with a long run of games but can Arsene take that chance in such a vital position? Almunia could come back next season back to the form of a couple of seasons ago and prove everyone wrong, who knows. Only time will tell.
It does feel somewhat premature talking about transfers at this time of the season, we have second place to play for and mathematics still tell us that the league title can be won not that I will allow myself to go there anymore. In some ways I think I would rather we couldn’t win it at this stage to give us the chance to blood the likes of Eastmond, Merida and Traore in the remaining games.
Sol Campbell will be sitting down with Arsene Wenger at the end of the season to discuss his future. The current first team have all benefited from Campbell’s arrival so you can only imagine that he would be a great person to have around for the youngsters such as Bartley, Traore, Eastmond, Wilshere etc
This is the point where I would talk about Campbell’s pre Wigan talk but I haven’t heard it yet and I am going out in a moment so me being the ultimate professional that I am will give it a miss for now.
Back tomorrow for some pre match stuff.
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