Morning Gooners
The London Olympics are around the corner as is the new season and Arsenal kicked off their pre-season proper with a win against a Malaysia XI. I’ve only seen the briefest of highlights and while a win is always important, in pre-season it is more important to get everyone one of our players match fit, sharp and most importantly at Arsenal, through to the first game of the season uninjured.
Arsenal had a couple of half chances in the first half through Santos and Chamakh but fell a goal behind on the stroke of half time with a great strike from ‘Muslim’. Arsenal took their sweet time but equalised on 86mins through great work by Yennaris and a finish by Eisfeld. Just when they thought it was all over, Chuks Aneke’s looping/deflected shot won the game for the Arsenal.
She's heard about his scoring record...
With no reported injuries, it seemed to be a very good work out in tough humid conditions and a Hackney marsh style of pitch. If anyone watched the game and tried to over analyse the performance as a team or of an individual, I feel sorry for you. It’s a pre-season friendly, it means nothing unless we pick up injuries. When I was younger (yes I just used that phrase!), you found out about your pre-season result in the column at the bottom of the newspaper the next morning. ‘Oh we won, that’s good… now who’s on page 3…’ would be my typical reaction.
Today’s pre-season games are part of money making worldwide tours designed to further the ‘brand’ name of the football club to increase commercial opportunities. Every manager would prefer to warming up for the season in a small training camp in North London or Austria. Arsenal are in the far east with Man City and United (I believe), while Liverpool, Chelsea and Sp*rs are all in the USA etc etc. The players gain no benefit from these locations; if anything their bodies are put under greater strain from travelling and ‘unusual’ conditions. To sum it up, Arsenal play Man City in Beijing in the Birds Nest stadium on Friday, what’s the point? Money.
Here are the highlights from yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VVSsOLuFb4
In other news;
Emmanuel Frimpong has been charged by the FA for improper conduct on Twitter:
The FA released a statement today saying that Frimpong posted a comment “amounting to improper conduct and/or which brought the game into disrepute”.
The comment is believed to have “included a reference to ethnic origin, faith or race”.
The comments related back to a Tottnum fan who said ‘he’d pray’ for Frimpong to break all his legs and die, yet Frimmy gets charged. While Frimmy pleaded ignorance to his slur:
“Just wanna Say didn’t even no the word is offensive as u hear it all the time but u live and learn from ur mistakes Have a gd afternoon”
He like other ‘choc ice’ eating footballers need to learn to either grow up or delete their twitter accounts. I think Arseblogger sums it up brilliantly in this post:
http://news.arseblog.com/2012/07/twitter-guidelines-issued-as-frimpong-is-charged/
That’s actually about it if im staying away from Santi ‘the new Juan Mata transfer saga’ Cazorla and complete non story that is the RVP transfer saga.
Here’s to some good news soon on the transfer front, the quicker players are in and out, the better.
Have a good one Gooners.
~ @Tottz82
