We’ve signed Mikael Silvestre 21 August, 2008

I’m sure you’ve heard already by now, Mikael Silvestre is an Arsenal player. Yesterday morning it started as a bizarre rumour that would never have got any attention if it weren’t for the amount of newspapers and websites running the story.

It started off as a ‘bizarre rumour’, but Arsenal fans gradually started to consider the possibility of this actually going ahead. The story was he was just about to sort out a move to Manchester City when Wenger heard of his availability and snapped him up right under Mark Hughes nose. City have moved quick to find someone else and are expected to sign Vincent Kompany from Hamburg.

So we spend much of yesterday debating how he could actually add to our squad, at what his role might be. A lot of questions were asked, like “Why are we buying a player that’s not good enough for our Premiership rivals?” And more importantly, “I fucking hate Mikael Silvestre, how I am going to feel if he came to Arsenal?”

So I went to work last night thinking about these things and when I came back I saw that he’d signed, and will wear the no.18 shirt. I still felt a bit shocked; it’s all a bit strange really. I think it’s a really odd Wenger signing. He’s 31, way past his peak and he’s a player Man United are trying to flog. I still haven’t heard Wenger’s view on this, there’s nothing up on Arsenal.com yet.

I want to know what Silvestre’s position at the club will be. On instincts, I would say he’s cover for Toure, Gallas and Clichy. He’s experienced and he’s used to the Premier League. Also, he’s still got some pace. So he does make some alright cover in our defence, but would he sign knowing he’s only going to be on the bench.

Or, maybe he sees him as our new defender, to partner Gallas in an all-French defensive four?

There’s some debate that this could be the case with Kolo Toure moving to midfield. Kolo likes to get forward, and has proved he can cut in further up the pitch, but on a more regular basis? I don’t know. He does seem the sort of player that could make that switch from defence to midfield. As I said, we know he likes to attack and penetrate the opposing defence, and obviously, he’s a decent defender too; So you could say he has to ingredients to replace Mathieu Flamini in central midfield.

I think Wenger plans on signing another midfielder though. There’s been talk of that Swiss bloke, Gokhan Inler. Arsene was in Switzerland last night watching the game vs. Cyprus. Maybe he was there to look at Inler; it’s a strong possibility. Djourou got 90 minutes in that game though so he might’ve been there just to check up on him.

I still think he’s going to sign in midfield. We’ll have to wait and see. As for Silvestre, well I’m not sure what Arsene plans for him yet. We might get a clue this weekend against Fulham. With him coming in, it means Armand Traore can go out on loan. It was obvious that he needed that experience but we needed him incase Clichy got injured. Now with Silvestre here he can go out on loan and Portsmouth have shown an early interest. It would be a good club to go to but I wonder whether he’ll get many games there.

Well it was another round of international friendlies last night, and so far I haven’t heard of any more injures, WOO!

Van Persie scored for Holland in a 1-1 draw with Russia. Decent goal too, took the ball on the edge of the box on his left foot and curled one into the far top corner. More of that please Robin.

Three defenders, Sagna, Gallas and Djourou all played the full 90 minutes last night. Hopefully they’ll be alright for the weekend, they should be anyway. The French beat Sweden 3-2 with Sagna’s cross setting up their first goal. Djourou’s Switzerland beat Cyprus 4-1 with Arsene Wenger watching on from the stands.

Bendtner also played a full match for his country, however he lost emphatically 3-0 to Spain with Arsenal-linked Xabi Alonso getting two.

Theo Walcott couldn’t get on the pitch for England’s 2-2 draw with Czech Republic. Personally, I thought England were crying out for a bit of Theo last night. There was no imagination, nothing exciting; I think Walcott might’ve done well if he we awarded the chance. Never mind.

Ramsey played for Wales U21, Fabianski put in a good performance with Poland but lost 1-0 to Ukraine and Carlos Vela played an hour for Sven’s Mexico against Honduras.

So that’s it for news today, hopefully we’ll get Wenger’s views on Silvestre later today but probably tomorrow in his Friday press conference. Thanks for reading.