Signing: Mesut Özil

During the final hours of deadline day Arsenal secured a club-record signing of German international Mesut Özil. The 24-year-old midfielder allegedly left Real Madrid for no less than £42,2 million pounds. It is reported to be a five-year-deal, and hopefully one that will bring much joy and fortune! It will be exciting, to say the least, to see what our new no. 11 can accomplish in the Arsenal shirt! 

Signing: Emiliano Viviano

Italian goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano has joined Arsenal on a season-long loan for 2013/2014. He is a 27-year-old 'keeper going from Palermo to join us for the season. Personally I have no experience of watching him play, but it will be interesting to see him compete for a starting place against Szczesny and Fabianski.

Signing: Mathieu Flamini

Today Arsenal Football Club confirmed the re-signing of midfielder Mathieu Flamini, who has been training with the team for a while now. The Frenchman left the club in 2008, having made 153 appearances, and has now re-signed at the age of 29. It will be intriguing, to say the least, to find out what the midfield-maestro can add to the team for this season!

Summer Update

So the league starts tomorrow, and due to extensive travelling I have not written anything since final game of last season! So here goes, a summer update of results and signings:

This summer's pre-season was, like previous years, staged in Asia. The first game was against Indonesia Dream Team on the 14th of July. We won that game 7-0, with goals from Walcott, Akpom, Giroud, Podolski, Olsson and Eisfeld.
   Next up was Vietnam on the 17th, this time the final score was 7-1 in our favour. Giroud scored a hat-trick, Akpom got a brace, while Oxlade-Chamberlain and Miquel were on target as well.
   Then we travelled to Japan and played two games there. First up was Nagoya Grampus on the 22nd, which ended 3-1. Giroud was once again on target, along with Miyaichi and Walcott. We beat Urawa Red Diamonds as well, with the final score 2-1. Podolski and Akpom won that game for us.

The Emirates Cup was, as always, played in the beginning of August. This year the cup included Napoli, Galatasaray and Porto. We faced Napoli on the 3rd, which ended in a 2-2 draw, with Giroud and Koscielny on target for us. On the 4th we played Eboue's Galatasaray. To our great disappointment we lost 1-2, Walcott scored a great goal in the first half but as Drogba was introduced things went terribly awry for us. This meant that we finished 3rd in this year's Emirates Cup.

The last game of pre-season was played against Manchester City on the 10th of August in Helsinki. We won that one 3-1, thanks to goals from Walcott, Ramsey and Giroud.

Concerning signings, there isn't much to say. The window closes in September, and so far the only new player we've brought in is Yaya Sanogo. He is a 20-year-old striker from France who looks quite promising.
   There is also one player who has left this summer, Gervinho has gone to Roma on a permanent transfer.

This is just a quick update on what has been going on this summer, now it's just to wait for the season to begin tomorrow!

Signing: Nacho Monreal

In this transfer window we have managed to secure a long-term contract with the Spanish defender Nacho Monreal. He is 26 years old and joins us from La Liga side Malaga. Monreal is primarily a left full-back, and since Gibbs has been ruled out for more than a month it is likely that the Spaniard will mainly appear on the left side of the defence. However, since he has played in Malaga he will not be eligible for us in the Champions League, which most likely means that Santos will be the left full-back for the Bayern Munich game or possibly games. Either way, Monreal appears to be an exciting signing, having made nine appearances in the Spanish international team. He was described by Wenger as a "techincally gifted player, a good crosser in the final third and strong in the air", which sounds like exactly what we need!

Signing: Santi Cazorla

On the 7th of August Arsenal sealed their third signing of the summer, the Spanish midfielder Santi Cazorla.

My personal experiences of the 27-year-old has been from watching the national team, he has featured for Spain in 45 games, which is quite impressive. A player that has played for the Spanish national team is a player to be reckoned with, I'd say.

He is an attacking midfielder and it will be interesting to see what he can accomplish in the Arsenal shirt.

Signing: Olivier Giroud

This week our second signing of the summer was completed. Olivier Giroud is a 25-year old striker from France. He was the top scorer in Ligue 1 last season with 21 goals in 36 games and he is arriving from the French champions, Montpellier.

It will certainly be exciting to see what he has to offer, and with this second striker recently signed we've got plenty of options up-front for the new season.

Olivier Giroud, holding up his new shirt.

Signing: Lukas Podolski

I know I've mentioned it in an earlier post, but since the season is over and I'm growing weary of not writing I've decided to give some further information of our new signing from Germany, Lukas Podolski.

My personal earlier experiences of the striker are few, I can recall watching him in a couple of games for Germany, but no more than that. He is currently 26 years old and has played 95 games for Germany, which means that he's got plenty of experience! He's also been a prolific goalscorer with 43 strikes for the national team.

Hopefully he will add a lot to the team and relieve some of the pressure from Robin van Persie (who is still having negotiation-talks with the club, making us all more nervous by the day!).

Lukas Podolski wearing the red and white.

Transfer Deadline Day

This is the first time during my years as an Arsenal fan that we've had this much action in the transfer window! We've signed five players on the very last days! Yeah, you heard me right, Five players!

The first deal to be completed was South Korean captain Chu Young Park (26). Then, on the very last day, we signed three players! Brazilian left-back Andre Santos (28), German centre-half Per Mertesacker (26), midfielder Yossi Benayoun (31) on loan from Chelsea and in the very last minute we completed the signing of Spanish play-maker Mikel Arteta (29) from Everton!

Exactly what we needed, some more experience and class players! Now have a bit more hope for the season!

FC Cologne vs. Arsenal

2-1, Pre-Season, Rhein Energie Stadion, 23/7 -11
Gervinho 7, 15

Amazing debut for our new Ivorian striker Gervinho! We looked incredible offensively in the first half, a lot of that was down to Jack Wilshere, he has looked brilliant this pre-season, he definitely ran our midfield in this game's first half.

The opening goal was a real beauty, Wilshere set up Gervinho with a breath-taking ball that went over the opposition defense straight in the path of the Ivorian striker, whose finish was clinical!
It didn't take long before he was on target again, Walcott provided a great cross for Gervinho to score from close range.
Just before half-time Jenkinson got really unlucky when his clearance went over Szczesny (who was on his way out to collect the ball) and into our own net. He looked pretty bummed out about it but fortunately lots of team-mates came to comfort him, so I'd reckon he'll recover quickly.

In the second half we didn't have the same rhytm in our play (could be down to the fact that the entire team except for Gibbs had been replaced).

However, there was a sad ending to the game when Henderson (who had replaced Gibbs 70th minute) got injured whilst committing to a tackle, it appeared as though he twisted his knee, and he had to be stretchered off the pitch.

Injury Update;
-Diaby has a long term injury that will keep him out of the start of the season.
-Fabregas failed to recover from a muscular injury in time for this game, hopefully he'll be fit (and still an Arsenal player) for the Emirates Cup.
-Fabianski made his debut from his injury in this game, so it was good to see him back in action
-Eboue missed this game through injury, but it doesn't seem to be a long term one.

Malaysia XI vs. Arsenal

4-0, Pre-season: Asia Tour, Bukit Jalil Stadium, 13/7 -11
Ramsey 5 (pen),
Walcott 37,
Vela 58,
Rosicky 90

The first game of the 11/12 season ended very well for us, a comfortable 4-0 win, but I can't say that I expected anything else. This was the first time to see our two new boys in action, Ryo Miyaichi (a quick winger that we signed last year but since he went on loan at once I hadn't seen him in action until today) and Carl Jenkinson (a right-back from Charlton that we signed earlier this year).

The first half had a lot of pace and action, we started brightly and when Wilshere was clipped in the box Ramsey got the chance to put us in front which he comfortably did. After that first goal the Malaysian team built up some momentum, but they weren't ever close to scoring. Walcott scored the second with a delightful chip, yet you have to give Ramsey a lot of credit for that goal as well since it was his amazing pass that gave Walcott the chance.

There were close to eleven changes for the second half and we couldn't quite get up to the same pace that we had in the first half, but we did score another two goals, the first one came from Vela, and it didn't come as a surprise when he decided to lift the ball over the keeper instead of going for a more direct shot, but he truly is the master of lifting the ball into goal, and it always looks classy. Rosicky got to wrap the game up in the final minutes when he headed the ball in from a good Arshavin cross.

We've still got a lot to look ahead for, and the new players really look exciting, I truly thought that they both did a great first game for the club and believe that they can become something big in the future.

The reason that I got to see this game is that Arsenal now have included Arsenal Player in the membership. Arsenal Player is like ATVO from former seasons, and they are streaming the pre-season games live! Smashing!

Just to finish it all off I've got some bad news.. Clichy has left the club for Manchester City (who seem to be buying all of our players lately...)

Blackburn Rovers vs. Arsenal

2-1, Premier League, Ewood Park, 28/8 -10
Walcott 20,
Arshavin 51

As you expected going to Ewood Park was extremely tough, but in the end I'm thrilled that we got away with the three points, that doesn't happen too often.
Walcott continued with his fine form and was once again the man of the match for us, not only did he score an amazing goal (he actually scored two more, but was deemed to be offside on both occasions), he provided great passes and made top class runs throughout the game.
Fabregas and van Persie were both handed their first starts of the season, but with mixed result, van Persie got injured and was replaced in the 34th minute by Chamakh, while Cesc had a good game with some amazing passes but didn't have quite enough strength yet to last the entire 90 minutes.

We had a great start to the game with lots of possession and fine chances, and eventually van Persie played Walcott and the young winger didn't let us down, he got past the entire defense and finished it all off in style by placing the ball in the far corner (and it was quite a powerful shot as well, enough to pierce part of the net), he sure is looking good so far this season.
But it didn't take too long for Blackburn to equalize when one Diouf managed to get away from Koscielny and played the ball in so that another Diouf could easily tap it in.

After that Blackburn were building up pressure but we managed to keep the score-line even through the first half, and in the second half we played much better, Blackburn hardly got a taste of the ball until the final minutes, and in the 50th minute that possession paid off when Sagna made a great run on the right side and provided with a great cross that reached Fabregas, his shot was blocked but the ball reached Arshavin who managed to get a shot away and it went straight in the net.

We managed to hold on to that lead and what an important win it was.

Yesterday it was confirmed that we managed to sign the thirty year old defender Sebastien Squillaci, so now we have some more depth in central defence!
He was not quite ready for this game but soon enough we shall see him play, he will be wearing number 18.



Injury Update;
-No news have yet reached me about van Persie's injury, but hopefully it's nothing serious.

Summer Signing; Marouane Chamakh

He has been on the radar for a year now, and finally he has signed a long-term contract with the Arsenal!
It was official yesterday, so not much is yet known, but the fact that he has signed is enough for now! He is now our no. 29!

Lots of talk has already emerged about Cesc leaving for Barca, but I hope that we can keep him at the club for at least another year..