highlights of arsenal-barcelona.

in case you missed any of last night...

what a brilliant night for gooners everywhere.

it's been a while...

...but i've got a bit of time on my hands, and may as well discuss the subject at hand at the moment. CHAMPIONS LEAGUE.

my and my closest gooner friend [i myself am an arsenal fan] trekked down to a london pub to watch the spurs match - to make up for the fact that he's otherwise engaged for tonight's clash against barcelona. it was truly unique : the first time that we've ventured to a public venue to watch tottenham play, without being taken there by a spurs fan. we felt as if we were in some form of 'gorillas in the mist' style documentary.

before any hotspur fans click away and stop reading, this won't just be a massive rant about your lot...just a tiny little snapshot of the ones that surrounded us. we has a real variety; old boys who had been supporting since the days of ardiles, young lads who have endured some awful lows and great highs in the last few years - and then the middle aged fans. some were ok, but there was one in particular who was of interest.

primark pleather coat, barcelona shirt on, loud and obnoxious. everything you could want from a parody of your local rivals' fans. he was responsible for most of the documentation which we scuppered together, which can be observed at the bottom of this page. i won't dwell on the result or performance, as it would pain me to - however if any spurs fans who enjoy blogging are reading this, feel free to request to represent the other side of north london on the blog.

WELL DONE SPURS. there.

tonight is the next hurdle...i don't know why i started writing this now, as i have very little to say on the matter. i'm pessimistic to say the least, and hope that the game is great to watch, and not one sided. not too bothered about progressing, purely because we are facing the best team in the world - and last year we went all out against them : and in the process we ensured our squad was down to it's bare bones and dropped away in the league, and even FA cup.

i can only hope for what would seem to be a miracle, and have Arsenal win 5-0. in reality it's likely the reverse could be true, as we have a dodgy defence at best, with Sebastien 'Suspect' Squillaci likely to play. a defender who has shown nothing but shades of averageness. he may not fit the aesthetic qualities, but i fear that in him we've spent £4-5m on the role which seems to constantly be fulfilled in any arsenal squad. the role which has been filled by luzhny, cygan, senderos, silvestre and now squillaci.

nasri is in the squad, but in my opinion shouldn't be risked unless it's got to 60 minutes and we're less than 2-0 down, otherwise accept the fate and concentrate on keeping the league form up. what i'm spouting isn't gospel, and is probably fraught with holes : but i'd rather see us go hammer and tongs at the league.

anyway, i've grown sad at the prospect of the match tonight - i'll leave you with the ramblings of spurs fans, documented by @jjdinosaur

oh keeper, where art thou?

ARSENAL FANS AROUND THE WORLD ARE FURIOUS.

i wouldn't say furious - just disappointed with the lack of a goalkeeping signing. arsene doesn't often bow to pressure from fans, hence the lack of defensive mid cover etc. but it seemed that he genuinely has seen the problem between the sticks at the emirates - and wanted to solve it.

then he only found one player who he wanted, and it was because of a combination of his age and ability. clearly he sees one of the younger keepers at arsenal (my guess would be Wojciech Szczęsny) as the future : and signing a top keeper with 5-6 years left would clearly hinder their chances at breaking into the first team.

now until january we are stuck with 2 keepers who rate in the bottom 10 keepers in the league (second choices included), and between them in the league alone they are likely to drop between 10 and 12 points as a result of poor decision making, or pure farce.

i don't think our attacking team has the energy to consistently score 3 goals before 60 minutes to keep a result safe, so it has been a massive oversight that i'm sure arsene himself is very disappointed with. keep the faith.

Gillingham FC or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the drop.

Another season in the lower leagues began to fanfare at the Priestfield.

With Andy Hessenthaler back in charge after the debacle that was Mark Stimson (I admit I was late to the party on that one, I only made a facebook group demanding for his sacking 2 hours before he was sacked.) the fans were feeling quietly optimistic.

For those of you who do not dare tread into the lower regions of the football league allow me to recap 12 months in a few lines, I shall begin in August and progress -

Simeon is going to Leeds.
Simeon is staying.
First game of the Season 5-0 victory against Swindon
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Simeon is going to Southampton.
Simeon is staying.
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Lost Away
Relegated on last day of Season
Stimson Sacked
Simeon is going to Southampton.
Simeon is going to Leeds.
Simeon is going to Everton(!).
Simeon goes to Norwich.

And that was our 12 months. From newly promoted wonder kids to the worst away record in English football.

We have however had a constructive summer. Plenty of new signings and most of them free.

We took Cody McDonald from Norwich on a 12 month loan as part of the Jackson deal. He is a young player but most Norwich fans seem to think he is going to turn out mustard.

Young Stanley Aborah an ex Ajax player has signed up for us as a free agent. Most Gillingham fans are still 50/50 about him. Sometimes he looks like pure class other times he seems to be a lazy git.

Nicky Southall is back for the third time.

But we at the Priestfield have one exceptional reason to be cheerful this season and that reason is a new Striker.
Adebayo Akinfenwa. Now don't get me wrong but if you have ever seen Resident Evil 2 you might recognise this guy.

I have it on good authority from a friend who knows our kit manager that this guy wears a XXL. We had to specially order him shirts as most companies do not manufacture shirts in that size.

He has so far come on and saved us from a 1-0 loss with an incredible goal from just outside the box and been inches away from scoring the single most powerful overhead kick the world has ever known.

So far 2 draws and one loss (at home) is not a record we want to be seeing.

We have a lot of people crocked currently including Simon King who has been out for over a year now with a nasty ankle injury.

We need to go back up for no other reason than the fact we have so many overheads we cannot afford to spend long in League 2.

UTG.

Birmingham City Season Preview

I thought I'd write a little about my club, seeing as that's something I'm confident of my knowledge in.

So, two games in and what can we deduce? Basically - we're set up exactly the same as last season. Solid at the back (bar a few shaky moments from Mr Carr last week), but we're still likely to struggle for goals unless we get some more creative players in before the transfer deadline.

Mcleish is still after N'Zogbia, and he would fit the bill well, but could bring a little unrest to the dressing room and also, that could pave the way for McFadden's move to Celtic, and that's an idea I'm not too keen on.

So, with a front line consisting of the 6ft8 lamppost Zigic, who doesn't seem to want to move, Cameron Jerome who has less technique on the ball than all of our grandparents and Kevin Phillips already injured for a large proportion of the season, where else are the goals going to come from?

A) Set Pieces: Ridgewell, Johnson and Dann will chip in with a fair few goals from set pieces this season, as we've already seen at Sunderland on the opening day. I have no worries about this.

B) Matt Derbyshire: a bit of a wildcard, this one. On a season-long loan, he looked quite sharp when he came on this weekend but who knows how he will get on. Only time can tell.

C) Midfield: Larsson - unlikely, Ferguson - no, Fahey - not good enough, Bowyer - past it?

Step forth Craig Gardner.

Gardner is the player that blues have been missing for the last few seasons. Although he has always been used as a utility player across the midfield and even at right-back, his performance on Saturday shows that to utilise him properly, he has to be played in the centre alongside Barry Ferguson, or in the long run, the similarly composed, tough tackling Michel.

Bowyer's dip in form at the end of last season is a sign that it's time for him to be used more sparingly this term and Gardner's box-to-box style and ability to pop up with a goal or two could make the difference this season from us simply avoiding relegation, to getting some decent results and maybe sneaking another top 10 finish.

In conclusion, I'm confident that we shouldn't have to worry

about relegation - we should be comfortable. But in order to

get out of that bracket of clubs like Bolton, Wigan, Blackburn, Wolves and Stoke, with no disrespect to them, something is going to have to change.

i'll kick it off shall i?

see what i did there? because it's a football blog. awesome.

thought i'd steam in and write a little about Gallas' transfer to Tottenham...as an Arsenal fan, i'm not too fussed. He wasn't a favorite with anyone affiliated to Arsenal, epitomised by the now famous Birmingham incident - found himself as captain by default, had it taken away from him...and bullied Kolo out of the club by lauding his seniority over him.

as a player, he was pretty standard. 6-7 out of 10 over a season, 6 out of 10 for the big games...and he hates being surrounded by anyone who he thinks isn't good enough to be there. it's lucky though, at spurs they don't have the likes of Denilson, Vela and Armand Traore. it'll be very interesting to see how he fits into the WHL dressing room, as a lot of the players actually seem like jovial fellows.

for Spurs, he makes a good 3/4th center back - for him, it's egg on his face as his demands were rejected by major clubs and he eventually lowered them. good business from redknapp (i always find it ironic that he has a reputation for wheeling and dealing, yet all his previous clubs have suffered some form of crippling debt after he left). i think a majority of the Arsenal support are non-plussed about Gallas' signing for the local rivals - but there's no doubt that at some point, it will come back to haunt us and he'll join david bentley and danny rose in the DVD box set.

In summary, thanks for the service, shame you were so big headed, and good luck in separating the spurs camp . also, haha - you never got the giant bosman that you wanted.

au revoir