so that's what sound feels like...
i thought i knew what to expect from my bloody valentine. the band, not the movie(s). i had never seen them but i was familiar with their music and i had heard the warnings/advice about seeing them live. excitement had been building for a few days/weeks leading up to this. wow... my back feels better now. that's odd, i thought my spleen was on the other side?
2009/07/31
2009/07/26
pre-season in bunches.
over the next 7 days we will play 4 games: mon 27 szombathelyi, wed 29 hannover 96, sat 1 atletico madrid and sun 2 rangers. this should give us a good look at the full squad, checking for fitness, forging partnerships and playing with formations. atvo will see lots of use this week...
since pre-season sits in the middle of "transfer window" there are rumors and rumors of rumors. we are "monitoring" huntelaar/martins/chamakh/hangeland, fiorentina wants eboue, ac milan wants bendtner, man city wants toure and random french club may want sylvestre. anyone else?
personally, sell/give away sylvestre. hold off on the rest...for now.
ok, now that that's out of the way we will need to figure out the defense and it should be sooner rather than latter. we currently have (cb) toure, gallas, senderos, djourou, vermaelen, sometimes song, sylvestre (lb) clichy, gibbs, traore (rb) sagna, eboue. rb and lb positions pretty much sort themselves out. will traore go out on loan again? we need to keep eboue as cover for sagna, duh. cb...here are the facts: gallas is now on his last year in contract; he's pushing 32. toure and gallas pairing just doesn't work. senderos wants out. we want sylvestre out. (puts on obvious glasses) hmmm...we either extend gallas' contract or we move him out while we can still get something for him.
crap. we can't reduce the cb core to just toure, djourou, vermaelen, sometimes song? can we? no. remember that toure, eboue and sometimes song will be gone in jan and feb for the african nations cup (anc).
(weird sensation coming from over my shoulder) there he is...just staring at me; sylvestre. it's like the geico commercials of the money stack/eyes with the techno music. (shudders)
we could strip down to the core above and get another cb, like hangeland. but that still leaves us very thin back there during anc. do we promote from reserves?
Labels: arsenal, sometimes song
2009/07/24
random record of the day (henceforth known as rrotd):
death cab for cutie - narrow stairs
Labels: rrotd
((stretches out arms and cracks knuckles))
transfer window opened on june 1. flamini left a gaping hole in our midfield a year ago. we are now in our 3rd transfer window since flamini's departure and we still haven't replaced him. we like to "monitor" players. we send out scouts to watch and study players so when the transfer window opens and such a player might become available we have all the facts to consider before we spend our horded precious gold.
we were "monitoring" the situation with xabi alonso last summer. granted, it wasn't all on us... we started "monitoring" felipe melo even before the confederations cup started this summer; instead we decided to finally make an approach only after his club increased his price and played us like a fiddle to get an even higher price from juventus. we started "monitoring" lorik cana last summer. cana just signed for 5m to sunderland. fucking sunderland.
we're too busy fucking "monitoring" these players, who fill a obvious need we have, to actually put in a bid to try to sign them! now now, i know you're saying that there are still 36 days left in the window and anything can happen: arshavin jan 2008, diarra aug 2007, etc, and i agree. wenger could pull out a rabbit from his hat and bring in toulalan or m. diarra and we would all applaud him for his astute purchasing...
it's the principal of the thing man. we get left strung out there watching all these guys go flying around and it's like we're having an out of body experience where we see ourselves on the periphery staring off into the sunset with our clipboard of facts and we are unable to do anything about it.
monitoring, it's whats for dinner.
Labels: arsenal, spies like us
2009/07/22
if i've learned anything in the past 4 days, i have a bad memory.
what's that you say? write things down? i'm trying to actively concentrate on not writing down random, and non-random, on pieces of paper weather they be post-its or notepads or scrap paper. it's not even a concerted"green" (god i hate that term) effort, it's just a habit i'm trying to break. i mean, who needs this mountain of numerous pieces of various sized paper in unnatural colors with only somewhat legible scribblings hurriedly scrawled on? you can never find the one you really need anyways as it's probably fallen off and drifted away into oblivion or you find the one that you have no idea how it is still relevant as it was transcribed into cuneiform those many millenia ago... is all that effort really worth it? meh, historians may say otherwise.
Labels: library of alexandria
i'm waiting to come down with plauge.
it's only logical; in the last week the dog had the flu and jen got ringworm. now i'm betting on when the big hangnail in the sky will turn me into a zombie.
bbbbrrrrraaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnssssssss
Labels: brains
an arsenal injury? no, you're kidding...
it wouldn't be a season of the english premier league (screw you barclays) without a injured arsenal player. oh, that's right, it's still fuckin' pre-season. d'oh. supposedly diaby is responsible for nasri's fractured right fibula. that it happened during the first day of the austrian pre-season camp is not a good sign. of course, wenger is optimistic that nasri could be back in only 6 weeks or so. i'm not holding my breath.
do we purchase cover?
Labels: arsenal
laketrout december 26 2000 @ wetlands is now on archive.
don't let the unknown mini-disc source scare you off...this sounds good. late 2000 - that should tell you volumes all ready. not puny cliff notes of a reader digest story volumes, i'm talking war and peace or encyclopedia britannica sized volumes.
Labels: laketrout
2009/07/19
roundup from yesterday.
arsenals pre-season match against barnet ended in a 2-2 draw. arshavin and barazite scored for the gunners while rosicky captained the squad in the first half. it was great to see rosicky out on the pitch for the first time in over 18 months following his knee injury and i hope to see him many more times!
adebayor finally completed his move to manchester city. personally, i dont think we need to buy a replacement striker...yet. with van persie, bendtner, eduardo, vela, and even arshavin and walcott i feel like we have enough. of course, you can never predict when the injury bug will hit, and it will - especially at arsenal! i hope we use the money to finally cement down a hard-nosed central midfielder. we were linked with felipe melo a few weeks ago before he sealed his move to juventus. available options: mamadou diarra, jeremy toulalan, lorik cana and miguel veloso.
dcunited won last night in a rather emphatic fashion after putting in a rather pedestrian effort in the first half and despite quite possibly one of the most outwardly appearing biased and unfair refereeing performances i have had the horror to see. i honestly believe that the only reason the ref gave us that penalty was that he thought that when his performance was reviewed later by mls they would have fired him for not giving the penalty - it was that blatant. the 3 goals we scored in quick succession in the first 15 minutes of the second half really knocked the wind out of colorados sails and they never recovered.
the players seemed especially grateful to the fans, more so than normal, and applauded us after the game.
2009/07/18
bij will be playing free at the wind up space every sunday in august in baltimore with special guests and different various musical projects every week. if i only lived 3 hours closer...
Labels: bij
arsenals first pre-season match is of course against barnet today. there are many anxious/eager eyes on rosicky and the new boy, vermaelen.
Labels: arsenal
colorado v dcunited tonight. excellent.
while it's a double header with the washington freedom, i just cant see myself going early to catch it. we need to win to keep us up at the top of division.
are you going?
Labels: dcunited
laketrout may 5 2000 @ wetlands is now on archive. many thanks to rich steele for his help in making this recording sound good.
the opening jam> little things> #5, the jam> luvean> holding and the closing lmsy> stigmata> hypnotized> come to daddy are personal highlights.
damn hackers.
luvean.net died a couple of years ago and i never got off my ass to do anything about it. oh sure, i had ideas...motivation though, that's the rub! i won't narrow myself this time to just one thing though. why wear blinders? ok, not blinders but you get the point - i hope. this way i keep my eyes on you more.
Labels: hello world