For the last couple of hours I have been bored. So, naturally, I found myself browsing through the Danish Under-19 squad. I noticed something interesting. I browsed a little more. Sitting comfortably?
Over the last two years, Chelsea have signed 18 players under the age of 18 on freebies or with nominal tribunal fees. Ken Bates recently kicked up a fuss about the pinching of Tom Taiwo and Michael Woods from Leeds. Other English clubs have suffered the same fate. Ryan Bertrand has signed from Gillingham, Scott Sinclair (who is a shit hot striker) from Bristol Rovers, Harry Worley from Stockport and James Russell from Arsenal (chelseafc.com apply the schadenfreude…Russell is described as having “sensibly switched to Chelsea”). For good measure they also picked up Sam Hurrell, who won that rubbish Football Idol programme.
Danish youngsters Per Weihrauch and Morten Nielson (the genesis of my search) signed from Ajax and KB respectively, and were joined recently by Scandinavian mate Tomi Saarelma from FC Lahti in Finland. Keen to offset their Scandinavian gang with an Iberian one, Chelsea picked up Fabio Ferreira and Ricardo Fernandes from Sporting Lisbon, Ricardo Semedo from Guimares and Sergio Tejera from Espanyol.
Keen to represent every nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, Chelsea have also added to their squad Jonas Elmer from Grasshoppers Zurich, Miroslav Stoch from Slovakian club Nitra and Connor Clifford from Irish side Crumlin.
Perhaps the most alarming thing is the epithets attached to many of these kids…’wonder kid’, ‘rising star’, ‘prodigy’…etc. Oh, and be sure to watch out for young recruit Lewis Bakes (9) signed from Luton, and the possible arrival of young Australian Panos Armenakas. Aged 7. God help us all.
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Seeing as Benji is too lazy to get up off of his arse and write a blog, and I'm counting down the minutes till I can leave work to get down to Emirates Stadium for the Arsenal-Zagreb game, I feel like I should use my time (mildly) productively and write a little piece about what has become my pet hate this summer - the Ashley Cole transfer saga.
Now before I get into my rant, may I just state that like all Gooners, I absolutely loved Ashley Cole. 'Local boy done good' is not a story you get very often these days in the Prem, especially at Arsenal. But it was more than that. At the age of 25, Ashley is arguably the best left back in Europe (and seeing how insular we are as a footballing continent, probably the best in the world).
None of this of course is news to you. And in fact, the Chelsea tapping-up affair was so well publicised that you know about that too. What may be unclear is that, after being fined £70,000 for his role in the matter, Ashley (influenced heavily by his agent) decided to take Arsenal to the European Court of Arbitration, claiming that not being allowed to talk to Mourinho was against his human rights. Over this matter, he fell out, acrimoniously I might add, with the Arsenal board, and particularly with David Dein. This mainly happened about a year ago, and Cole, ironically spent the largest chunk of last season on the sidelines. M. Wenger did however pick Cole in his starting line-up for the Champs League Final, the biggest game of his career, to the detriment of Mathieu Flamini who had played the entire campaign and been part of the tightest defence in the history of the Champs Lge. Testament to Cole's ability? Yes. Wenger showing remakable faith in a player who had flirted with his no.1 competitor? Also yes.
Skip to this summer, and suddenly the saga has turned into what can only described as a demonstrative footballing power struggle. Cole is merely a pawn in this, because lets be honest, no-one wants him at Arsenal. Chelsea not only want to get a quality player (which Cole undoubtedly is), but they want to get one over on their London rivals. So they are only offering under Cole's true value. (If Essien, Drogba, Shauny Wright etc all cost 21-25m, then how is Ashley worth £16.5m, their max offer?)... Arsenal are laying hardball, and so are Chelsea. Wenger makes a cheeky £5m bid for Gallas, just to show he's not fucking about. Chelsea then say 'you can have him for Cole, no cash'... Essentially this hideously tedious saga, is boring everyone and the sooner Ash is out the better. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was Cole's statement last week saying he was available for selection... well thanks very fucking much, £55k a week and he has the cheek to make himself available! Unreal!
I'm not gonna get started on the whole autobiography thing, because I think they're ruining football and increasing player power to a detrimental amount.
Anyway, I realise that I've gone on long enough, but it was good to get that off my chest! I'm off to watch Arsenal (minus that little tosser Cole) bang 15 goals past Zagreb Sod off Ash... You don't deserve to wear red and white again! You deserve Chelsea.
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