The transfer rumour mill is in full swing as we delve ever forward into January 2009.  Christmas is a distant dream; the next Bank holiday is seemingly lodged irrevocably in the unreachable future; and temperatures continue to plummet at a pace akin to the demise of the economy. Manchester City appear to be buying everybody, or at least trying to, however, so far there transfer policy hasn’t borne fruit on the pitch. Whether that is to do with Mark Hughes being crap remains to be seen. West Ham appear to be selling everybody, although whether this will prevent their collapse is unknown. The Arsenal are being linked with increasing numbers of players but nothing has yet happened beyond the excellent news that Jack Wilshire has signed his first professional contract with the club. One hopes that this piece of critical housekeeping is followed up with new contracts being offered to Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott.

There is increasing speculation that Russian playmaker Andrei Arshavin will be moving to the Emirates. They say that there is no smoke without fire, although in this case one would think that the smoke and the fire are firmly in control of Arshavin’s agent. Can anyone really see Mr Wenger spending 20 million on a player?! Still, the Mirror yesterday reported that le Boss has green lighted the deal and circumstantial evidence in the form of Wenger’s statement regarding Champions League-tied players suggest something may be in the air. One cannot deny that purchasing Arshavin is an exciting prospect, however, I have been an Arsenal fan too long to get carried away by things like this. In fact, the last time that we were linked to an established top level player and we actually bought him was Dennis Bergkamp. Another player that we have been strongly linked to in the last couple of days is Matthew Upson, who, predictably West Ham have stated will not be sold. The latest rumour is that we propose a swop deal with Bendtner plus cash for Upson. This is so speculative that one wonders if there is even a mote of truth in the story. For a start, I think Wenger doesn’t believe in going back. Secondly, Upson has a terrible injury record. Thirdly, Bendy would almost certainly refuse to go there. There is also increasing chatter regarding a potential move by Toure to Manchester City. I really hope that this doesn’t happen. Toure is one of the old guard and somebody that I really hope can work back to the once high level of form he displayed. His malaria seems to have drained him of much of his energy levels in games but these illnesses take time to recover from and I am convinced that if he stays he can once again attain his old self. There has been surprisingly little news about Gallas in the last few days. He was the one player everybody expected to see out the door asap. One would think that Wenger is keen to tie up a replacement before considering letting Gallas (or Toure) go. He would very much want to avoid the situation that occurred in the summer where he let Gilberto and Flamini go without being able to sign a defensive midfield replacement. In fact, that also occurred when he sold Vieira. I remember opening the papers each day expecting to see we had signed somebody, but to no avail. I recall even Jose Mourinho saying he thought Wenger must have a replacement in mind. That turned out to be the last time that we won anything. Hmmm.

What would be nice is that if indeed we are to sign anybody we do it as quickly in order that the team can be settled and the new playing staff integrated as soon as possible. We very much want to avoid the situation in the summer where everybody was rushing about like blue-arsed flies in the closing moments of the transfer window, only to be predictably disappointed in the hunt for bargains. The fallacy that one can pick up a player cheap at the last minute has well and truly come back to bite the Arsenal on the backside as now the exchange rate is such that £1 and 1 Euro are of the same value so that the cost of players now as compared to the beginning of last summers transfer window is much higher. Also, the spectre of the Webster Ruling looms darkly on the horizon. A contract will soon be virtually worthless. I wonder who the Arsenal players are hoping the le Boss will buy. We know that Fabregas wanted Wenger to bring in Alonso in the summer, but do you think that the players look at the newspapers and see stories about Arshavin being linked and think to themselves…Hello, that would be good?!

Welcome to the Burgervan for 2009. I have one critical piece of advice for anyone out there who is listening. GET THE FLU JAB! The Burgervan’s Christmas and New Years has been spent in a miasma of influenza misery. Hence why there has been no blog for a few days. When one can barely sit up in bed, writing a blog comes very low down the list of activities, firmly behind staying alive, attempting to move, and trying to open my eyes.

So much has happened since the last blog entry that I could write a novella, but seeing as today is also my first day back at work, I will be a tad more succinct than that. Firstly, I hope that everybody had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year, hopefully Father Christmas brought you all everything that you were hoping for and if he didn’t you were probably on the ‘bad boys/girls’ list and therefore not deserving anyway.

The Arsenal flattered to deceive a bit in their Christmas period games but at least they continued their undefeated run of games. Stopping the rot is still the name of game and the Arsenal seem to be doing it. Draws against Liverpool and Villa were disappointing, particularly throwing away yet another two goal lead to draw at Villa Park. I know that ultimately it was a miracle that we weren’t 4 goals down at half time but even so. To throw away two goals in injury time in a game as important as that was very disappointing. One hopes that come May we don’t miss out on a Champions League place by a couple of points to Villa. But, since then we have come back and beaten Tony Adams’s Pompey and then Plymouth in the FA Cup. The Portsmouth result was less than convincing but it was a win and three crucial points. Its all we can do now to keep grabbing points anyway that we can to ensure that we give ourselves as good a chance of getting back in to the Champions League as possible.

I was very glad to see that le Boss treated the FA Cup with the respect it deserves. I love the FA Cup and I have many happy memories from our victories in the past. Last year’s performance against United was shameful, but it looks as though this year we are really going to go for it. We all know that realistically it is our best chance of silverware so we need to be sensible about it. In the next game we are away to last years beaten finalists Cardiff, so although it may be a battle we should move safely into the next round.

I cannot believe how unlucky we are with injuries It is appallingly bad karma that we have Rosicky, Walcott, Eduardo and Fabregas all out with long term injuries. Add to that ongoing injuries to other players like Toure, Diaby etc and you can see why we struggle. One of the gifts that Father Christmas brought me was the 2007/2008 Season Review DVD. We were astonishingly good for most of last season and you could see us drop when Rosicky, Eduardo and RVP were injured. The balance of the team was lost and we have never got it back. I wasn’t that sad when Hleb and Flamini left in the summer, but after watching the DVD I can see that what they brought to the team hasn’t been replaced. I didn’t understand why Wenger is being linked with attacking midfielders but we do need one, we lack a link between the midfield and the attack. We also lack a midfield but that is something that has been discussed many times before. I hope that Rosicky can play for us again in the future. He is a great talent and with him on one wing and Walcott on the other we have genuine width and pace. Our team at the moment is very unbalanced with under par players playing out of position and no real variation of approach, togetherness, camaraderie or grit. It was a telling moment when I felt a pang of regret that we had allowed Senderos off on loan all season. At least he gave a sh!t. By the way, we will certainly get him back, I cannot imagine AC Milan taking up the option to buy Senderos at the end of his loan spell. I hope that he comes back to us having learned some tricks off Paulo Maldini and co. I wonder if he taught Paulo how to score own goals?

So that brings us on nicely to the transfer window. We are in it and I have the same feeling that I had in January….. namely that we desperately need people in but I cant help feeling that we wont get anybody. Particularly as we are being fed the same Wengorian rhetoric that we had during the summer. I don’t believe for a minute the bullsh!t issuing forth from the Daily mail regarding a split between Wenger and the board regarding Arshavin. I firmly believe that the board would always back Wenger’s decisions even if he wanted to spend big, which I don’t believe for a moment that we will do. Spending 24 million Euros or whatever has been quoted on a player like Arshavin is ludicrous, we have no idea how he will fare in the Premiership and 24 million is a lot of money to risk. Even if the player was a guaranteed success it would still be difficult to justify such a fee, how can the club make money back on a player like that, we’d have to win everything every year and that is just fantasy. I hope that Wenger brings in a couple of 8-10 million level players and secures the contracts of Walcott and RVP.  I wouldn’t mind it if we sold Bendtner also. He has failed to live up to expectations and seems to be a malcontent. We have plenty of striking talent with Ade, RVP, Eduardo and Vela, so Bendy is surplus to requirements. Perhaps offering Zenit St Petersburg a Bendy plus cash deal for Arshavin could be a possibility if the manager wants him. Also rubbish is the story linking Wenger with a move to Real Madrid. Real are the sort of club that are contrary to everything that Wenger believes, he likes to work in an environment where he has total control over footballing matters. That is not the case at Madrid, where transfer policy is dictated by the board and used more as a political manoeuvring tool than to improve the team. If Wenger were to leave, and one hopes to goodness that he doesn’t, then it would surely be to manage the French (or possibly German) national team.

Quickly going back to transfers. My brother asked a question the other day, namely where does all of our money go? I can understand that in times of recession, one needs to be careful, however, on balance Wenger has spent very little on transfers in comparison to other clubs, we have massive gates every week, huge merchandising income, massive sums of money from TV rights, the club get money from using the Emirates for other activities (concerts, friendly internationals etc) and we have some of the highest ticket prices in the country if not the world. Plus we make a lot of money from selling on players that haven’t quite made it. Now, the stadium repayments are set and planned in advance so it can’t all be going on that, our wage bill is high but no higher than it has been in the last ten years or so….. So where is all the money going? Why is so little put aside for transfers? How is it we have less available now than when we were at Highbury? It is curious. There is something amiss. The club is well run, that much we know, and we are in a good position in terms of self-sustainability if the sh!t hits the fan, which it probably will, but even so, what position will we be in if the sh!t does indeed hit the fan? Languishing in the UEFA cup? With Chelsea, Liverpool and United out of reach, with clubs like Villa, Everton etc on an equal footing (league table wise?). I hope that the board know what they are doing, because success breeds success in football and likewise failure on the pitch can spiral very quickly. I guess that we will just have to wait and see.

Hopefully Toure will stay and work hard to regain his previous form.

Let’s dive straight in shall we. The January transfer window is just 8 days away and the latest player to be linked with a move to Arsenal is Andrei Arshavin – the surprise package of the European Championships who everybody wanted but nobody would stump up more than about 10 million for.. The reason…. He is completely untested in a top league and went missing in Russia’s later games. Despite Arshavin’s ‘lifelong dream’ to play for Barcelona, as his options dried up and he realised he had burned his bridges at Zenit St Petersburg he became very keen to join Tottenham towards the end of the summer transfer window. Questionable character flaw that. Anyway, apparently the Arsenal have been encouraged to make a £20m bid by Zenit in January! Hmmm, despite the fact that Arshavin is undoubtedly a very exciting and talented player can you really see Mr Wenger shelling out £20m for him? There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of that. If we had other key components in our side – e.g. a dominant defensive midfielder and a defender that can head the ball then I would welcome a player like Arshavin into the side, but at the moment it would be a misdirection of our resources. I don’t really know why I have credited this story with so much text, it is so obviously a total bunch of arse. The Sun says Kolo Toure is being targeted by Man City – HA! That is ridiculous. Wenger would never sell Toure! Bendtner has reportedly rejected a move to Spartak Moscow as they are out of Europe – that also reeks of bullshit.

With the horrifying news that Fabregas could be out for up to 3 months some transfer activity is vital. It’s sad that we all said in the summer that if we suffered a serious injury to Fabregas then we would be fucked. Well, now it has happened and not only that we have lost Walcott and also suffered injuries to numerous other players. 2009 is looking extraordinarily ominous. If we don’t get into the Champions League then we are in serious trouble. Really serious trouble. Financially and in terms of our playing staff.

Let’s head upstairs now to the board room. Many people will be encouraged this morning to hear that Alisher Usmanov has no immediate plans to increase his stake in the Arsenal. Usmanov has told the Guardian that he has not held any negotiations with Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith saying: “I haven’t seen her and so far she has not announced that she wants to sell………there is no point in discussing something that doesn’t exist.” However, that doesn’t sound very convincing to me. It does appear that Usmanov is as baffled by the shenanigans at board level as the rest of us. Let’s not forget, whatever one thinks of Usmanov, he is a highly accomplished businessman. He has tasked his London based partner Farhad Moshiri with finding out just what the hell is going on. Usmanov said: “What has happened in the last year poses questions…..When in the space of a year four members of the board of directors are sacked, when the general director whom everybody had praised is changed, we consider that to be a huge matter – just to sack a major shareholder without explanation…Mr Moshiri is now in London and is trying to find out the reasons for these sharp changes and according to what explanation we get, we will decide our strategy.” In short, Usmanov is unwilling to get involved in what he outwardly perceives to be the mess of the Arsenal boardroom.

Almunia has been very outspoken about the players need to be more committed on the pitch and I applaud him for coming out and saying so. Too often this season we have seen lazy and blasé performances from the Arsenal in games that the players obviously view as beneath them. Well it’s bullshit. I cannot believe that these players do not try to give 100% all the time. It is appalling. Despite the fact that they are earning a fucking fortune, their job is playing football. PLAYING FOOTBALL! Surely they want to perform to the best of their abilities in every game. They are meant to be professionals. How have we ended up with a team that has such an appalling attitude, or should I say no attitude at all? Why aren’t they motivated? Don’t they want to win? It’s weird. Again, I have been spoiled on a diet of Adams, Keown, Dixon, Winterburn, Parlour, Overmars, Petit, Seaman, Campbell, Pires, Henry, Gilberto, VIEIRA – All players that desperately wanted to win and drove the team forward with their sheer strength of will and desire.

Today we face Middlesbrough, and we thankfully welcome back many of the players that didn’t play against Porto. It’s a bleak and nasty day in London today, one can only imagine how awful it is up North. Will our posse of pampered premaddonas be up for it? I think that they will. They are improving slowly but surely in the league and this is a great opportunity to continue their fledgling winning streak. At least it’s a lunch time kick off, so our little fellas can be tucked up nice and warm in bed by 3pm.

Football is back after a seemingly endless three days since our oiks got knocked out of the Carling Cup. Wigan visit the Emirates today probably wishing that they could have played us two weeks ago. A win today is all I care about. I don't care how we do it, how slick our passing is or how many opportunities we have. All I want is that we have scored more than them at the final whistle and if we can keep a clean sheet i'll have that too. We must build on the Chelsea result and that's the bottom line.

A few people at my work have been saying this week that the Arsenal are due to give somebody a thrashing. It's true that we haven't handed out a stout humiliation to a side in the Premiership for a while, but I don't think that the team are there yet. Like I said before, a win today is all that matters. It's weird isnt it how you change your expectations. Once, not too long ago, I would have gone into this match with an expectation of at least a 3 goal victory, now I would be content with a hard fought 1-0.

Gallas is out today so we will either see the much awaited return of Kolo or Silvestre filling in for Gallas. Eduardo is almost ready but not quite. He is in full training but just needs matches to quote le Boss. It will be great to have him back in contention. I am still unconvinced by Adebayor and Bendtner is sadly not up to the job so I would ultimately like to see our front line composed of RVP and Eduardo.

For some reason we have seen the ''almost signed Ronaldo stories doing the rounds again over the last two days. I wish that Arsene wouldn't comment on these stories. If we had signed him, he would have been amazing for us, but we would have faced the same close season wantaway bullshit that United have suffered with as Madrid come knocking. The only difference being that I don't think that we would have been able to hold on to him like United did. Despite being total buttmunches, United handled the Ronaldo situation excellently over the summer. Sadly their tapping up of Berbatov wasn't quite so well handled was it? At least that f*cked Tottenham in the @ss though so I won't complain too much.

I see Keano has left Sunderland. That surprised me. I didn't think that he was a quitter. Ince is touted to follow soon, and anyone who saw his tv rant yesterday would have to say that he doesnt really look like he can handle the pressure. Was he crying in that interview by the way? It looked like it to me. Pussy. You'd never catch Arsene crying like a little bitch.

Transfer speculation is hotting up with the latest names linked to the Arsenal being Silvain Distin from Portsmouth, Brede Hangeland from Fulham and Felipe Melo of Fiorentina. These rumours are almost certainly complete tosh although we have been linked to Distin a few times. Arsene has come out and said that he wants Gallas to stay at the club. This could be the truth or it could be a ruse to ensure that potential buyers don't undervalue him. Either way, let's keep hold of him until the end of the season, we don't have enough players as it is. Plus he has been pretty good in the last two games he has played.

Anyway. today it's Wigan and I feel a win coming and i'm sure that El Capitan wants to keep up his 100% record.

Burgervan Prediction: Arsenal 2 - 0 Wigan

Flash of Arsenal!!

As fans, we fear a takeover of the club because the loss of tradition would also be a loss of our identity as a football club. Imagine how Peter Hill-Wood must feel about a potential takeover. It must be an appalling prospect for him. I don’t know if Peter has an heir to take over from him when he retires but I truly hope that he does.

The big mystery: Why did Keith Edelman leave the club? If anybody has any idea (beyond idle speculation) then I’d be very interested to find out.

A win. We didn’t play particularly well, we didn’t play particularly badly but we won. We ground out a result despite injuries, lack of confidence and lack of form. We kept a very welcome clean sheet. The players worked for each other, some of them didn’t play well but that doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it was of vital importance that we stopped leaking goals, stopped losing and had some good news for a change.

The media dwells on our lingering problems this morning. Of course this result doesn’t solve all of our issues or paper over the cracks but it is a step in the right direction. A new captain, a clean sheet, a win, and a steely determination to get a result are all indicators that the feeble submissions we have witnessed of late may be consigned to the past. As I have said before, it wasn’t the losing that bothered me so much in recent weeks, it was the pathetic manner of those defeats. Anyway that is in the past.

Also in the past, albeit the recent past, is the William Gallas affair. Gallas played last night, largely due to a lack of any options, but he got his head down, shut up and worked hard for the team. The crowd were kind to him also, which was a surprise. I have changed my opinion on the way Gallas should be handled. In the spirit of moving on and looking to the future I have resolved to forgive Gallas for his idiocy. If he can stay with the team, work hard, not give any more interviews and not be a disruptive force in the dressing room then I will back him. The players have come out to support him, although notably RVP and Samir Nasri have been quiet. The manager has given him another chance, so I guess so should we. Make no mistake though, William Gallas is on parole. One more f*ck up and he should be shown the door as quickly as possible.

El Capitán had a great first game in the hotseat, not only was he all over the pitch and involved in everything, his quick thinking at the DROP BALL set up a great pass for confidence shorn Bendtner, who finished superbly. That moment threw me back to the glory days when Henry and Pires used to contrive similar rule bending opportunities at free kicks. It’s nice to have a player capable of thinking differently. I couldn’t care less about those people that claim bad sportsmanship, we needed to win that game. Anyway Aliiev was guilty of hideous gamesmanship with his rolling about as if struck by lightning quickly followed by sprinting antics. I was glad he got sent off, not only is he a cheat but he also got caught. I could probably just about stand a diver, but not a diver without the sense to do it properly.

El Capitán has said that he is keen to talk to Vieira and Henry to get advice on his new role. Vieira can certainly give him some pointers, he was a miraculous captain for us. It’s been said before, many times, by me and others, but why on God’s Green Earth did we ever sell Vieira? If we hadn’t, he’d still be captain and we’d have probably won the league a couple more times in the last few years. Sorry about that, I must remember that now we are looking forward, not dwelling on the past and what might have been. So what if we sold the world’s best midfielder, the world’s best winger and the world’s best striker in the space of two years and didn’t replace them. That isn’t important anymore. The future! Look to the future!

Going back to the Champions League, despite our problems this season we have qualified top of a difficult Champions League group. That is an achievement for any team, let alone a team comprising children and ‘utility players’ such as ours. The players and the manager can take great credit for this achievement. Last night it was great to see Vela start, I enjoy watching him play, he is good on the ball, runs at the defence fearlessly and always has a shot on goal. In a season or so he could be flippin’ excellent for us. Likewise Ramsey looks like a player of 23 rather than 17 or 18 or whatever he is. I know that they were there because of injuries etc, but even so, they acquitted themselves admirably. As did record breaker Wilshire and Johann Djourou. Most of these players are only ready for substitute roles at most, but it is good to have these players coming through, even if it doesn’t help us that much which our pressing problems.

Oh dear. I guess my hunch was wrong yesterday. The lesson learned there is don’t trust William Shatner. It would be very easy and quite satisfying to launch into a tirade about yesterday’s defeat to Aston Villa, our second home defeat of and our fourth overall this season. The problem is that everything has been said before. We know why we lost, the players weren’t able to motivate themselves sufficiently to beat Villa. It’s really as simple as that. What the solution is to our staggering rollercoaster ride of inconsistency is as much a mystery to me as it appears to be for Wenger.  

I didn’t watch the highlights last night, I couldn’t bring myself to, but from listening to the commentary team on Sky Sports and BBC it sounded as though Villa deserved to win. We didn’t create any chances or even reach a level were we looked like threatening. That is a real shame. It would be easy to point to our lack of strikers on the day, but that didn’t stop us against Man United. Bendtner has completely failed to grasp the opportunity presented to him by Adebayor’s injury and RVPs stupidty, which is a pity because I like the guy. The fact is though that there are hungrier and more skilful strikers in reserve who have a rightful claim above Bendtner next time we have a striking crisis. Anyway, it’s all beside the point, yesterday’s defeat wasn’t down to Bendy, it was because for the forth time this season the team couldn’t muster themselves to give a sh!t.

By the way, how many goals have Silvestre-Gallas conceded now? It must be time to bring Toure back into the team, at the very least his game has some zest about it.

I have no idea what Arsene plans to do about this. His post match comments claim we were unlucky but if you are beaten 2-0 at home after being dominated by the visiting team for virtually the whole match, then that to me isn’t unlucky, it’s a fair result. Although I applaud Wenger’s defence of his team to the media I hope that he doesn’t convince himself with his own rhetoric. Despite what he says week in week out, our squad isn’t mature, it isn’t experienced, it doesn’t show great character and most importantly it doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Theophilus P Wildebeest’s pants of winning the league in the foreseeable future.

The real shame is that after coming quite close last year last, this year we are going to be massively behind the other teams. We have gone from a position of strength to a position of weakness, whereas all of our rivals have improved markedly. It’s all very well having England’s future in our reserves but that doesn’t help Arsenal now or in the next couple of years. There won’t be anyone around to instill fighting spirit in them anyway, especially if none of the senior team have even had a sniff of a trophy in their careers.  

I can feel a rant coming on, but like the Arsenal I just can’t be bothered, they aren’t worth the emotional energy.