Contender for goal of the season

Update: the Video was removed from YouTube. I found it on Google Video. Enjoy!!!

The Wenger Years: My Highs and Lows

It's been a decade since Arsene Wenger became the Arsenal manager. I am not sure exactly when I became an Arsenal fan but it was sometime between 1998 and 1999. It might have been the way we played in 1998, Kanu's transfer to Arsenal from Inter after his performance at Atlanta '96 and his subsequent issues with his heart problems, or something else. I can't pinpoint anything exactly. The only thing I can say is that for the last 7/8 years, I have been a Gunner and my love for this team in England who have had to be second best for a long time has been constant through the years.

I remember being continuously taunted by United fans about continually finishing below them in the league from 1999 through 2001, our inexplicable failure in Europe, our inability to ever defend the league title and much more. I have had to put up with a lot and there have been highs and lows throughout the years. Since I have only been an Arsenal fan through the Wenger years, I am not the right person to comment on what a huge difference he's made to the club and how he's elevated our status around Europe and the world especially with our style of play which I admit is sometimes naive but a joy to behold nevertheless when it's clicking.

I have not always agreed with everything he's done but I am grateful for what he has done to the club I have come to love for reasons I cannot fathom. It's one of those things life does to you that you cannot explain. Of all the teams in the world and in England, why Arsenal? I digress...

Remembering the time when we had a ton of experience in the side and had to lose a ton of young players to other teams because Wenger didn't think they were good enough. When you think of all the promising young players we had in 2001-2003 that Wenger didn't play despite the fans' continual clamouring for them: Richard Wright, Matthew Upson, Jeremie Aliadiere, David Bentley, Jermaine Pennant, Moritz Volz, Francis Jeffers, Ryan Smith, Ryan Garry, Stuart Taylor, Gael Clichy. Compare that with his philosophy the last 2 years to blood Kolo Toure, Cesc Fabregas, Phillipe Senderos, Emmanuel Eboue, Johan Djourou, Juston Hoyte, Theo Walcott, et al. He was just waiting for the right time and the right group of players.

I agree that he didn't play the first crop of youngsters because they weren't better than the players we had then: Vieira, Edu, Kanu, Wiltord et al and that he was also forced to blood some of these current players because of injuries and suspensions but he has kept faith with them and we have a bright future ahead of us if we can keep our house together and take care of business.

Why did I mention the above? I don't know. Just showing the 3 different generations Wenger has had in his time here: The Adams generation with Vieira waiting in the wings to lead the next generation, The Vieira generation with Henry bidding his time, and currently the Henry generation with Kolo Toure and Fabregas the next leaders of the Arsenal team.

Anyways, following Arsenal is a full-time job that shouldn't be taken lightly and someone with a weak heart would consider it sound advice not to get too attached to the club as there are highs and lows that do not follow any set patterns and your heart would be wrenched out with no thought for its well being.

Here are my highs and lows as a gunner so far:

The lows:

• FA cup semi final 1999, Arsenal v Man United. The Bergkamp missed penalty and the Giggs wonder goal. Anytime I see that goal, my heart gets ripped out especially considering it was the famous back 4 of Adams, Keown, Winterburn, & Dixon and the fact that if not for that game, Man U wouldn't have had the greatest moment in their history winning the treble in 1999.
• losing the 2000 UEFA cup final in Galatasaray on penalties.
• losing the 2001 FA cup final to Liverpool to a Michael Owen double after we had enough chances to win 3 games. Liverpool went on to win a fake treble of the FA Cup, Worthington (Carling) cup and UEFA cup
  
• not being able to sustain the title challenge in the 2002/2003 season dropping valuable points down the stretch especially in games against Villa, Bolton and Leeds despite the fact that we were the best team in the Premiership that year (in my opinion)
• Losing to Chelsea in the Champions League quarter finals in the 2003/2004 season in what was then our best chance of winning it all. That loss also ended an 18 batch unbeaten run against Chelsea in all competitions.
• Losing the 49 game unbeaten run to ManU after so much cheating, and bullying in the game: The Neville brothers' treatment of Reyes, Ferdinand's foul on Freddie which should have been a red, Rooney's dive and much more.
  

The highs:

• victory over Chelsea in the 2002 FA cup final after marvelous goals by Parlour and Ljungberg.
• winning the title with Wiltord's goal at Old Trafford after a phenomenal season.
• Man U - Arsenal, FA cup quarter final 2003. We beat the Mancs with Henry on the bench at Old Trafford. This led to the famous flying boot incident and ultimately to Beckham being sold to Real Madrid. We went on to win the FA cup that year as consolation for missing out on the league.
• Battle of Old Trafford. This wasn't pretty. This was the match in which Arsenal players finally had enough and attacked V.Nistelrooy for all his cheating, and diving against us. You could also say this was the game that defined the unbeaten season for us as the players were forced to bond and become united after the backlash they received for their actions.
• Arsenal v Dynamo Kiev, Group phase, 2003/2004 season. We were on the brink of being eliminated in the first round after taking only 1 point from the first 3 games. Time was running out on us and Ashley Cole scored that last gap header to keep us on track in qualifying from and eventually topping the group. This game is not really special in the minds of most people but I was so happy when that ball went in, I was screaming for joy. I couldn't bare the thought of us crashing out so early. The great 5-1 victory over Inter followed that game.
  
• Arsenal v Liverpool 2003 /2004 season. We had just been dumped out of the FA cup and Champions League by Manchester United and Chelsea respectively putting any hopes of a treble to rest. Our morale was down and people were doubting if we could still win the league not to mention still go the season unbeaten. Arsenal and Henry responded with a trademark Arsenal performance. See the goal Henry scored in that game which was the goal of the season. There's a funny twist to this particular video.
• Arsenal winning the title at Spurs in 2004. We seem to have a knack of winning the title at our rivals' home grounds. At Spurs in '71, Old Trafford in '02 and Spurs again in '04.
• Going unbeaten in the 2003/2004 season and eventually going 49 games unbeaten. I felt we couldn't lose. Every game we played, I knew we were going to win. We were really invincible.
  
• Finally proving the doubters wrong about doing well in Europe. Beating Real Madrid and Juventus on the way to the Champions League final before eventually losing to Barcelona.
• September 2006: Beating Manchester United at Old Trafford in a game nobody expected us to win. The youngins showed why Wenger's faith in them can be justified. The good news is that anytime we've beaten the Mancs in the league at Old Trafford, we've gone on to win the league. May this year not be different.

It's been a fun ride. I can't wait for as many more years as Monsieur Wenger is willing to give us.

What have been your highs and lows?

Did T.O. try to commit suicide?

See Foxsports for more.

Brunell breaks NFL record

Wow, Mark Brunell of the Washington Redskins has just broken an NFL record by going 22/22 so far. He has now thrown 22 consecutive passes in a single game.

As I was typing this, he just threw an incomplete pass. I jinxed him.

Update your feeds

Blogger recently changed some feed related stuff. From this blog post,

In this same release we’ve fixed some feed related things as well: comment feeds are now showing the latest comments, and pagination works, which solves this known issue. Also, feed URLs on the beta are now also served up from your blog’s domain in addition to from beta.blogger.com.

The new url for the Atom feed for this blog is http://olaoluwa.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full and for the RSS feed, it is http://olaoluwa.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full?alt=rss. Alternatively, you can add it to your favorite feed reader from the links on the right of this page.

I thought I was smart

Boy graduates college in one year [via Steve Pavlina].

I am sure I could have done it if I wasn't that lazy, did not have a life and wasn't interested in so many different things.

Seriously though, there's no way I could have done it and I give David Banh mad props.

Yet another plane crash in Nigeria

After the crashes last year, there has been yet another plane crash in Nigeria.

My condolences to the families of the lost ones.

The irony of it all

I am the TA for Intro to Engineering and one of my duties is that I have to ensure that students don't sleep in class (It's a big class). The reason why this is really a big deal is that they want these freshmen on the right path so that they would learn the right way and more students will end up as good students (some names come to mind but I wouldn't mention them) and not like me.

This is reminiscent of Proverbs 22: 6

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it

The irony in all this is that I sleep in class. To not be hypocritical and because I have decided to turn a new leaf in some of my ways, I have decided to try my best and stop sleeping in class.

I however have one question for you guys as this won't be easy. There will be some classes that are either so boring or I am very tired and I have no choice but to sleep in class. My logic was that I preferred to go to class, sleep and gain some knowledge if possible instead of missing the class entirely. Also, the professor will see that I made an effort to come to his/her class. If you were/are a professor, which do you prefer? A student missing class or sleeping in it?

My plan for now is to leave class and walk around any time I am feeling sleepy. Hopefully, that's not too many times in any given class.

Which phone should I get?

My 2 year plan with Sprint is over and I am not sure if I should renew it or get a new plan from another company? If I change my provider, who should I go with? Verizon, AT & T, T-Mobile?

I have no reason to want to leave Sprint but some of you guys have complained about its Customer Service but I haven't had to deal with them so I don't know. Also, I know they have better signals than T-Mobile where a lot of people are. I think Verizon is supposedly the best with the Network but it's also allegedly expensive.

And which cell phone should I get?

This is the phone I have.

And this is the one I was thinking of getting if I remained with Sprint.

What do you advise?

What is the world coming to?

Woman kidnaps baby, slashes Mother's throat.

Arsenal v Manchester United

Today's game against Man U might be our biggest game of the season as a loss could be devastating to our title hopes considering the kind of start we have had to the season.

This is not the top-of-the-table clash it usually is since we are languishing in 17^th position. Also, without Vieira, Keane, V.Nistelrooy, and a few others, the game wouldn't have the animosity of previous encounters.

For the way some Arsenal fans see the game, see this article on Arsenal-Mania.

I agree with most of the views expressed there except that I don't hate ManU and I think it's just a game but since I don't live in England, ...

I think we have a chance of winning tomorrow but ManUre is rightfully the favorites to win it especially when you consider our (both Manure and us) starts to the season and the fact that we haven't won a game against them since winning at Old Trafford in 2002.

More Flamini questions

I asked where Flamini was: Wenger tells us why he's not playing left back.

This is the second time Wenger has brought this up. It means people are still asking him why he's not playing Flamini there.

More Facebook changes coming up

In what's indicative of the upcoming changes by Facebook to open up to everyone in addition to the backlash received from the changes made last week, Facebook has put up the following reminder of the privacy controls available to users.

Since we started adding high schools and companies last year, pretty much everyone has been able to use Facebook. As the site grows, we're constantly adding more privacy controls like the ones we added last week in response to your suggestions about News Feed. You can expect to see more soon, but in the meantime we want to highlight some things you may not have known.

How do I control who sees my information?

• Show different information to different people using privacy controls.
• Hide info from specific people (even friends) using limited profiles.
• Make yourself invisible to someone on the site by blocking them.

Who can see my profile now?

• Your friends.
• Other people at Howard, Google and Washington, DC. (my networks)
  
• We will never allow any random person to see your information.

Who can get on the site?

• College students with a .edu email address.
• High School students with an invitation or a school email address.
• People can register for a company using their work email address.
• In the future, people will be able to register for regions. But not yet.

What does this mean for me?

• Probably not a lot since privacy has always worked this way.
• Still, make sure your privacy controls are set the way you want.
• If you have suggestions for improving privacy, send them to here.

The first indication of the upcoming changes are in a sentence in the privacy statement above:

In the future, people will be able to register for regions. But not yet.

I wonder what impact this will have on Facebook's usage. I think people should take this change better than they did the last one as the privacy options still remain the same. The only issue would be the loss of exclusivity which I think makes Facebook unique from other social networking sites like MySpace and which might have gotten Facebook to where it is today as it was different. Now, not so much!!!

I think what Facebook should do is to limit the settings of people who are in College, High school or Work networks and who are also in regional networks to have their regional networks to be at the bare minimum and then remind people the day the changes ship for people to change this.

Did the above sentence confuse you? Let me expatiate. I am in the Howard, Google, and Washington D.C. networks. The day Facebook becomes open to everyone, my settings for my D.C. network should be at the bare minimum so that a lot of random people I don't know can't see stuff about me.

I think it's OK for folks in a college or at work that you don't know to be able to see stuff about you as that's still a limited scope and there could be valid reasons to do so. A region is just too big. At least that's what I think.

As for me, I have changed my settings for my regional network. It's not at the bare minimum but it's stricter with different availabilities for different things. You can change your settings here.

Microsoft high school

Microsoft designed a high school in Philadelphia (via Adam Barr).

Interesting development. I am not an expert in education (not even an authority in the field) but I know that the current school system is broken. Why do I say this?

• I sleep in some classes (this started in college. I was a better student in High School),
• have to take classes that are boring,
• have to learn? a bunch of stuff I might never use and not of importance to real life, and
  
• school doesn't teach you how to survive in the real world.

I don't know if Microsoft's answer is the solution to the present school system (both here and in Nigeria as that's what I am familiar with) but at least someone's trying something different.

One thing of note: despite the fact that I am a Software Engineer, I think there's too much technology involved in Microsoft's solution (which might be indicative of the future). But what do I know?

Too many books to buy

Do you know the problem with taking 21 credits? The number and cost of books one has to buy.

Want to control your Mini-feed? you can

When you log in to Facebook, you should see An Open Letter From Mark Zuckerberg on your home page.

It makes for some interesting read and explains their motivations for creating the Feeds and the steps they have taken to give ensure people's privacy is kept.

The important thing from the blog post is that you now have exact control over what can appear in your Feeds. You can tweak your privacy options here.

Me? I am not changing anything. Let's see how it goes.

Where is Flamini?

Last season, he excelled in his role as left back with all the injuries we had in that position.

This season, he has been largely absent and has not started as a left back despite the problems we have had in that position with Cole's transfer saga and Clichy missing due to injury. Justin Hoyte has instead been playing there. I have not watched any games so far but the reviews for Hoyte haven't been that good.

Is there a reason why Wenger is not playing Flamini as a left back? Did Flamini object to being played there? I know he is not injured because he started in midfield against Dinamo Zagreb at Emirates Stadium and has made a few substitute appearances. He is also not listed on the injury list.



As predicted by me and others, Wenger is considering playing Gallas as a left back.

From the above article,

“He can play left back and there is a possibility he may play there [on Saturday]. At the moment we have problem there. Justin Hoyte prefers to play at right back largely not left back. So [Gallas] is the most capable to sort that out.

We all know Gallas doesn't like playing at left back and being asked to play there so soon might be trouble. What's intriguing is that Wenger is not considering Flamini for the position despite the fact that he's not injured, Gallas doesn't fancy the position and neither does Hoyte yet Wenger insists on playing them there.

Is there something Wenger knows that he's not telling us? Probably.

If I get another opportunity to meet him, I will ensure I pick his brain and try and understand the way he thinks and the decisions he makes.

Update:
From the Team News we finally have an answer to why Flamini is not playing at left back. Gallas plays there tomorrow.

He does not care where he plays, he has said that many times before, and at the moment we do not have a left back available. Justin Hoyte is not a left back, Flamini is not comfortable there at all. We have a problem so he plays there.

21 credits woot!!!

From having only 12 credits I needed to take this semester to be on track to graduate in May to having 21 credits on my plate. How did I get here? What did I do to get into this position?

First, a little flashback...

Most of my friends are used to me taking a lot of credits (or are under the illusion that I take a lot of credits). In my six previous semesters, I took 19, 18, 20, 20, 15, and 15 credits respectively (The maximum number of credits you can take at Howard is 18, 21 in Engineering. You have to pay for each additional credit above the maximum apart from tuition paid). See the dip in my junior year? I had taken most if not all the electives I needed to take and was out of options and was a little bit lazy so I chilled and only took required classes or classes that count(ed) towards graduation in one way or the other.

Last semester, when registering for classes, I realized I had only 12 credits this semester (with maybe about 5 or 6 credits next semester) to take towards my graduation and they were all CS courses. So, I needed to find something else to take: 12 credits seemed so small. I decided to take Digital Design I so I could gain some design skills which could be useful as I have no idea how to use Paint, Photoshop, or any photo-editing software yet I am a web developer (That's why I don't have a website: no design skills). The only problem with this class was the time: Tuesday and Thursday 6.40pm - 9:00pm. I wasn't too comfortable with the class so late. I digress...

I decided I was going to decide over the summer if I still wanted to take the class. With the class, I had 15 credits which was decent and would also qualify me to be on the Dean's list (I think 14 credits is the minimum... I need to go get all my certificates) and also provided a window which enabled me to play safe - as an international student, I have to take a minimum of 12 credits to be in status as a full-time student or else .... If for any reason I drop a 3 credit class, I would be able to remain in status with 12 credits so that seemed reasonable.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a Business (Administration?) minor hence I took some Economics classes. However, I never took the necessary classes required to be a Business minor. I think this was mainly due to clashes with my Engineering classes (College of Engineering and School of Business operate in different worlds) and a little bit of laziness.

When looking for classes last semester, I don't think I looked for Business classes (Did I mention I could be lazy?). However, during the summer, I decided I was still interested in taking advantage of the School of Business and take one or two business classes and maybe drop the Digital Design class because of the time.

I decided I would try to take Accounting and/or Real Estate since they could be applicable to the real world. I was able to get into the Real Estate class but was unable to get into Accounting class because it was full and I was unable to get an override from the teacher. If I had gotten the override, I would have had to make a decision on what to do: take 21 credits or drop at least one of Digital Design, Accounting or Real Estate. I most likely would have dropped one class.

Since I didn't get into Accounting, I decided to stick with both Real Estate and Digital Design as that would leave me with 18 credits which was manageable. Nevertheless, I decided to still sit in the Accounting class so I could learn a little without having to worry about homework, tests and exams. That was perfect. I would eat my cake and have it. And that would make Accounting the one class where I could give the teacher my undivided attention and wouldn't need to do my normal routine of sometimes not listening in class, sleeping in some classes and then having to go read the textbook and bother my classmates when it time for tests, exams and homework.

Today, the professor passed out the roster of the class in Accounting for people to sign for attendance. Normally, I wouldn't look at the roster since I knew I wasn't in the class. To be surprise (bewilderment, dismay?), I saw my name on the roster. I was shocked. I met the professor afterwards who confirmed that I was on the roster. Not sure how I got in there: I tried registering earlier and was told the class was closed on Bison Web, maybe I was sleeping when I was registering. Checked Bison Web (Howard University's Banner Information System) today and indeed saw the class on my schedule.

I can't drop any class now because the add/drop period without having a W (Withdrawal) on my transcript has passed. Don't really like having Ws so I have stayed away from them so far.

I have decided to take the challenge of 21 credits which turns out to be 8 classes. I am not going to drop any of the classes yet and I don't plan to do so except something dire happens. On a positive note, I just looked through my transcript and saw that I have taken 8 classes before in the spring semester of my sophomore year when I took 20 credits. I survived that semester so I can survive this one. Despite breaking my leg that semester, I was still able to pull through.

Maybe the smartest decision I have made since I came back to school was deciding to sit in my Accounting class even though I believed I wasn't officially registered in the class. Imagine the dread if I had realized I was in a class later in the semester in which I took my truancy to whole new levels where I attended no classes and saw the nice F on my transcript: God works in mysterious ways.

Senior year was supposed to be fun with few classes. Now, I find myself with my maximum course load. Time to buckle up. School is in session. At least I will learn stuff this semester.

Pictures from the summer

I have finally put up all my pictures from the summer.

They can be found on Flickr and Picasa.

Most of them are on Picasa with just the first set being on Flickr. I moved to Picasa because of the monthly limit. I needed to upload a bunch of pics at once so that didn't work for me.

Other places where I have pictures are:

• Windows live Spaces
• Facebook

Facebook responds

Mark Zuckerberg has responded to all the hoopla generated from the changes made to Facebook.

Facebook's changes: good or bad?

Facebook got a facelift today and from what I have seen today from my friends and other folks, people don't like it.

I applaud them for trying something new and trying to be leaders in the social networking game. I don't use MySpace, Friendster, Orkut or other social networking tools so I can't really compare what all these sites are doing but I know that Facebook has been innovative with stuff like Badges and their developer network.

With their changes today, all what you do and what your friends do is out there in the open for everybody to see. When I mean all, I mean everything. There is nothing that you do on Facebook that is not available in your mini-feed or in your friends' news-feed.

The cool thing about it is that it allows you to keep track of what your friends are doing and what changes they made but it's too much information. I love you guys but I really don't want to know every move you make and I don't want you knowing every move I make.

One thing everybody should not forget is this which was mentioned in the Facebook blog post announcing these changes:

News Feed and Mini-Feed are a different way of looking at the news about your friends, but they do not give out any information that wasn't already visible. Your privacy settings remain the same – the people who couldn't see your info before still can't see it now.

If that is true and I believe it is, why all the hoopla? Before, you had to go and look for this information and had to be determined to find this. To see whose wall I posted on recently, you had to go to all my friends' walls and check if I did so. To see which comments I posted, you had to do the same thing and so on. Not so anymore!!! Everything is out there in the open now.

One thing I noticed when going through a few of my friends' mini-feeds, there was no information on there that I couldn't see before these changes if I was determined to find it. However, there seemed to be an obvious absence of information that shouldn't have been (and wasn't) available to me based on the privacy settings. For example, I couldn't see anything done to /with anybody in a different network from me.

I however found my mini-feed useful to me. I think they are on the right track if they make the mini-feed more private or enable it have more specific settings limiting it to a few people (a network might still be too big for this kind of thing). One problem I usually have with blogs and with Facebook is leaving a comment somewhere (photos, notes, etc.) and trying to keep track of what I did. With my mini-feed, I am able to see what I did in one place and just have to click on the link from my mini-feed to see if there has been any update. That's a cool feature there and I think more people would use that as time goes by to keep track of their own activities. By the way, Mike Torres found a solution for comments on blogs. I haven't used it yet but you can give it a try.

If Facebook gives me the option to control my mini-feed, I have to say that I will make it private as I don't want anybody tracking every single thing I do. I want to keep my stalking private :). If not, I can deal with this as long as they don't start making stuff like page views, visits, journey through the site public. That would take creepy to a whole new level.

Another thing that should be considered is that we were actually told / warned of the pending changes to the site by Mark Zuckerberg in this blog post before it occurred. From the blog post,

It's our goal to provide a tool that helps people understand what's going on with the people around them; all of our additions and changes contribute towards this goal. The new things we're going to launch will do the same.

I remember reading that blog post. I can't remember people's reactions to it and I can't see these reactions right now as the ability to see previous comments on the Facebook blog is either currently down or has been removed.

From my internship experiences, I know most companies have usability teams trying stuff out: Janna was a usability analyst intern at Google this summer. I am pretty sure Facebook passed this through usability and it must have gone well for them to release and the blog post was made to prepare us. I am pretty sure these changes are here to stay one way or another.

Update: When I thought people didn't like it, I wasn't aware of the magnitude of hatred here. People really hate these new features. There are at least 2 groups on Facebook which have been created to demonstrate how much people hate this. They are:

1. Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook) with 90, 296 members as of 1:10am on 9/6/2006
2. Fuck the New Facebook with 1629 members as of 1:11am on 9/6/2006

Do you know the irony? I found these groups through my News Feed. I am pretty sure others did too.

Now we know why Zidane headbutted Makalele

Makalele mentioned Zidane's sister in an unbecoming manner.

The saga continues

Gallas has responded to yesterday's claims by Chelsea. I am tired of all this. Both parties should forget about all this and let's focus on the new season.

Also, that would make people like me do my work I should be doing instead of being on the lookout for all ths.

What did we get ourselves into?

From this article,

The statement revealed how he initially refused to play against Liverpool in last season's FA Cup semi-final and how, if selected to play against Manchester City in the first game of this season, he threatened to score an own goal, get sent off or make deliberate mistakes.

This shows the power players wield now and the extent to which they will go to get their wishes. At least Ashley Cole was stilling willing to play for us if the transfer to Chelsea did not go through.

Did Chelsea get the better of the Cole-Gallas deal? They got a player who wanted to come (Cole) and got rid of another who was undermining the club (Gallas). We, on the other hand, lost someone (Cole) who wanted to leave based on our refusal to give him what he wanted and eventually gave his "replacement" - Gallas - far more than Cole was asking for in the first place. We got someone who seems to have come to Arsenal only to spite Chelsea and because he didn't have any other options.

Hope all this bad blood between Gallas and Chelsea ends soon and we can go back to competing on the field.

Baptista deal permanent?

It seems Baptista has signed a deal with Arsenal for four years subject to Arsenal and Real Madrid agreeing terms at the end of the season.

From The Telegraph,

Baptista, 24, arrived on transfer deadline day from Real Madrid, with Jose Antonio Reyes moving in the opposite direction, and initial reports suggested that both deals were one-year loans. It has now emerged that Baptista has agreed to a four-year contract with the club, subject to Arsenal wishing to follow through with the deal at the end of the season. "Yes, it is like a four-year contract," he said. "After the first year Arsenal need to talk to Real Madrid, and if they can come to an agreement then I will be really happy to stay here."

That is interesting news. It seems he has accepted his fate that he has no future at Real and he's looking forward to life at Arsenal. Hopefully, he'll play well this season, make an impact and have Wenger take that option to sign him.

Aftermath of yesterday’s transfers

The Ashley Cole transfer saga is finally over with Ashley Cole finally moving to Chelsea in a part-exchange deal for William Gallas and £5 million. Also, Reyes got his dream move as he departed to Real in an exchange for Baptista. These transfer undoubtedly strengthened the side but there are still a few things that have to be seen / considered.

Regarding Ashley Cole, Chelsea initially bid as high as £20 million for him and we didn’t accept the offer. We made a bid of £5 million for Gallas meaning we valued him between £5 and £10 million. There were rumors that there was going to be an exchange plus £10 million for Arsenal but those never materialized. Considering that Ashley Cole was asking for £60k in the first place and we didn’t give it to him which started this whole mess, then we offered him £70k last year and then agreed to pay Gallas £80k just shows how confused the Arsenal board is.

From a financial and reputational perspective, Chelsea were the clear winners as they insisted that they were not going to be held to ransom by Arsenal and eventually got what they wanted on their own terms although there are rumors that Mourinho is furious with Kenyon for letting Gallas go. This makes sense because they also sold Huth to Middlesbrough on the same day so an injury to Terry or Carvalho puts Chelsea in a pickle although they have one cover in Boulahrouz.

From a footballing perspective, Arsenal won because we have a proven defender in Gallas joining us to beef up the central defensive position making the defensive partnership of Toure and Gallas one of the most formidable in the premiership. What this does to Senderos development is anyone's guess. I have a sneaky feeling that when Senderos comes back from injury, Gallas might be asked to play at left back which he doesn't like to do and was one of the reasons he left Chelsea. Chelsea already had Wayne Bridge who is an adequate left back and they had Gallas who could play there but wasn't excited about doing so.

We also got rid of Cygan for £2million. I wish him all the best in his feature endeavors at Villarreal.

The other major transfer was the exchange for Reyes and Baptista. Baptista opted for Real Madrid last year when he was our major transfer target and is only settling for us now that Capello has made it clear he has no future at Real. However, Wenger seems to be excited about his arrival. He will bring a new dimension to the team with his power which we have been lacking for a while since the departure of Vieira. I am not sure how he will fit into the current team since he can play as a forward or as a midfielder. That's why I am not the manager and it's up to Wenger to utilize him in any way he can.

We also got another Brazilian, Denilson yesterday.

In other news, ANR was taken down last night due to heavy traffic because a lot of Arsenal fans were looking for the latest scoop on the transfers.