By Myles Palmer
THE FIRST league game is Everton on August 16, so there is still plenty of time to sign a keeper and a centreback
Only Dein and Wenger know who they are talking to.The other directors are told nothing.
Wenger and Houllier collect their OBEs tomorrow. But the Foreign Office has decreed no quotes, no interviews.
They will get their gongs from Jack Straw.
Hundreds of tabloid fairytales in June and July, as always.
I was told today that Vieira DID give those two pages of quotes to the News of the World, but they jumped the gun and used them a week too soon.
Paying Vieira £11 million over 3 years will save Arsenal money.
Because they couldn’t replace him for £21 million.
There is no player in the world who can do everything that Vieira does as well as he does it. And if there was, would he join Arsenal?
Vieira is half the team.Without him, Arsenal would be teamless.
Wenger has been silent because he wants to focus on keeping Vieira and Pires.
His view is : without them, forget it.
So he MUST re-sign both players.
Both owe him a lot.And both know they owe him a lot.
Chelsea being sold to a Russian oil tycoon confirms London as the capital of Europe.
Post-Beckham, it seems that Roman Abramovich is the only story in town.
Unfortunately, I haven’t got time to go into that today.
Do M15 see the new Chelsea as a money-laundering operation?
Will the new owner pick the team?
When a billionaire shops for talent, will clubs see him coming and double the price?
I was coming out of the gym yesterday when I bumped into Neil, a marketing guy who was once an A&R man.
He said that one of his fencing buddies is a bond analyst who had a meeting in Moscow with Abramovich’s oil company.
Neil said, “It’s an amazing story. Ten years ago he was selling used car tyres. He lent £50 million to the Russian government and couple of years later he inherited a big chunk of the oil industry.”
July 8th 2003.