Still no news on Cesc – maybe because there isn’t any? 20 May, 2010

The Fabregas to Barcelona stories are still coming from various blogs, newspapers and sports channels but to sum everything up – nothing has happened at all. There’s still nothing from Arsenal about this apparent meeting with Wenger, no quotes from Cesc, nothing official from Barcelona or anything else for that matter.

In an attempt to keep the story going the tabloids have to just make up some shite. The Mail reckon we’re asking for £80m but reckon Barca want to give us Hleb back as part of the deal and The Guardian are claiming he will be reunited with his former club by the weekend. The Guardian are usually quite a respectable source of information so I’m hoping they’re just jumping on the hype bandwagon with that one.

The fact of the matter is though that the papers can write whatever the fuck they want; they can say that we’re setting up a straight swap for Messi and I wouldn’t care. I’ve been writing this blog for four years now and the biggest tip I’ve taken out of it is take everything that’s written in the papers with a bucket of salt. Tabloid speculation is 90% untrue so there’s no point even wasting your time with it. A lot of the time I totally ignore these sort of stories but as this ones so widespread, so important and won’t go away I guess it needs a bit of comment. My way of dealing with things is don’t decide anything until you hear anything official. I couldn’t care less what is written until I see something on Arsenal.com, or from the manager or player’s mouth.

I would be expecting something soon to be honest, to confirm or deny the stories but nothing has come up yet. Maybe the clubs are in talks, maybe Wenger is still talking to Cesc about it or maybe nothing has happened at all – who knows? Only they do and it’ll stay like that until the time comes. I’m praying our captain wants to stay as much of the next Gooner but you wont see this blog getting caught up in anything until I hear it from higher up.

Seeing as there is no news on it then, lets move on. Sol Campbell’s been talking about his proud comeback to Premiership football. It is quite an achievement really and you can only put it down to his hard work and determination. He might’ve lost a bit of fitness with age but he makes up for it in effort and a player that will turn 36 next season is likely to get another contract as the highest level. He’s shown what it takes to be a fighter too and some of the younger players in this side should take note of that, the thing with bringing through a young side is that there isn’t many players that have won things in the squad and you need that sometimes.

Sol reckons we need to bulk up the side a bit and says ‘you can’t rely on just 13 or 14 players’. This is something fans have been saying for a long, long time but whether we don’t have to money or other reasons it hasn’t been addressed. We are one of the unluckiest teams ever with injuries so it doesn’t help to have such a small first team squad. We’re in the market to improve the squad now and I ‘understand’ (as is the expression nowadays) that the first addition will be announced Monday or Tuesday. We have to keep going though and if we can make it two new signings before the World Cup I think that’s a good start.

In other news Robin van Persie’s been talking about helping out the team and Theo Walcott’s saying he wants to make much more of an impact at this year’s World Cup. And that’s about it then today. Maybe we’ll hear something much more concrete do to with the Cesc stories over the next few days but until then speculation with carry on, and on, and on. What a bore.

Speak to you soon.