Jack to the future

The promise of Arsenal's own three lions in action for the national side last night couldn't quite tempt me to watch England's friendly with Hungary live last night. I did however record it on the V Box and, once I had ascertained the starting line up, sped through the first half in about 2 minutes. According to a Richard Williams article in today's Guardian, by doing so, I missed Theo Walcott using the 45 minutes he was given to show Don Fabio that he was wrong, wrong, wrong not to take the Newbury Express to South Africa.

That bodes well for the season ahead, although it should be said- as though it hasn't been said enough already- there are no doubts about Walcott's ability, just his ability to put it all together on anything like a consistent basis. Anyway, he departed at half-time, but there was still an Arsenal player on the pitch as Kieran Gibbs replaced the left back we'd all like to forget ever played for us. Didn't he do well? I could only take about ten minutes of watching England at normal pace before boredom set in and I doubled the speed, but what I saw from Gibbs was composure, good use of the ball, his speed and some quality crossing. That Steven Gerrard's (hope he doesn't repeat that on Sunday) equalising strike into the corner came directly after a positive Gibbs run into the attacking third was halted didn't escape me.

So, it was a positive evening for our young left back. Unfortunately, Jack Wilshere only got about 8 minutes to strut his stuff. I thought it was quite amusing that his first contribution was a high sliding tackle. The kind of tackle which might have seen him booked on another day. We'd like to have seen more of him, naturally, but bearing in the fact that he was in hospital till 5am yesterday with stomach pains (I know how he feels) and our rather huge season opener which he may well be required for, I'm just happy he got through it ok. Well done to both Kieran and Jack, I'm sure last night was just the first of many such experiences for the pair.

There were quite a few of our lads on display last night, Thomas Vermalen and Emmanuel Eboue played ninety minutes each for Belgium and the Ivory Coast respectively. Happily, the Ivorians were only down the road at Upton Park, so we should have no trouble getting Eboue back for the weekend- how times, and opinions, have changed! Andrei Arshavin and Samir Nasri were both given 79 minutes for their respective nations, Andrei winning and Sami losing but they weren't playing against each other. Elsewhere, it seemed as if Lukasz Fabianski had another shocking night as Cameroon beat Poland 3-0. But it turns out that Fabianski left the field at half-time, with one goal scored. Finally, I think we can mention it five paragraphs in, Cesc Fabregas played his first football since the World Cup Final. He played the first half of Spain's 1-1 draw with Mexico, you'd have to think that for once, this might be a good friendly for us. Carlos Vela also got 58 minutes in on the other side.

The Liverpool game is now starting to look a little less frightening, particularly as there have been no problems reported with any of our players. I think it's noteworthy that, having ploughed a lone furrow up front during the World Cup, RvP was not included for Holland's friendly in the Ukraine this week. This contrasts with the inclusion of Fabregas, who didn't quite play as much football across the tournament, for Spain. I wonder what will have been more beneficial to the respective players- will a week's extra pre season training have been just the ticket for RvP? Or would it have benefitted him to have played? I suppose getting back from the Ukraine would have been a bit of a nightmare. Cesc of course has trained often but played less in the last few weeks. Or months, when you factor in the broken leg that kept him out for last season's climax.

The goalkeeping situation at the club, and no I don't think it makes me either a whiner or a Chelsea fan (if I was a Chelsea fan I would of course be writing a Chelsea blog, assuming that being surrounded by Chelsea fans hadn't diminished my IQ to moron levels) to note that there is undoubtedly a "situation" at the club, seems annoyingly deadlocked. The Mirror are reporting that Arsenal still want Mark, but can't have him unless Fulham get Brad, with Manuel moving to Villa to replace Brad. Or something like that. Are these three the only bloody goalkeepers available of all the goalkeepers plying their trade across the world? More to the point, taking the Arseblogger's point this morning about Brad Friedel giving up European football to play for Fulham and why would he want to do that, why don't we just go for Friedel and offer him proper European football? He gets Champions League football and we get a better goalkeeper than we would have had, everybody's happy.

Or is that too obvious? On Almunia, OptaJoe recorded a stat that has Almunia as one of five Premier League keepers to be credited with an assist last season, it didn't say whether that assist went to an Arsenal or opposition scorer. Yeah, it's childish point scoring, but no more so than some of the comments I see here.

On the note of point scoring, when talking about the "open race" we could all expect to see for this season's title Arsène Wenger paid a backhanded compliment to Spurs the other day. He said,

"You expect Manchester City, who invest a huge amount of money, to be one of the contenders as well.

"Tottenham if they can confirm what they produced last year, Aston Villa as well. You could have six or seven teams because Everton for me has a strong squad too."

Yes, he included Tottenham in the list of teams that could challenge, but he bracketed them with the likes of Aston Villa and Everton who are never, sorry Luke, going to be title challengers this season. And in saying, "if they can confirm what they produced" he added a pretty big caveat to that statement. I don't think even the Tottenham fans believe they will reproduce last season's form. All they can put their faith in is the year ending in 1.

That's not much to hold on to now, is it?

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