How the Media Attention is Helping Arsenal...

I should start off by saying a bit about the Hull game on Saturday. I never did get around to writing a match report, but I thought it was yet another good, solid game. Arsene Wenger said after the game that the fact we went on to win and not lose the game after we conceded the equaliser proves the team is maturing. I couldn't agree more, and I think that although it's not pretty, we are indeed turning our season around. If we can keep this us we'll be in a great position to take advantage when Chelsea & Aston Villa slip up.

Now onto the subject of today's post, and it has to do with the media. Any Arsenal supporter worth calling themselves one can see that the media very clearly has it in for Arsenal. Why this is still remains a mystery, but I heard a very good explanation once.

The suggestion was that the media are full of old Liverpool fans from the glory days of the 80's. They don't like Man Utd that much and thus the constant obsession with Ronaldo's move to Real Madrid, and the complete overlook in the media of the fact that Liverpool weren't playing that well for a while. I seem to remember last season when we were leading the league and sweeping away team after team the "experts" were saying we would collapse and not win anything. This season Liverpool have just been average but leading the league, and yet the media never said anything about Liverpool collapsing...

And of course, said the person from whom this theory came, our famous win at Anfield in '89 which won us the league has forever turned all Liverpool supporters from the 80's against us, and thus the media bias.

But whilst the media bias is annoying, it has actually helped us in this case. Year after year, the media make up a million stories about us apparently going after this player or that one. In fact over the summer we were linked with no less than 50 players (seriously). But just as they focused on Nasri during the summer, they are focusing on Arshavin this January. It's all the media can talk about in relation to Arsenal transfers, and I think that's really helping us.

We've seen it so many times that Arsene Wenger likes to use smokescreens to buy players. He will supposedly go after one player, a big player, only to be after someone else entirely. The club who owns this player thinks that Arsenal are just signing their man as a second player to supplement the big star, so they sell him for less. I think that this is happening again, or at least I hope it is.

Whilst it is perfectly obvious we are going for Arshavin, and perhaps we really will get him, I also think that this is setting up the perfect situation for Arsene Wenger to get someone else as well. Whether it happens or not is a good question, but the fact is the situation is set up so perfectly and so invitingly, I think Arsene may just go for it.

It happened with Silvestre over the summer. All of the sudden out of nowhere there was a rumour that we were going to sign Silvestre and a day later we had him. It was totally unexpected, and I think there's a good chance it might happen again. I'm hoping it will anyway, and I'm hoping we're in for a new defensive midfielder, who I still think would be our main target.

We'll see what develops, but the situation is set up perfectly and the opportunity ripe. Now we'll find out of Arsene Wenger makes the move. Don't forget, you can get now all the Fab 4 Arsenal news and views sent direct to your mobile phone for free, please Click Here for details on how to try out this great service!

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