Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is hoping to have concluded a deal to bring goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer to the club from Fulham before the Gunners welcome Blackpool to the Emirates on Saturday, according to a report from The Daily Mirror.

Fulham are believed to want £4 million for the 37-year-old, but Arsenal, who apparently see Schwarzer also moving into a coaching role at the club, are willing to pay £2.5m.

The Gunners have apparently already had a £2m offer turned down, but it seems that a deal is increasingly likely as Schwarzer is keen to leave Cracen Cottage.

Should Schwarzer join Arsenal, then that should pave the way for Shay Given to leave Manchester City for Craven Cottage, after the Irishman dropped behind Joe Hart in the Eastlands pecking order.

I’ve always been a fan of the little Czech midfielder ever since he scored against us at Highbury for Sparta Prague. He’s such an intelligent player and I have high hopes that this season could be his best.

Although he was dubbed ‘The Little Mozart’ during his time at Dortmund by those zany Germans, he’s had little chance to demonstrate his orchestrating ability in an Arsenal shirt – primarily due to a horrendous hamstring injury that saw him out for 18 months and the emergence of players in his absence. His good moments have only been fleeting and since then he’s kind of faded into the background.

He came on at Anfield on Sunday and was instantly involved in prompting attacks and contributed to most of our good work – almost scoring after a clever little run and exchange of passes with Arshavin.  I’m of the opinion he’s a greatly under-rated player and with a few selections in succession, he could prove to be vital to our chances. He’s got the kind of football brain that’s innate and impossible to teach and he’s one of the few in our squad willing to have a pop from outside the box.  Personally, I’d have him as a regular starter ahead of Diaby as long as he can stay fit. He may be small and not as combative a player as some, but what he lacks in presence he makes up for with guile. 

What do you think? Can he hold down a regular spot? Would you select him in the starting 11? Are there other players in the squad you have high expectations for?

Why We Won’t Win The Title Until The Season Is Over

It is because we wait until the very end to do things. What’s the point? We should sneakily rip a few pages from certain Italian clubs’ books and win the title before anyone else can.

We need to learn to spend wisely. Too much money goes into paying our players. Why do we even bother when Barcelona won the treble with their players playing for free? Some of the things we do boggles the mind.

The money should be going not to the players, but to the people that really matter. I don’t mean Wenger should pay himself even more, because as we’ve seen with England, paying the manager a lot of money doesn’t help much. The people we should be paying are the ones that can help us win the title before the first kick of the round thing.

As you know I’m trying to be as vague as possible. Being too explicit about things can hurt you, as Joan Laporta found out. Saying too much never helps. So I hope anyone who reads this and Arsene Wenger himself understands what I am on about, even though what I’m saying may not make sense.

I read somewhere that the highest transfer fee ever paid for a referee was 27 million pounds. It is not a lot of money. It is good value. Just saying.

The problem with us is that we’re all too nice. I remember Walcott saying he won’t be a nice guy anymore but he’s still nice. He obviously lied, which isn’t a nice thing to do, but it’s certainly not dirty enough. While our rivals have players like you-know-who and you-know-what (that plays for the Totts), we’re stuck with these nice kids who like to play “good football.” I don’t want to see good football. I don’t even like football. I like winning things. Win for me, Arsene.

I am a lot of things but what I am not is a waiter. I don’t like waiting until May to see my club lift a trophy. I am ambigious enough to say that I demand success now. Do what you need to, Arsenal. Trophies don’t grow on trees, and only the early birds can catch them.

Главный тренер Арсенала утверждает, что молодой полузащитник Джек Уилшир в этом сезоне будет бороться за место в основном составе команды.

Арсен Венгер уверен, что Уилшир не смотря на свой молодой возраст уже имеет достаточный опыт для того, чтобы помочь команде выиграть Английскую Премьер Лигу в этом сезоне.

Прошедшая неделя была очень важная для 18-летнего футболиста, так как он дебютировал за основную сборную Англии в товарищеском матче против команды Венгрии, а несколькими днями позже уже вышел в стартовом составе Арсенала на матч первого тура АПЛ против Ливерпуля.

Джек Уилшир был заменён во втором тайме матча на Энфилде, но до этого он не выглядел скованным на фоне таких полузащитников, как Стивен Джеррард.

Венгер верит в то, что молодой канонир сыграет не малую роль в успехах клуба в этом сезоне, но он так же сказал, что помимо таких талантов, как Уилшир, команде необходим опыт для завоевания трофеев.

"Уилшир готов бороться за место в составе Арсенала," - сказал Арсен Венгер.

"Вы (репортёры) любите спрашивать о том, будем ли мы выигрывать трофеи в этом сезоне и ещё вы, разумеется, хотите, чтобы молодой талантливый Джек Уилшир регулярно играл за Арсенал."

"Конечно это совместимо, Джек очень талантливый футболист, но нам надо совмещать потенциал и опыт для того, чтобы выигрывать турниры"

"Вы должны согласиться с тем, что Английская Премьер Лига это чемпионат, где очень сложно регулярно выпускать молодых футболистов и при этом выигрывать."

"Манчестер Сити потратил на трансферы этим летом 100 миллионов фунтов, а мы только 8. И если мы не завоюем титул в этом сезоне - это будет скандал! Но АПЛ это очень высокий уровень, и победить не так легко, как может показаться," - сказал Арсен Венгер в интервью оф. сайту.

Агент полузащитника голландского ПСВ Ибрагима Аффелая подтвердил интерес лондонского "Арсенала"  к футболисту.

Как известно, летом пару раз появлялась инфомрация о том, что "канониры" заитересованны полузащитником сборной Голландии, агент игрока Карел Янсен.

"Арсенал" был связан с футболистом, но конкретных действий от "канониров" не было", - сказал Карел Янсен.

"Контракт Аффелая с клубом заканчивается уже в следующем году, но мы пока не планируем его продлевать, хотя клуб уже предложил контракт на улучшенных условиях, мы подождем и рассмотрим различные варианты.

Leon Callender, owner of Straight Ace Sports Management, confirmed the 21-year-old travelled to Hull for talks with manager Nigel Pearson and that the deal would amount to £1 million including add-ons.

Callender told the Hull Daily Mail: "Should the two clubs come to an agreement on a deal, I can't see there being any problem in the deal going through. Jay is very interested in a move to Hull.


"He sees Hull as a good Championship club and feels it would be a good move for him. He travelled up to Hull last week for a look around and has spoken to the gaffer. Now it is just down to the clubs to agree a deal."

It has also been reported that Hull are in talks with Cardiff over a straight swap deal involving Tigers' striker Daniel Cousin and the Welsh side's unsettled forward Ross McCormack.

But the switch is dependent on Cousin agreeing on a substantial wage cut, with Cardiff understood to have offered the Gabon international £9,000-a-week, which is half his current salary at the KC Stadium.

How ever we cannot be blind for the fact that there are other people on the internet. People who want us to win now. For the moment I am not going to call them fans from other teams who just are trying to bring unrest to our fans. I am willing to believe that they are real Arsenal fans but that they are  people who are impatient and want us to win a trophy today and so I will call them the impatient fans.  They disagree with the youth project which in their eyes has failed for 5 years now. A youth project that is only starting to bear its fruits if you look at the fact that players like Wilshere and Gibbs look to have made the needed step up. Players like JET, Frimpong who are very close to do the same. But for those impatient fans it doesn’t go fast enough.

Those fans want us to buy players without trying to give that fine young prospect the chance of becoming a better player. If we would have let them have it their way we would have sold Song long time ago. Or even have given him away to any team that would take him. Now those people are asking, impatiently: “when will Song be back”. If we would have bought Melo like they had insisted we would have been first in the red cards table maybe last season and we never would have seen how Song developed in to a very important player and possible one of the best defensive midfielders in the coming seasons.

Many of the impatient fans have been asking Wenger to be sacked. They blame him for everything that went wrong.  I think we all know what those impatient fans have been saying the last years: “he has lost it, he knows nothing, he is filling his pockets, blah, blah and more blah”. You can even read it here on this blog every now and then. They all hoped that the board would throw him out or that they wouldn’t give him a new contract.

Since Saturday however there is no doubt anymore. Arsène Wenger will be our manager for at least another 4 years. The board has underlined the fact that they are on the same wavelength as our manager and want the approach that we have started many years back when they knew we were facing a difficult time ahead will be continued.

This approach is based upon building our own superstars from kids age up and only adding to the squad when needed and nothing could be found in our own youth to fill up the gap. Wenger’s wet dream some have called it but it turns out to be the wet dream of the board also.

So here we have it in the open and clear for all who want to see it. This is not just a solo project from our manager. No the board is fully supporting it and want it to continue. Whatever the thoughts might have been in the past, this is now the Arsenal way. This is our way. And this will not be liked by the impatient fans.

At times we have been called AKB (Arsène knows best)-people. They have said to us that we only support the manager in person and what would we do if the manager would walk away? What would we do? Still support the club or follow the manager to wherever he goes? They threw it at us and wanted us to look like bad Arsenal supporters. We didn’t support the club, we supported the manager was their opinion. They made it look as if we are not real supporters of the club. They were the only true fans of the club and we were just Arsène Wenger fans.

But now it seems that the manager and the board of our club support each other and have the same goal and the same approach to reach that goal. In fact it is now clear to see that those who have been supportive to Wenger are the one that support the long term vision of the club, not just the vision of the manager. By offering him a new contract and by Wenger signing it they have told the fans: you can say what you want, you can think what you want, but this is the road we have taken en the road we will follow together. In fact it looks like  that the way to look at things this site has always taken, is about the same way that the board is looking at things. And as the board (like it or not)  is the owner of Arsenal and it is the board that is deciding on the direction of the club, it looks that we on here are the real followers of the club. And it seems that we are not “just Wenger fans” as they have accused us.

So for those impatient fans it must not have been a pleasant news that Arsène Wenger signed an extension to his contract. And then the questions comes up: What will they do? Will they still support the club now knowing the way it is going? Will they walk away now it is clear that the club is going further in this road? Or will someone of them buy all the shares, impatient as he/she is and do it in another way?

I think this is a time in the history of our club that some fans will have to think about being a supporter or not. Are they supporters of Arsenal with all what it represents and for the moment this is the Wenger + board approach, or are they Arsenal fans who only think about winning things and if possible today. A real supporter would choose for staying a supporter and supporting the club and the players. Someone who only want to win things will have other options if he wants to.

But to answer the question they have been throwing at me in the past: I would have stayed an Arsenal fan if Wenger would leave us. I have been an Arsenal fan since long before Wenger came along. I admit, I became also a Wenger fan for what he has brought us and for the way he has kept us at the top in those difficult years. But no matter what if Wenger leaves I will stay an Arsenal fan. So the question is, will the impatient fans stay Arsenal supporters if Wenger stays? And he does stay.

So time to choose: support the club and support the players and the road we are going, like it or not. Or you could leave and call it a day. But don’t complain if at the end of this decade or so the Arsenal supporters who have supported not only the club but also the board and the manager appear to have chosen the right path. Let’s do it our way, The Arsenal Way!  And let us show some pride because we have the courage to choose another way. It takes courage and a brave man to go on new paths.

Shay Given gets go-ahead for Arsenal transfer from Roberto Mancini
Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini has revealed he will allow Shay Given to leave the club, clearing the way for a permanent transfer to Arsenal.

Shay Given has been told by Roberto Mancini he can leave Manchester City
Arsenal are on the lookout for a new goalkeeper to replace error-prone Manuel Almunia this season, with speculation growing that Arsene Wenger prefers Given to his other top target – Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer.
And Mancini, speaking ahead of his side’s Europa League qualifier against FC Timisoara on Thursday, has admitted he will not stand in Given’s way if the 34-year-old demands a move after being demoted to the bench in favour of 23-year-old England international Joe Hart.

“I hope he can stay,” said Mancini.
“But I respect his decision if he wants to leave.”

Лукаш Фабианский полон решимости завоевать доверие поклонников в этом сезоне после печального начала карьеры в «Арсенале»

Польский вратарь испытал большое впечатление, когда провел свой первый матч в Кубке Лиги в 2007 году.

Однако Фабианский сделал несколько громких ошибок в последние годы, после этих ошибок все Фаны пушкарей перестали когда либо верить что Лукаш сможет выступать на высоком уровне.

25-летний вратарь откровенно рассказал о своих взлетах и падениях, и было это недавно в его интервью «Sportlight» Фаби признался, что он готов выполнить свою работу вратаря, чтобы восстановить доверие болельщиков.

«Как игрок вы должный доказать, что вы заслужили шанс», сказал Фабианский

«Я понимаю, каждый крик против меня, и это только мотивирует меня играть лучше и работать» -продолжил поляк

«Но, конечно, я буду делать все, что в моих силах, чтобы показать, что я заслуживаю и мне надо быть соблюденным.Тогда, возможно болельщики начнут петь мое имя по стадиону- это было бы замечательно» -закончил Лукаш.