Hleb Hits Back

Don't trust this! He has just manufactured some of Hleb's comments to make him appear positive. Those Vital Arsenal b@stards!

Fair play to Alex! This is exactly what Ade would have done had the quotes in the NOTW not been true.

I don't think ade has the brain to respond to the media quotes but his agent should and thats where the promblem stems from IMO.

It's a scum minefield out there - one day it's the mercenary agents, the next it's the gutter press... can't someone just pull the plug and turn the internet off for the summer months so we can be spared the temptation to read this gunk? And is it just me or has Newsnow metamorphosed into a bloated collection of any old ***** from any old place... I mean how many mutations of Caught offside and the Hampstead local rags are there? There was a time when maybe one article in 5 was worth clicking on but now there's barely one a day. I'm serisouly thinking of replacing my Newsnow bookmark with Vital Spuds!

"I'm serisouly thinking of replacing my Newsnow bookmark with Vital Spuds!" -- *gasp*! bit drastic, andy, no? :-) Hi everyone--just got back from a trip to Brazil visiting family, where I went to the Libertadores final at the Maracana (crazycrazycrazy) and learned a bit more about the Diogo from Portuguesa that Arsenal bid for. Rumours abound that the player wants to go to Arsenal ahead of any other club but his club won't release him. Also saw a great interview with Eduardo and his wife, with nice shots of him at the beach (with wife and daughter), talking about his sorrow at Croatia's failure at the Euros, how he misses playing football, how impressed he was with Arsenal's facilities and general treatment of him, how much he admires and enjoys being with his teammates and his immense gratitude toward and admiration for AW. Anyway, re Hleb: ALWAYS ignore English press (mis)translations of non-English sources. They are notoriously unreliable.

Hi Lou! To be honest I wasn't sure which Diogo the UK press had been referring to, there are a few candidates. Diogo's a fairly common name in Brazil, lots of players just in Brazil's Serie A have that name. And I hadn't really read the UK reports very carefully so I'd missed the references to Portuguesa being the club in question, that would've clarified to me which one Diogo was the target of Arsenal's attention. I sub to 2 Brazil TV channels here in NY and they air some football matches, but I've only seen a handful of games involving Portuguesa (one of Sao Paulo's oldest clubs). I do keep abreast of the Brazilian football media but had been reading a lot about 3 different young Diogos, so wasn't sure which one Arsenal bid on. By the time I'd arrived in Rio I knew which one it was. I'd seen him play in one game in NY and had read a some good press about him. But there are several young players in Brazil right now labelled "the new Pato", like this Diogo is, and so I'm leery as to how good he'd be in England. That said, while visiting family in Sao Paulo, I did catch a repeat of a game with him playing, and he did impress. Great pace, clinical finishing, tireless workrate, superb ball control. Great attitude on the pitch, too. He's also quite strong, loved seeing how he fought off 3 tall defenders. But Portugesa is asking for a ridiculous sum (minimum of 20 mil euros) and pundits are saying they probably won't even let him go at that sum.

mmm. Ignore this, i am stupid enough to post the same thing the article is talking about. I thought this was the previous. Doh

He probably said something along the lines of " the midfield should have produced more goals...Cesc certainly shoots more than me" translated by an idiot from the media reads..."Cesc is greedy and doesn't pass "...