The pre-season got off to a winning start eventually but the key thing was that no-one picked up an injury; the younger players proved what a difference a week extra’s training makes. Arsene said afterwards,

Everybody talks about the players we have lost but we have three to come back. We have injured players – like Robin van Persie and Tomas Rosicky – to come back. We also expect Eduardo to return

No mention of Bacary Sagna who returned yesterday and whose absence was possibly the most crucial in the run-in, requiring a shuffle in the back four. RvP looked fine to me in Euro2008 as far as his fitness went so there is another one; Rosicky apparently will not be back until September according to reports yesterday and as for Eduardo, well, he is back when he is back, hopefully not rushed as Henry and van Persie have been in the past. As for incomings, Arsene commented,

I can’t give you any names of players we will sign but there will be at least one more coming in and maybe more. It may be an experienced player. You can expect more players to come in. We are in the market and if a good enough opportunity comes up then we will take it. I am comfortable that we have thought about this over a long period. We are still very confident that we will challenge for the title next season

That ‘experienced player‘ is Gareth Barry according to the Mail on Sunday without any substance to their comment at all. Arsene believes that there were two or three young players who would be promoted to the first team squad, primarily for Carling Cup and dead rubber Champions League matches. No doubt that there will be some who are more favourites to do so than others. It is hard to say which ones though given that he is effusive in his praise for most when pinned down on individuals; on Jack Wilshere, for example, we are told, ‘I don’t think Jack will stay in the reserves for long‘.

The News of the World in its usual sensationalist style carries the ’story’ that Adebayor will stay if Arsenal raise their offer of £70k per week, the paper carrying out its’ own version of ‘newspaper chicken’, a game we have all witnessed time and time again. Essentially a number of reporters on the same paper create a story and the first one to blink loses. With Adebayor, the story goes he will stay for £100k per week.

There are the usual flaws in this; no-one has matched Arsenal’s valuation as far as anyone is aware; the offer of a new contract is on the table but for the last few weeks, ‘Team Adebayor’ have been telling everyone that it was for £45k per week so a new contract must have been issued given that the story says that the £70k was offered ’some time ago and they’ve never changed their position’.

Quite why the paper and Banal Sports News are so obsessed with his return to training is beyond me. I know they want the sensationalist headlines of ‘Adebay-war’ but only the most intellectually-challenged player would refuse to turn up given the damage it would do to their reputation. To cap it all, apparently the story of Juventus buying RvP next summer that broke two or three weeks ago was not true because it’s a Geoff Sweet ‘Exclusive’ in today’s paper.

Hold on though, according to The Sunday Times if Chelsea stump up £114m for Kaka, Milan will meet Arsenal’s valuation of Adebayor, £11.5m of that will be immediately spent on Roque Santa Cruz, the rest on Barry if Liverpool’s revised cash bid of £16m is not enough to fill Martin O’Neill’s pockets, dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s’ of the summer’s transfer talks and putting us in the unenviable position of reading the self-congratulatory tones of all of them for predicting everything correctly.

’til Tomorrow.