I won’t be around for a while… 4 September, 2007

I’m off to Spain for a week and I doubt that where I’m going will have internet access but if it does I’ll keep the blog up to date. It’s international week anyway so there shouldn’t be loads of news, there’s the possibility of an announcement on Wenger’s contract and hopefully there’s no more injuries. Here are those players that are off on international duty; it’s strange that William Gallas and Bacary Sagna have been called up to the French squad even though they’re injured, maybe they’ll be back for Tottenham? Also, “Jens Lehmann has been selected to play for Germany despite suffering from an Achilles injury” is the quote from that article. Hmmm.

With the transfer window now closed, Wenger explains why he didn’t add another striker to his squad. He makes it quite clear though here, talking about Nicklas Bendtner:

“Every other club in the Premier League seems to phone me to get him on loan. So how can I say that everybody wants you but we want you here and then go to buy someone new.”

I can accept that. I’m sure we all know how desperate Bendtner is to play; he only came back here from Birmingham on the guarantee of first team football. He’s certainly 4th choice striker but I’m sure he will get games. If we did bring someone else in then Nick would’ve left and then we’d be back down to the same amount of strikers so there was no point in bringing someone in. Gilberto Silva has supported Wenger over not making many signings.

One player Arsene did decide to bring in though was Lassie Diarra. He only had a year left on his Chelsea contract and according to reports we got him on the cheap. He says that Chelsea thought he would “crack and finally accept a contract extension”. What a delightful situation. He goes on to say:

“But I refused every extension and now I have signed a three-year deal with The Gunners. Chelsea finally accepted, maybe because they were scared I would leave for free in one year. At 11pm on Friday night, I got a phone call to tell me I could start to negotiate with Arsenal as both clubs had found an agreement. I didn’t hesitate because Arsenal was the only club I wanted to join. It was Arsenal or nothing. Other teams contacted me, but I knew what I wanted. Chelsea knew I wanted to join The Gunners.”

I love the way it sounds like Chelsea were desperate to sign on this boy and offered him extensions and extensions yet he refused them all, brilliant. To be completely honest, by the sounds of things, behind the scenes at Chelsea Football Club is not a nice place, and I’m not just talking about the Diarra situation. There’s Lampard, Gallas, Mourinho and others who in one way or another have been unhappy, or had stalls in contracts talks or fall-outs.

That’s about it then for today. I’ll try get on el internetio this week, if not, I shall speak to you after the international break for a build up to Tottenham away. Thanks for reading.