Arsene To Buy Ajax, Roy Of The Rovers & Win A Home Shirt

A mixed day for the Arsenal contingent in South Africa. Robin van Persie will be happy with his performance and the result, Bendtner mixed emotions and goodness alone knows what is going through Alex Song’s mind, relegated to the bench as another French coach showed that Dick Dastardly was not the only flawed genius.

Quite what was going through Paul Le Guen’s mind in dropping Song and playing Eto’o on the right is unknown. The answer to that question seems likely to be ‘not much at all‘. Perhaps the vuvuzela was distracting him. Interestingly, the broadcasters are blaming the players, coaches and other fans for the complaints about these ‘instruments’ whilst Fifa notes that the only formal moaning about them has come from the broadcasters. Hmmmm….

Back to the matches. Japan won their first World Cup finals match on foreign soil as Le Guen decided that having a competitive squad was better than fielding your best team. What is it at international level with French coaches? First we have Domenech, who we knew was certifiably nuts, cocking up France’s opener and now Cameroon lost against their weakest group opponent. Absolute genius.

Robin van Persie will be reasonably happy with his own performance in The Netherlands 2 – 0 win over Denmark, providing the cross which caused confusion in the Danish defence and the opening goal. Poulson was unfortunate to head against Agger’s back but ultimately it was a poor goal to concede. van Persie and the Dutch generally, hinted at better things to come but were well worth their win.

Given that Nicklas Bendtner was an injury doubt before the game, he put in a decent performance although he screwed his one real opening wide. The Danes containment of the Dutch worked in the first half but was undone early in the second. They lacked the penetration that their Golden Generation of 1986 – 92 had and the suspicion is that it will be the difference between qualifying and going home early, surely Cameroon will be fired up for their final encounter, a game which realistically they will have to win and Denmark will need at least a point from.

As for Italy, the less said about their first half performance the better. No, seriously, it was that bad. So bad, Paraguay must have been wondering what they were worried about beforehand. The second 45 minutes was a vast improvement and brought them the draw that they deserved overall.

So to Arsenal. The photoshopping of the new away kit gathers pace this morning with Daily Mail artists getting to work. Not too sure about it being a throwback to the Woolwich Arsenal days, it struck me as a little too Watford on first glance. However, we’ll be a bit generous and allow Nike to say it was inspired by Melchester Rovers all-conquering sides, obviously inverted.

Elsewhere, Arsene has been very impressed by the Dutch qualifying campaign for South Africa is covetously glancing in the direction of the Eredivision. Specifically he is looking at Ajax. More specifically at Stekelenburg, van der Wiel, Suarez and now Vertonghen. That takes care of the defence and attack. Such is his eye for a bargain that he has talked Ivan Gazidis, Kroenke and Usmanov into buying the club rather than separate bids for each of the players. Quite what he will do with Rommendahl is anyone’s guess but Gunnersaurus is looking nervously over his shoulder.

WIN A HOME SHIRT

Arsenal Football Club has kindly donated a new home shirt (to be released on July 29th) to the winner of this question:

Which Arsenal managers have played in the World Cup Finals?

Send your entries, along with your name and address, here or to aclfcomps[AT]btinternet[DOT]com, changing the bits in square brackets, with ‘New Home Shirt‘ in the subject line, to have a chance of winning. Closing date is midnight, Sunday 20th June 2010.

Good Luck to all who enter.

’til Tomorrow.

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