Highbury House

Morning Gooners,

What a day yesterday, and all without football!

Team GB won SIX Gold Medals and one of those went to Arsenal Fan Mo Farah for winning the 10,000 metres in style and all with our club’s name on his spikes.

It really was something special, especially the evening events and we will probably never witness such greatness again. Well not here in England anyway.

Sadly penalties were the undoing of the GB mens football team. Aaron Ramsey converted one but had another saved in regular time which would have been enough to win the game but then Daniel Sturridge couldn’t convert his in the shoot-out.

The tennis wasn’t bad either as Andy Murray and Laura Robson secured their place in the final so at least a Silver for them.

Ok, back to Arsenal……

Victor Wanyama lurks in the background of many current rumours linking every player under the sun to Arsenal and as much fun it is reading them, most are so far-fetched even PHW couldn’t make them up.

But this one surrounding Wanyama is a little more interesting.

His valuation sits around the £7 Million mark.

He’s a Mr Utility who prefers to play in the central defensive midfield position but can play centre back if required.

He’s young at just 21 years old.

He’s African.

The last comment is not any sly attempt by me to be racist, I am not so don’t even go there but we all know Arsene Wenger likes to sign French, Spanish and African players together with the odd English talent.

Why, well it’s obvious, English players are generally over priced and overrated, James Milner, Gareth Barry, Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing are just a  few in a long list who prove that.

Spain of course is flavour of the season because of the ongoing problems in the world of finance but Victor Wanyama has been tried and tested in what many believe to be a tough, hard tackling, Scottish Premier League.

Celtic boss Neil Lennon isn’t in a hurry to sell him but as said yesterday, there is usually a price for any player that will tempt a club to sell, we Arsenal fans of all people know that and the Celtic manager admits:.

Every player has his price but we’re not a selling club – although every club sells players if they get the right offer, but it’s right that we are spoilt for choice in terms of talented young players in midfield.

Hardly convincing eh?

Over the last few days/weeks there has been many a story/comment in the ‘blog world’ about Alex Song.

Some suggest that Robin has told Wenger that we will never win anything with Song in the squad, some suggest that he has no intention of signing a new contract and wants to move on, other suggestions are that Wenger has told him he can go and of course there is this little interest from Barcelona.

Arsene Wenger has really been bigging up Abou Diaby, he’s even suggested he’d be the first player on the French Team Sheet when fit so does he see Diaby as the player to take Song’s place?

By that I mean to be the one who will make the forward runs and the over hit passes? (Please note irony!)

Diaby is quicker, he is not so clumsy either so he’ll be able to get back and help out without giving away silly fouls/free kicks in dangerous areas, something which Alex Song is very good at.

He might head in the odd own goal though. – Yes, I jest of course….

Many Arsenal fans want us to sign a defensive midfielder, I am one of them, but many also believe that our priority should be signing a central defender believing that neither Johan Djourou or Kyle Bartley are really good enough to step in should we suffer injury to the extent that we did last season. (Hopefully we won’t)

For Celtic, Wanyama has been mostly played in defence and he’s not happy but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind stepping into that position every once in a while if it meant he playing for a club like Arsenal.

If he does sign, surely that would spell the end of Alex Song…..

Mind you, so would the signing of Etienne Capoue of Toulouse, he’s valued around £10 Million and reports suggest that Barcelona and Arsenal head the race to sign him after the player admitted he wants to leave his current club in search of Champions League football.

Gregory Van der Wiel also wants out of his current club Ajax and with one year left on his contract he is hoping that Arsene Wenger makes a move for him according to The Sunday Mirror. Newcastle have allegedly already made Ajax an offer but the player wants to join us. The same article suggests that Manchester United will finally make a respectable offer for our captain, one which they believe will see Robin playing alongside Rooney this coming season!

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I love reading the rumours, just hope one of these turn out to be real and I know which one I’d prefer…

That’s it for another day, hope it’s a good one…