By Myles Palmer
GOONERS have been very neurotic and depressed this week.
Mainly because the tabloids print so many garbage stories.
So I suppose I should clarify the transfer situation.
It’s quite simple.
1. Arsene will sign a goalkeeper next week.
2. He says that further squad additions will depend on players leaving the club.
We hope that means some players ARE leaving the club and Arsene will have money.
He wants a striker, a defender and a left back to cover Ashley Cole.
The Inter Milan bid for Pires was far more serious than his flirtation with Valencia.
But Inter have just signed Fadiga from Auxerre and Luciano from Chievo on the right.
HARRY KEWELL says he’s been talking to Liverpool for six months !
And he sold his announcement to Australian TV for £25,000.
And his agent Bernie Mandic did Leeds chairman Prof McKenzie up like a kipper.
Mandric got £2m from Leeds, Kewell got £2m from Liverpool – Leeds only bank £3 million.
McKenzie is a transfer virgin who got raped.
Some say Kewell is shy athlete who just wants to train, play and go home to his wife and kids.
Others reckon he is a moody, big-headed Aussie brat who used the interest of Arsenal and Man United without ever intending to join either.
At Leeds, Kewell was not so anti-social that he refused to go out with the boys.But he was always the first to leave.
At the Leeds United Xmas party two years ago he had a couple, left early, walked to his car and drove home.
Arsenal’s new keeper might be Saja.
The San Lorenzo spokesman says the contract is 90% done.
The Saja deal is sensible : £ 350,000 as a downpayment,going up to £2.3 million if the Argentinian, who has 4 caps, does well.
Some tabloid stories about Arsenal have been 100% stupid.
Silliest : the club is too skint to pay last month’s wages.
Consider : Arsenal collect the season ticket money on June 1st.
Each season ticket costs £1000 or £1300 or even £1600.
So 22,000 season tickets bring in about £25 million.
Arsenal might have cash flow problems, but never in June.
Did you watch Inside The Mind of Paul Gascoigne?
Venables was nauseating, as always.
July 11th 2003.
PS
Back in May my resolution for summer was: Don’t sweat the big stuff.
I had been reading WhatReallyHappened.com and
CounterPunch every night till 2 a.m.
But I decided : Don’t sweat the big stuff.
Try to give up this addiction.
So I’ve cut down that surfing to 2 nights a week.
Last night I found a heartening story by Michael Wolff on nymetro.com.
It’s about the launch of The Guardian as a weekly paper in USA.
Wolff says the corporate Nazis have exterminated leftwing papers.
He says Rusbridger is a packaging genius and there’s a vacant niche for liberal writing.
The Guardian’s website, as you know, had zillions of hits from the USA during the Iraq techno-massacre.
So maybe The Guardian can reverse the fascist coup by Bush and his evil billionaire buddies.
I’m quite optimistic about their prospects.