By Myles Palmer
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I JUMPED THE GUN last Friday, regarding Julio Baptista.
Now we hear that Spurs have bid 20 million euros for the Brazilian.
That doesn’t make sense because (1) I’ve heard Arsenal have bid 22 million euros and (2) it’s a World Cup season.
Baptista is Parreira’s fifth choice striker after Ronaldo, Adriano, Robinho and Ricardo Oliveira.
Why would he join a club not in the Champions League?
Football is a circus full of silly people and silly events, but Baptista signing for Spurs is the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve heard in six months.
On Monday I heard that he will join Arsenal and be on £40,000 a week.
But today we read that he prefers to join Barcelona in summer 2006, when his fee will be set by a tribunal. I trust my sources more than the newspapers. Let’s wait and see.
SOL CAMPBELL and Ashley Cole want to leave, so neither of them could be captain.
Therefore Thierry Henry got the job.
Is Thierry a leader?
Cole extended his contract by one year, till 2008, to get a pay rise from £27,000 a week to £70, 000 .
That is a necessary compromise. There is no market for Ashley Cole, as I said weeks ago.
Nobody wants to buy a left back for £15 million. If he was Shaun Wright-Phillips or Michael Essien, he could have got a move.
Edu has gone, Vieira has gone, so it suits Arsene to keep Ashley, an experienced warrior.
Apparently, they have a “gentleman’s agreement” that Cole can go if Real Madrid come in for him next year.
AW has signed Armand Traore, a 17-year old left back from AS Monaco and he now has Gael Clichy on a new deal until 2010.
Jose Antonio Reyes is now under contract till 2011.
PATRICK VIEIRA looked shell-shocked at his first Turin press conference.
Not the face of a footballer getting his dream move.
Pat never believed Arsene would sell him.
Vieira will add class, pace and authority to a bunch of workmanlike winners.
Juventus could win the Champions League now. I hope Pat’s girlfriend Sheryl, a real Londoner, likes Italy.
THE ATLETICO MINEIRO boys were at Barnet, where Arsenal won 4-1 on Saturday.
The Brazilian lads go home today. They played a Reading reserve team and beat them.
AS ALWAYS, pre-season is flux. Pre season is experiment.
Pre-season is kids, trialists, mass substitutions, trying different combinations of players.
Pre-season is when managers take the football machine out of the garage and put it back together again and try to get it running smoothly.
Any machine has cogs and gears and some big wheels. If you lose a big wheel, like PV4, adjustments have to be made.
Especially if, like Arsenal, it is a highly-tuned machine that performs at a rarified level of skill and athleticism.
As I say, it’s flux. Last summer in Amsterdam, Arsenal played River Plate and Ajax – and got two 0-0 draws.
The team showed energy, pace and good ideas. Arsenal were bright, fiery, created loads of chances – but could not score.
Arsenal looked like a high-scoring team, but they were firing blanks. They were a few days away from being able to score goals.They kept missing, as you do in July.
Jeffers played against Ajax, who had Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Those strikers moved to Charlton and Juventus before the real season started.
Shortly after those 0-0 draws, Arsenal played Manchester United in the Community Shield and thumped them 3-1.
I don’t remember the pre-season games I’ve seen. For 12 years we were in the Algarve for 3 weeks, so I usually missed pre-season and the Charity Shield.
APART FROM some Makita tournaments, the only pre-season game I can recall was at Orient, when Arsenal won 4-2.
Orient’s second goal was very sloppy defending and I was mildly shocked. A ball came over from the right flank, Lee Dixon somehow missed it, and their guy knocked it in.
I was not used to seeing Arsenal concede like that and I knew George Graham hated such gift goals.
When we talked after the game I said, “Terrible defending on their second goal, George.”
He said, “I’d rather it happened today than next Saturday. It gives us something to work on.”
MEANWHILE, summer meanders on.
There are three more weekends before meaningful football starts, so I’m just gonna relax and enjoy my weekends.
On Saturday we went to a barbecue which was mostly musicians and architects.
One of the architects said, “We’ve identified a design fault in the gazebo.”
July 18th 2005
PS
The Hargreaves story is bollocks.
3.30 pm : Baptista says he will stay at Seville for another year.