Well, the above picture is the first thing that comes up in a google image search for Kiev. That's the Pechersk monastery, apparently. How nice.
In terms of football, the draw was, on balance, kind to us. Not as kind as it perhaps could have been, but kind nonetheless. We should to be able to beat Porto, Fenerbache, and Kiev at home, and pick up at least a couple of points, if not more, from our away trips. Mercifully, we're visiting Kiev first, in September, rather than facing a trip there in December. This means it will actually be possible to play football against them, rather than the 'who can avoid breaking their all their bones on the frozen pitch' game, which is much less fun.
A trip to Istanbul probably won't be too much fun either - Chel$ea tripped up their last season, before beating Fener in the home leg, and I think we'd do well to get a draw out there.
Porto, in some ways, should be the easiest of the three. We beat them at home 2 years ago, and drew with them in Portugal, so I think we can do the same again.
In short, if we can't get out of this group we really don't deserve to win the competition.
In other news, there remains only 3 days to the end of the transfer window, and Arsene remains in a state of near xen-like calm. Danny Fiszman came out yesterday and said Arsene could buy whoever he wanted, if he wanted to, even a £30 million striker.
This has been interpreted as meaning we have £30 million to spend, which is not actually what Danny said at all. We could have even more; the point Danny was trying to make was that the club is generating plenty of money, and that Arsene is given free reign to decide whether or not to spend it. If he wanted to sign a big-money player he could.
This was to counter suggestions being planted in the media - I'm looking at you Daily Mail -by Fat & Orange's PR that Arsenal won't be able to compete without a takeover as we have no money at present.
We have money; have a look at the bloody Annual Report, it's all there. We have cash reserves on top of the loan repayments we're making. Arsene is trying to implement a policy of buying younger, hungrier players (ok, apart from Silvestre), rather than trying to compete for the huge, and usually overpriced, stars.
This policy has brought us agonisingly close to the CL, league, and Carling Cup in recent years, so let's not write it off too quickly. And anyway, there are still three more days for us to make one final move in the transfer window, so no panicking yet.
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7 comments:
Thats a bit harsh isn't it Tom.
We should go through pretty easily but only as long as we buy an "enforcer".All of the players we were linked with are cup-tied so Arsene will have to suprise us with a good signing.
If Diaby could stay fit, we would have an "enforcer". He has broken Campo's ankle and knocked out Terry. What more would you want?
Chill guys you should be fukcing Gooners not enemies!
Yeah but Diaby has also had his leg smashed and suffered loads of injuries. I dont think he can play in central midfield as he cant tackle and he doesnt know when to release the ball
Thank god someone's talking sense again. I've become seriously sick of the doom and gloom related to not having a spend thrift child like benitez in charge of our team. Ok buying Torres is never going to backfire, but but generally he tries to throw cash at problems which essentially a manager should be able to fix with quality coaching and tactical thinking. Give me Wenger any day. I hate the way managers discard their failures so readily and blame their boards for lack of support, and now to add to that, we've got so many tv pundits banging the gong for buying success, maybe this is why they're pundits, not managers. In the last twenty years, it's fair to say United have always been the biggest spenders, with many of the biggest names of the times joining at some point, but everyone knows the players the fans have always loved the most were the generation Fergie developed from scratch, so why don't we give Arsene his chance, his record's amazing with unknowns, Let's have a bit of patiebce... or are we all fair weather fans these days.
Tom, thats a bit harsh!
Diaby COULD very well be an enforcer, if only he didnt injure himself everytime he went sliding into a tackle. I think he has the legs to make a good tackler, just needs to beef them up a bit.
"Blogger Tom said...
learn to spell and then learn to re-read your bloody awful writing you thick twat"
What an absolute tard
Nothing is that article warranted such a response
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