The Day of Exes

By: Abby | July 30th, 2008

It’s been a day of ex-players, as Arsenal traveled up to Germany to help VfB Stuttgart celebrate the renaming of their stadium (to the Mercedes-Benz Arena- Stuttgart is the home of the company, after all). Stuttgart, of course, is the new home of former Arsenal goalkeeper/entertaining character Jens Lehmann. Now, I love Jens, and I make no excuses for it. Jens is awesome. I was sad to see him go, but thought it was the best for both parties. Still, though, even though I haven’t seen the whole game yet (I’m at work during all these friendlies), it’s still hard to see him in a different team’s colors.

Sniff.

Anyway, I’m sure you can find a nice match review somewhere else, since I’d just be plagiarizing off of them anyway until I see the game myself, which may not be for a bit because I have to watch Project Runway tonight. In brief: Arsenal went 1 down after the half, thanks to Yıldıray Baştürk, but then Carlos Vela, Nicklas Bendtner, and youngster Jack Wilshire- quickly becoming the star of pre-season- all scored for a final score of 1-3. Samir Nasri also made his first appearance, William Gallas was still captain, and Gaël Clichy was awesome. They wore the new away shirt, which I’m considering getting with Clichy 22 on the back.

Again, you can’t take too much from pre-season games, but Stuttgart are a much harder proposition than the Burgenland XI. And up against stronger, international-quality opposition, the young stars still put goals in. While it’s still early, it seems that Vela is the real deal, this could possibly be Bendtner’s year, and in Wilshire we might have what Arsenal fans have been claiming will be coming from the Academy- English talent that can play the Arsenal way. (But let’s not overhype the boy- he’s not even 17.)

Here’s some highlights- including a bit of Jens getting spooked by some pyrotechnics. I <3 you, Jens, good luck back home.

But Jens isn’t the only ex-Arsenal I’m thinking about today. Former Arsenal trainee David Bentley made his move to rivals Spurs today, which normally wouldn’t get a mention here, except that we’ll apparently be getting quite a windfall from it. The Sun should be taken with a grain of salt as always, but apparently, when we let him go to Blackburn in the first place, Arsene insisted on a huge sell-on clause- shrewdly noting that any English player who can kick a ball to his teammate will sell for massive amounts of money. The Sun is reporting that we’re getting £7 million for him, which is probably on the high end, but still. I’m going to say something I got used to saying over at the Hertha blog- thanks for the random money, Spurs!

It isn’t all exes. As rumored, we’ve signed midfielder Amaury Bischoff. He’s twenty-one years old, born in France but has decided to play for Portugal, and was most recently with Bundesliga side Werder Bremen. I follow the Bundesliga and like Bremen, but I have no idea who he is or what he’s like. But I trust Wenger- he’s the one with scouts, not me.