So the big news from yesterday was that Emmanuel Adebayor gave an interview in which he said he was staying at Arsenal and he had no idea where all the stories about him wanting to leave came from.

Now, unless Adebayor has an evil twin then I think it's quite plain where those stories came from. Him and his agent. End of story. I really think it's a bit much for him to expect people to fall for the old 'I never said them things' defence. We're not fucking stupid. We know how it works and how he tried to play the game. He's going to get more money from us, sign a new contract and all because he acted like a complete and utter cunt all summer long.

His comments about how 'at the moment my heart is with Arsenal' just make me think of David Bentley saying the exact same thing when he moved to Sp*rs, and we know what a cunt he is. 'At the moment', lovely. Such a wonderful long-term commitment to the club. He's played us like chumps since the end of the season and now a few spurious badge-kissing quotes and we're supposed to forgive and forget. I'm not sure it works like that.

Arsene Wenger is very aware of the damage Adebayor has done, saying:

What is very damaging sometimes is that the player gets bad publicity against his own fans for things he has not said. That is sometimes difficult to repair. There is disappointment from the fans because they feel the player wants to go.

I can fully understand Arsene trying to calm the waters, especially if the player is going to stay, but do us a favour boss and don't try and feed us the same shite Adebayor is trying to. It was quite obvious that Adebayor wanted to go, pretty much ever since he gave that interview to El Mundo back in May. No question he had his head turned, promises were made to him about how much money he could earn at Barcelona or Milan. He saw the Ramblas paved with gold and he agitated for a move.

If he really didn't say anything about leaving then it would have been as easy as pie to stop all the speculation dead in its tracks. Just look at what Cesc did last week when he was linked with Real Madrid. He came out straight away and said 'This is wrong'. Not after months of speculation when it looked like all avenues to the dream move had been closed.

Maybe I'm just too cynical about the whole thing but Adebayor has, to my mind at least, acted poorly all summer long now he expects us to fall for a cock and bull story about how he had his phone off. Bollocks to that.

Now, from a footballing point of view this is good news, I suppose. The lanky cunt got 30 goals last season and another 30 this season would go a long way to helping us win the silverware we all so desperately want. The squad is stronger with him in it and ultimately that's what matters. It's also shown that, despite stories to the contrary, we can keep our players in the face of definite interest from big European clubs.

Adebayor was a hugely improved player last season and if he can continue that trajectory then it's good for Arsenal but he's heaped pressure on himself now. Nobody expected 30 goals from him but as he's used those 30 goals to extract more money from us and as a bargaining chip elsewhere then he's got to perform like a 30 goal striker week in, week out. Can he do it again? Can he live with the expectation?

How will the fans react to Adebayor? Beats me. His goals will be cheered, like every goal is cheered, but does he deserve the songs? Has he tarnished his reputation too much? Will his hilarious fiction win the majority around? We'll just wait and see, I suppose. Hopefully he'll be contrite enough to make up for his nonsense with goals and not just that farcical interview.

Arsene Wenger then blasted the likes of Barcelona and AC Milan for 'tapping up' our players, saying:

There is a game going on in Europe where the big clubs tap up our players. They let us do the work and develop the players and then they think they can just come in and offer him big wages, but after they cannot come up with the transfer request. It should be the other way round.

It's obvious that this happened with Adebayor this summer and with Hleb, not that I give a shit about Hleb. But I don't think this is a problem that only Arsenal suffer from. United have been battling it all summer with Real Madrid and it goes on all the time in Europe, across all the leagues and at all levels. Perhaps English clubs are just too gentlemanly. It's obviously not right but that's just the way it is. Still, I'm right behind the boss drawing attention to it even if the powers that be couldn't care less.

The boss also spoke about that one signing saying that we needed someone but it wouldn't be a problem if we didn't sign him, which is rather odd. Surely if we need a player then it would be a problem if we didn't get him. Especially as he says this player must be 'quality' so if we need a quality player then not getting is definitely a problem if you're using a player of lesser quality in his stead. Weird.

William Gallas will remain as captain this season.

Gael Clichy bigs up Samir Nasri, but the new boy could do without the Hleb comparisons.

Football today, hurrah! Arsenal v Juventus kics off at 4.15 and I think it's on Sky. Which is good. I have Sky. So that's my afternoon sorted.

Finally for today I hear some people are having problems viewing Arseblog this morning and it seems to be an issue with Internet Explorer. I have no idea what's going on but try using Firefox as an alternative till we figure it out.

Update: Thanks to Goonerholic it turns out it's the code used by Sitemeter, a stat counter. So if you find yourself unable to view sites in IE that's most likely the cause.

Cheers for now then. More tomorrow...