Firesuite

We can stop panicking now. It seems that the deal struck with Lorient to liberate Laurent Koscielny from his contract with Lorient and bring him to north London was merely pending the French club securing a replacement for the Polish Frenchman. That objective has now been achieved. Incidentally, I hope you've all been impressed by the way I've consistently managed to keep the word "Lorient" where it should be, rather than accidentally sticking it in front of Laurent's surname. You haven't even noticed, have you now?

Good. So, the deal for Koscielny- according to last night's Evening Standard- will be completed this week. Although the Young Guns blog reports that Koscielny has already been training with the Arsenal "yoots". It's a strange state of affairs, I think. If, a year and a half ago, I had told you that our central defence would be comprised of Messrs Vermaelen and Koscielny come the beginning of the 2010 season, you'd probably have looked at me blankly, before laughing and asking me,

"Who?"

But in Arsène we trust (well, I do anyway) and if he says Koscielny is the man to replace Gallas, then who am I to argue? The same paper reports that Arsène retains an interest in Borussia Dortmund's Neven Subotic. But that deal is expected to be slightly out of our price range, Subotic is apparently valued at £25m- which is (just to give the figure some context) £5m less than Barca have offered for Cesc.. Other names in the frame, well there's nothing to new to report. Cahill and Jagielka represent the usual suspects.

This turn of events leaves Thomas Vermaelen as the leader of the defence and he wants trophies. Like, now .Okay, maybe not right now, the only one on the immediate horizon is the Emirates Cup and I don't think that's anything to get excited about. Speaking to Arsenal TV Online, Vermaelen said,

"This year it did not work out, but we have a lot of good players and a good team with a lot of quality.
"We have to continue what we have been doing, we are working hard.
"I am convinced that next year we can win trophies with this team.
"We had a lot of injuries, and if we can all be fit for a long time next season, it will be a good year for us."

Clearly, Vermaelen is looking for a "good" season, but as I've said before, I think that there's going to be a lot of pressure on the Belgian's shoulders this season, I'll be interested to see ho he copes with it. It's funny that he mentions injuries though, because with pre season training starting today, the first player to bring a sick note in from his mum is everybody's favourite centre forward, Nicky Bendtner. You may remember that he missed a large part of last season due to a groin injury and it seems that, what with playing in the World Cup and all, it's flared up again. Not good news for him and not great news for us, bearing in mind van Persie is sure to get injured at some point in the next five days.

Actually, I say "flared up again", I think it's more like he was injured throughout the tournament but carried on because he wants to play for his country. And people wonder why Arsène hates letting his players go on international duty. But you know, don't let the fact that he was clearly not fit stand in the way of being able to have a pop at him Delboy Redknapp. Or you, Martin Keown...

The televised fixtures for next season have been announced. Any paranoia I was feeling at seeing an advert for BT's coverage of the Premier League at Oxford Circus station this morning has not been soothed. Let's deal with the BT poster featuring Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard(?) and..... Adebayor first. Need I say anymore? Never mind the fact that Mercenary City didn't even finish above Tottenham next season, or the fact that Liverpool didn't finish above either of them and that none of them finished above us anyway, is Emmanuel Adebayor really the poster boy for our national game now? And if so, did I miss a meeting? I suppose it's rather apt that Shabby is the poster boy for a money greedy, talent starved and morally bankrupt league we are sold every week, isn't it?

Seriously, why are we being forgotten about? I suppose it's not that important really, but the television fixtures do make you think that everyone seems to love watching Arsenal lose. Or at least, that the broadcasters love it when Arsenal lose. I wouldn't mind, but I'm certain it was exactly the same last year. From nine Arsenal matches selected for television between August and November, seven of them are away from home. Okay, most of our early home games would appear to hold little interest to the casual viewer, but what's so exciting about watching 11 northern thugs trying to kick our silky stars? It just seems a little unbalanced to me, it's also bad news for anyone about to be made redundant by Cameron's Government and therefore unable to afford Arsenal's la la land ticket pricing; you won't be watching the Gunners' home games on the telly. Or in the stadium.

There are some really tough fixtures in there, too. The opening weekend clash at Anfield, naturally moved to Sunday now, is followed two weeks later by the trip to Ewood Park, then Sunderland, then Chelsea and then Manchester City. We will also be televised at parks Villa and Goodison. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that, of those fixtures, only Goodison and Anfield yielded three points for us last season. So for me there is a very real fear that if we don't strengthen appropriately, our season is going to be over by the first week of October. And all played out on the television.

Lucky us.

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