Apologies, betting with spurs© supporters, All a-board,

Welcome Gooner’s and good day to you all. Once again I have to apologies for the lack of updates, however if you checked in the other day you would of seen the reasons why. We’ll just call them ‘ongoing saga’s’ for now! And there’s plenty of them. However as mentioned previously, things should return to normality very soon, like Cliff Richard having a Christmas number one and spurs© (by the way that symbol isn’t meant to be a ‘copyright’ symbol the ‘C’ is for crap! Or another four letter word you care to think of) being a top four team. Oh how we laughed. I must admit some spurs© supporters are still living in cloud cook-coo-land. Now one of relatives and I’m not proud to tell you this Gooner’s but even me, Tommi Gooner has to put up with infidels of the spurs persuation in his family. However one of my uncles is a spurs© supporter and I wanted to relieve him of some cash so I said to him lets have a £50 bet on The Arsenal finishing above spurs© – and if (yeah more like when) we do then call it an extra quid for every point extra we finish above spurs©. I thought he would go for it – he didn’t, he said he didn’t want to take my money – Muhahahahahaha – oh how I laughed. And on Monday just gone that was the exact text I sent to him when northern monkeys Aston Villa done them at Shite Hart Lane. I strangely didn’t get a reply though – those spurs© supporters are a funny bunch don’t you think?

 

Kroenke joins the board

The worst kept secret in football has now been exposed – Stanley Kroenke the American that originally old Etonian and Havanna cigar chumping ‘Sir’ Peter Hill-Wood didn’t want ‘his sort’ at The Arsenal has now joined the board. You could see this one coming a mile off it was just a case of when it was going to happen really. So that’s some good news which hopefully should see Jabba the Hut looking Russian fat man Alisher Usmanov’s move for The Arsenal derailed for a bit longer. Which is nice.

Apart from that Gooner’s the only other news is that we have plenty of cash. I think most Gooner’s must of known that seeing that The Grove is making money hand over fist compared to our Highbury days. However you have to think to yourself, ‘OK we got all this cash – but will Le Gaffer actually spend any of it?’ Well one such player the cash could of gone on is Yaya ‘Touré the Younger’ Touré who apparently reckons turned down a move to us in the summer – oh well there’s always the January sales though, seeing that the big fella is getting many games at the moment.

 

‘Thomas – it’s up for grabs now’ – Where was you?

As part of this season and trying to tie in with all the 20th anniversary shenanigans of that famous last minute championship win, allgoonerdup.com is doing a ‘JFK where was you moment’. But obviously the moment we’re doing is – ‘Thomas – it’s up for grabs now’ moment. Every Gooner knows where they were when that goal went in and we’re going to publish your tales. The idea is to do one Gooner’s piece a day, so get amongst it and send your emails in via the contacts page and mark the subject line ‘Thomas – it’s up for grabs moment’. I’ll be doing some sort of fancy graphic and that just to give the piece some ‘air play’. Get your emails in and we’ll get the ball rolling with your ‘Thomas – where was you moment’. Hopefully your tales of that wonderful night will get other people sharing their ‘Thomas – it’s up for grabs now moment’!

We’re back… In threes…

Apologies Gooners for falling off the face of the earth, we have recently been as productive on here as Arsenal during the transfer window. And judging by all your emails, you are missing your daily(!) bite size tidbits of Arsenal news with a bit of tomfoolery thrown in. So please bear with us for the moment, we’re going through a bit of a ‘saga’ shall we call it at the moment and hopefully we’ll be giving you daily updates once more. Failing that we’ll be making more comebacks than Stan Victor Collymoore but without the wife beating antics. So I give you this and name check two old skool hero’s and two guys who are definitely hip hop legends – Eric B and Rakim.

Its been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you

Without a strong rhyme to step to

Think of how many weak shows you slept through

Times up, I’m sorry I kept you

So Gooners as I’ve said bear with us – the show will be back on the road and normal service will resume very soon. So now you’re here, get cracking and read today’s, this weeks, this months article!

In Threes… 

So apparently the fashion of the moment is hat tricks. First Theo goes and graduates on the International stage with three goals. Now, scared of missing out on the hottest new trend around The Grove, our Togolese forward has gone and got himself his very own shiny hat trick. Poor old RVP – he was inches away from being a trendsetter just a few weeks ago and now he just looks like the poor kid who can only afford goals in pairs. 

Despite the hype and deflation of the transfer window, things don’t look too shabby around The Grove of late. There was that brief aberration against Fulham but since then things have gone rather well. And the Fulham game should now be reviewed. With hindsight, though they are by no means world beaters, and still a team we should be beating if we want to win the title, Fulham are proving to be a far improved team this season, riding well up the table. So rather than being a guide of what might be to come this season, it might just have been one of those blips against a team always capable of sneaking a result. 

 

And what of Adebayor’s latest attempt to win over fans? By refusing to get on a plane to Togo, I suspect he is trying to recast himself as the new Dennis Bergkamp, whose fear of flying was well known. To think most Gooners envisioned RvP as the new Dennis, what with them sharing Dutch heritage and technical mastery of football. How foolish of us to completely overlook the lanky fellow with the crazy hair and lack of experience wearing clogs. 

Meanwhile, our new star in the making, Samir Nasri has a worrying knee injury, whilst Tomas Rosicky looks more likely to turn out for the wheelchair football team at the Paralympics than appear at The Emirates anytime soon. Without going over old ground too much here, this smells of Eboué to me. I know he supposedly ‘injured’ himself on the weekend against Blackburn, but I suspect it’s just a smokescreen. If Nasri recovers in time, we better warn Theo to steer well clear of the Ivorian anywhere in the changing rooms. And possibly train all week in medieval battle armour. Just in case…. 

So now we’re off to Kiev, home of.. erm… well.. I’m sure it’s nice this time of year anyway, as long as you don’t get caught in any radioactive dust still lingering from Chernobyl. Really, this is the best time to be playing a team out there. For what seems like 10 months of the year, they play in 20ft drifts of snow, which might suit players like Adebayor and Bendtner, but poor old Theo and young Jack Wilshere would need snorkels. Kiev are by no means a team that we should roll over, but this is a good draw, and getting them before the winter chill kicks in should negate a lot of their home advantage (though moving Kiev somewhere near the Seven Sisters Rd might have helped a bit as well). It looks as though we will be without Gael Clichy though, which starts to put a bit of a strain on the team. With Traore off gallivanting around the Arsenal Old Folks home down in Portsmouth, there is limited cover within the squad for the left back spot. Kieran Gibbs could slot in, or perhaps Gallas will be shifted left and Djourourourouou’ou will come in to play alongside Kolo in the middle of the defence. That is of course if Silvestre isn’t fit again after his entire body was rebuilt with the leftover bits of Tomas Rosicky. Either way, it will mean a reshuffle and lets all hope this is not the start of an injury crisis just when we were looking good. 

Hopefully by this time next week, we’ll have sorted out a solid start in the Champions League, and then given Bolton a good roughing up. And if nothing else, we can always just laugh at Sp*rs in last place!

By Paul Wright – Allgoonerdup roving report