Train in Rain, + Gazidis Interview

By: Martin | July 7th, 2009

The official site has posted photos of the club’s first day of pre-season training at the training ground. A couple thoughts after looking at the full gallery of photos:

1. Manuel Almunia apparently forgot to put on his pants, probably because he’s been spending too much time in the offseason around Bendtner. No cause for concern, though, it’s only the first day of training–I’m fully confident by the end of preseason training camp he’ll have rediscovered his ability to put on shorts and by the beginning of the season he’ll be back to the pants-wearing keeper who served us so well last season.

2. It’s really nice to see Eduardo and Rosicky back in full training with the rest of the season. If those guys can stay healthy this season, it will do our hopes of winning a trophy a world of good.

3. Arshavin is pretty clearly wearing a training shirt with the number 28 on it. No one wore that number last season for the club, and Arshavin wore 23 after coming over in the spring. Either a mistake of some sort was made or he has decided to change his number. He will be 28 years old this season, perhaps that’s the reason. At any rate, if you were planning on ordering an Arshavin shirt, you may want to wait for confirmation. Otherwise, you’ll buy an “Arshavin 23″ shirt, everyone at the pub will make fun of you because he actually wears 28, and you’ll flip out “Carrie”-at-the-prom style and kill them all. And no one wants that.

4. I can’t make it out 100% clearly, but it looks like, for the time being, Vermaelen is wearing the number 31.

5. Now I know why Wenger always wears suits–look at his skinny little legs!

It is very nice to know that the team is back in camp getting ready for the season to come. Only 11 days until the first friendly.

The usual transfer detritis is still washing ashore today–more speculation about a cash + Eboue swap for Felipe Melo, and stuff about Lorik Cana and Brede Hangeland. Nothing new/worth discussing though. There’s also a story that young midfielder Mark Randall is attracting interest from Derby County, who would like to take the youngster on a season-long loan. Randall has shown some talent, but is nowhere near ready for Arsenal’s first team at the moment, and may never become that level of player–it could definitely serve him and the club well for him to get a full season of first-team action at the Championship level.

Also, Arseblog conducted an interview with Arsenal CEO and former MLS executive Ivan Gazidis. It is well worth reading, and I highly recommend it. He doesn’t say anything earth-shattering, but you just get a sense that he’s one of those guys that “gets it.” Seems very intelligent and thoughtful, dedicated to the club and all that it represents, and wants this club to win. For all our complaining, sometimes it’s worthwhile to sit back and reflect on how lucky we are to have such competent ownership, executives, and managements. Most fans aren’t so fortunate.

Finally, it’s off-topic, but as an American soccer fan, I have to give big ups to Oguchi Onyewu, who signed a contract with AC Milan today. He’ll be only the second American to play in Serie A, and the first American outfield player to play for one of the world’s true elite teams. It’s a big day for American soccer, and, while I doubt we’ll see any other moves of this magnitude, it sure would be nice to see some other high-level European clubs swoop in for Jay DeMerit, Michael Bradley, Benny Feilhaber, etc., because I think some of those guys are fully capable of playing high-level club football.