There was some significant changes on the Arsenal Board yesterday. Ivan Gazidis, who is our new Chief Executive, will now be the Director taking over from Richard Carr who leaves the position after 27 years of service. Richard is staying with the club though remaining a director and working with the youth and academy.

This is not massive news, Richard Carr is about 70 and Ivan Gazidis is a knowledgeable business and football man who we hope will take us in the right direction.

What does worry me though is Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith leaving the board with immediate effect. Lady Nina has a 15.8% stake in the club and therefore holds a lot of power. It is thought that she may have left with the intention to sell those shares to a high-bidder – A.K.A. Alisher Usmanov. By leaving the board she also leaves the lockdown agreement that shares will not be sold by Arsenal board members.

I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m not an expert when it comes it comes to board dealings, but this does worry me. There was been a lot of departures from the board in the past couple of years and it really does concern me what must be going on behind the scenes at Arsenal.

You will all have your own view of it but I expect to see Lady Nina selling her shares in the near future. Hopefully not to Usmanov but I bet he will be all over it. Kroenke seems like the man to trust with them at the moment, so it might be best for him to take them, but surely a deal would’ve been done in-house before Bracewell-Smith left the board. We’ll see.

On to more footballing matters and there’s a load of fresh stories coming from Arsene Wenger after his recent webchat. He talks about all manner of things Arsenal and Gunnerblog has the transcript.

He talks about the possibility of transfers and it’s the usual stuff from Wenger saying that he thinks we should focus more on what we’ve got because these youngsters have a lot to give but then if the right player comes along he will sign him. Hopefully it’s just him being conservative because I think it’s clear for all to see how much we need additions.

He also talks about Wilshere saying he’s going to be some sort of magical Bergkamp/Rooney/Pele/Jesus superfootballer, which is quite exciting. But yeah, check out Gunnerblog for the full story.

Nasri is 95% for Liverpool but Kolo is a big doubt. That’s the first piece of team news ahead of Sunday, also Nicklas Bendtner has picked up a knock in training and we’ll have to wait and see on him. That’s positive though on Nasri, Not sure I can take another Diaby/Denilson/Song + Fabregas midfield….

More on that sort of thing nearer the game.

Tomorrow it’s the Champions League draw and there isn’t really one team in there you’d ‘like’ to have. These are the possible teams we could get:

AS Roma
Panathinaikos
FC Barcelona
Bayern Munich
Juventus

I don’t really care who we get to be honest, whoever we get is going to be a challenge. Fabregas wants to avoid Barcelona and I don’t blame him, they’re playing very well… I suppose if I had to choose, I think probably Panathinaikos or Juve.

Well I better go now but I’ll speak to you tomorrow after the draw. See ya.