Stoke defeat and more Transfers

As you may have noticed it does take some time for me to recover from bad results, and whilst this bad results did not break our season (that was done some time ago) it did still hurt. It hurt as in the 90 minutes where we out-passed and out-played the cuntiest team in the world, the only stat which we were not on top on was the most important and overall we were well beaten 3-1.


It was simply a story of our season that we could go from beating the champions last Sunday, to losing to Stoke just seven days later.


After the match, the boss bemoaned a lack of competitiveness saying:

"On that front, we were not at the right level, certainly not in the first half."

Annoyingly it was easy defensive mistakes that cost us again. Just like they have all season, and just like they have done in the last few seasons. Their first, a key moment in the game, was from a set-piece where Djourou lost his man and Van Persie, at the front post, missed the ball for it to go straight to Jones' chest and into the net. Their second came as we gave up possession far too easily in our half, we failed to close down Pennant and were punished swiftly through a deflected effort. 


In the second half we made two substitutions but things weren't changed and we were far too lackluster. Van Persie managed too pull one back but less than a minute later, any hopes of a comeback were slashed as - when trying to intercept a pass- Djourou ended up just gifting the ball to Walters in our penalty area and he easily converted. 3-1. Game over.


Anyway, less dwelling on the unfortunate past, and more looking towards the future. Words which are so commonly used by us Gooners.


The news this week is that Nasri looks set to stay. His agent has said that there is no truth in rumours that he is off to Italy. 

"There is no break with Arsenal, in fact, we start over negotiations for the extension of the contract which currently expires in 2012."

This seems to be good news as frankly, Nasri is one of the only top quality players we have at the club and losing him would be insane. Especially if we have to put up with the annual rumours around our captain. 


In terms of incoming players, sky have linked us to Malaga player Rondon. He has notched up an impressive 14 goals in 29 appearances in Spain, but personally I do not think that he is one of the top class players that we need this summer. 


In slightly less reliable rumours, all over twitter we were linked to Karim Benzema. He is a player I strongly admire as his pace and finishing are some of the closest things we have to Thierry Henry on the planet. And there is nothing wrong with a bit of Thierry like play coming back to our team. Although this is a very unlikely, there is a slight bit of hope that he could come.


More soon.