From : Adetayo
Date: Thu, Jul 17, 2008
Subject: Signings
Hello Myles,
Thank God you are back ! I and quite a lot of Arsenal fans are getting worried about the lack of a defensive midfielder in the Arsenal ranks, considering the departure of Flamini and Gilberto. All the others, Diaby, Cesc, Rosicky, Denilson etc, are attack-minded. Song is off to the Olympics,( I would have thought Arsene had him in mind). Do you think Ramsey is up for it at 16? Or will Arsene still sign a defensive midfielder and centre back?
Myles replies :
I can’t reassure you. I can’t reassure Arsenal supporters. Only the team can do that. Only the Arsenal team can reassure supporters that they will see a good season. Yes, I still think they need a centreback and a holding midfielder with size and strength as well as mobility.
I think Arsenal need Yaya Toure, who improved Barcelona’s mobile little midfield by giving it power. He is a far better footballer than Edmilson or Motta. But the Barca team was falling apart around him as Real Madrid won back-to-back titles. Madrid have Diarra, another big African destroyer in front of the back four. Diarra is important to Madrid but not half the player Yaya is.
In the end, football is about players. Football is about matches. Without matches, football is abstract and imaginary. Fans get lost in a limbo between the past and the future. And, since football is unpredictable, you only know that next season will NOT be like last season. 2008-2009 will be a lot different.
But, right now, fans don’t know where they are. Only when you have a fixture list, and matches, and results, do you know where you are. If you haven’t got matches and results, you can easily become a bit neurotic, weird and dislocated.
Aaron Ramsey, I don’t know. I haven’t seen Ramsey play, so I don’t know what he can do. Haven’t seen Carlos Vela play, so I don’t know what he can do either. Seen a little bit of Nasri and have high hopes. He’s a talented kid. Cameroon may not last long in the Olympics, so Song may be back soon. Four years ago I heard that nobody at Colney thought Song was a player, apart from Arsene. Song showed us something last season. Not a lot, but something. Is he good enough? Wait and see.
Personally, I can’t make any predictions. I can only comment on what I see and I’ve seen nothing so far. The only prediction I’d make is this : When Eduardo comes back, and scores his first comeback goal at the Emirates, you’ll hear the biggest cheer you’ve heard for a long time.
This is a weird time of year that I usually missed, even when I was in London, as I would be preparing to go on a family holiday. From 1990 we went to the Algarve for three weeks, usually watching the Charity Shield on TV over there, watching Arsenal’s first or second game on Sky. One year I went to Wembley, saw Eric Cantona score a hat-trick for Leeds against Liverpool, then went on holiday the following day and forgot everything about that match. Didn’t think about, it, didn’t talk about it, didn’t write about it, can’t remember any of Cantona’s goals. The whole event went right out of my mind.
The summer of 1997 is one I do recall. Met Overmars and Petit when they were introduced to the press, David Dein buzzing and proud, having a word with Arsene about Boa Morte. But then suddenly we were on a Portuguese beach on a Sunday morning that Arsenal were playing at 4pm that day and the kids were in the water and a wave slammed a pedalo against Caroline’s little 11-year old leg, the lifeguard carried her up the beach 200 yards away, and Michael ran to tell us she had been hurt. A nice French couple with an SUV gave us a lift back to the apartment and I propped Caroline up with her leg on a cushion to watch the Arsenal-Coventry game with me. But, after half an hour, blonde pigtails and spectacles appeared at the French windows : her friend from next door. Seeing Helene, she stood up, hopped over the door, opened it and went out to play. I thought : That injury can’t be too bad !
Wrighty scored both goals and I was thinking : two goalscorers. I thought : Wright and Bergkamp will score but nobody else. Parlour and Overmars won’t score. This is exciting, it’s fast, it’s dynamic football, I love it. But there’s only two goalscorers and those two can’t do it every game, it’s impossible.
At that moment I did not guess that Marc Overmars, a truly world class player, would score 12 league goals in 2007-2008 or that Arsenal would win the double.
When I came back from all those holidays, the action had started, I was playing catch-up, there was plenty to talk about. Once, in the USA in 1998, we were at the beach with my brother Neil’s family, in a rented house on the South Jersey shore. Stone Harbour is a small town where you could buy a house for $1 million and a nice house for $2 million.
When we got home to Villanova, PA, I asked Neil’s wife Martha, a computer science professor, to search Charity Shield, Manchester United, Arsenal. When she said “Arsenal 3 Manchester United 0 “, we were all shouting, “Yes!” and punching the air. Well, Jan wasn’t, but me, Michael and Caroline were.
That is the only time in my life that I celebrated the result of a match played a week ago. If I’d been in London, I would have been there to see Anelka take Jaap Stam apart.
This year, going to Croatia early, and coming back in the same week that the Arsenal players started training, it’s a lot different. I should be wholly in tune with the rhythm of the season but I’m completely out of synch with my normal calendar, and I’m struggling with that. The number of days between coming back to London and a meaningful match is far too many. So I’ve had to find other things to do. On Tuesday I had a tuna bagel for lunch at the Royal Academy. Sitting in the Courtyard Cafe, I complacently asked, ” How many times have we been to the Summer Exhibition?” and Jan said, “Never, that was a first.” I saw a painting I liked but it was £17,000. The architectural room was interesting. Last night an Irishman was telling me about Greek blues on youTube.
I’ve decided to just potter along for the next three weeks, and give the managers time to sort their squads out.