Two Stephens

No one is injured (knock on wood) and no one has signed for Arsenal. All the news stories today are about Manchester City branded sodas, restaurants, underwear and sports cars. So… hm….

Here’s a video of Stephen Appiah.

With the revelation that Rennes rejected Arsenal’s late bid for Stephane M’Bia it does look like Arsene seriously TRIED to sign someone this year, but that his various bids were rejected. This brings the total number of players that Arsene tried to get in the defensive midfield position to 3, which is as much of an admission from the boss that he doesn’t feel the quality is there with our current squad as I would ever need.

It all makes a certain sense now in retrospect: Wenger’s bluster about this squad being good enough is just talk to keep the spirits up — he saw the deficiencies and took care of them. He traded a ball holding Hleb for a goal scoring Nasri, brought in a defender with a lot of heart and premiership experience in Silvestre, got the obligatory 16 year old with a ton of potential in Rambo, took a chance for free in Bischoff, and did due dilligence to get a defensive midfielder in for the right price. In the last instance a series of teams just didn’t want to give up their water carrier for various reasons. You could go back and look at that last part about the defensive midfielder and cry about how Wenger didn’t try hard enough, but I feel strongly that the Boss is a man of principle and wouldn’t do anything to harm the team.  Whether that be not signing someone he should, or paying over the odds for someone he shouldn’t. Also, it’s really hard for me to blame Wenger for not signing Alonso when it’s not really his fault that Gerrard went down, and the whole Barry deal went so sour. 

So, the boss talking up the team makes a lot of sense now, because unless we sign a free agent like Appiah, like it or not, this is the squad we’ll have this season. We can all hope that we sign Appiah but don’t expect it to happen. That way, if it does happen, you’ll be surprised and if it doesn’t you won’t be disappointed, right? 

One last thing, for the record, I’m now on the Appiah band wagon. 

Ok, I’ll post another if anything happens today.  Until then…

0 comments

  1. I agree, I’m also on the Appiah bandwagon. The fact that Arsene tried to sign at least THREE different players for DM in the summer reassures my belief that he knows what he’s doing with this club, no matter what his detractors may say. Great article, that’s exactly what I needed to read today.

    Fab 4 (http://fab4arsenal.blogspot.com)

  2. I think wenger should just sign appiah for 3 reasons (1) he’s a fantastic player & athlete(2)he’s expirenced(3)he’s a free agent. So what have we got to loose?

  3. I have always liked Appiah and was disappointed we did not sign him some 2-3 years ago. Having seen him play in the last World Cup he seems to be a bit of a mixture between Essien and Makalele.

    Not getting my hopes up though but would love to have him in the fold.

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