Friday News & Reading Preview 18 April, 2008

It was a busy press conference for Arsene Wenger today, with lots of stories coming out from this afternoon’s chat to the Media. The subject of Mathieu Flamini’s future came up and Arsene has issued strong words saying he has a deadline of 12 days for Flamini to make his mind up:

“We are getting close to yes or no. He says he wants to stay and I believe him. But as long as he has not signed, for me, he is free to sign where he wants. We have set ourselves a target until the end of the month of April to finalise the situation, one way or the other. That’s an absolute deadline because afterwards we have to make decisions about whether you have to move on the market because you don’t have much time left.”

So if it’s not done by the end of this month, it’s not happening. It’s good that Arsene has taken this no nonsense approach: You either stay, or you don’t. We all want him to stay, fans and staff, and Arsene says Flamini to stay. It’s just become an issue of money now. Matty wants to stay but he wants a decent wage for it, fair enough, but if he’s taking the piss then Wenger’s got to let him go.

Wenger has left it late to get this finalised so I’m not surprised he’s given an April deadline. That only gives him a couple of matches in May to look at possible replacements. There are a lot of Flamini-style players out there but this season he has been one of the best. He will be missed, but not irreplaceable; I’ll be upset if he goes but lets just get it sorted yeah? He’s out injured at the moment so he’s got plenty of time to think about it.

Flamini is one possible high profile departure, Gilberto another, Lehmann wants to go and I think Hoyte does too. There could be a few players on the way out but Wenger promises there will be signings. He wants to keep the squad together, that’s his priority, but he says he’ll add two top signings on top of that. The more departures, then the more signings…I hope anyway, the squad’s thin as it is.

For once, it looks like Wenger’s going to get the chequebook out but he says he won’t be buying two forward players. We’ve been linked with David Villa this week but Wenger’s been playing down the rumours. However he says he likes the player and never actually ruled out a move for him in the summer. We could do with a striker at the moment but if Robin stays fit and Eduardo makes a good recovery then it’ll probably be a bit of a waste.

In that link above, Wenger talks about our defensive problems and hints that he will make a signing in that department. He says we’ve gone ahead in so many games but not won and that’s what has cost us.

Gallas is the latest addition to the defence a couple of years ago and started this season well as the new captain however we’ve fell apart in the latter stages of this season and his captaincy has come under scrutiny. Wenger’s said today that he will think about who should wear the captain’s armband next season but it does seem likely Gallas will keep it. He did well at the start but I’m for a change to be honest. Who? Flamini if he stays, Toure if he’s got it in him, Cesc is pretty inspirational but still young, I dunno.

Senderos had a bad game against Liverpool and got a bit upset about it, that’s why he was left out of the Man United game. Wenger said he wanted to give him a rest, and allow him time to refresh his mind and start again. I think that’s fair enough. He could feature again tomorrow alongside William Gallas who could be wearing the armband for one of the last times; he’s how I see the team:

The team really could be anything, with the title race over it doesn’t really matter all too much, but we still have things to play for: pride, the fans and 2nd place. I think he should play Song, give him these last few games to see whether he’s ready to step up next season. Lehmann will start as Almunia failed today’s fitness test.

I’m not going to fully preview tomorrow’s game, as this is a pretty long post already. However I will say this quickly. We need to win, if we want to challenge Chelsea for 2nd place we need to put the pressure on them. Anything other than a win tomorrow and we’ve pretty much secured 3rd place for ourselves.

I don’t expect Wenger to play this one uncontested, he will get his players up for this game and tell them how important it is we keep on going. As I mentioned he other day, the fans will be coming to this expecting to see a decent display of football, they want to come down to The Grove and enjoy the football, not get depressed by a poor performance against Reading. The travelling side really need the points so we can’t sit back.

I’m playing in a 5-a-sides tournament in the morning with the guy’s from Arseblog. Gilbertosilver from Gunnerblog will be there and Arseblogger is playing too, I’ll be sure to give him a kick for you. I’ve got to go and dig out the shin pads now and get my stuff together so I’ll wrap this up, but I’ll let you know how it goes soon, and of course there’ll be a match report of the Reading game too.

Right I’m off now, thanks for reading