Franck has signed for Birmingham. The Times, Sky, The Official. Real shame. I wrote about Franck earlier in the week, and he’s a player I’ll miss.
Just finished watching the friendly defeat at QPR. I turned on after 11 minutes to see Chris Baird float a cross to the far post, from where David Healy retrieved the ball with a deft header back into the path of Brian McBride, who ambushed the defender and made it 1-0 from six yards. After 50 minutes I went into the front room for dinner and a Chinese. Came back and we were losing 2-1, so who knows what happened there. The last 10 minutes seemed completely misshapen and I guess it was a friendly, but it’s hardly the ideal preparation for Arsenal away is it?
From what I saw Baird and Konchesky looked very solid, Smertin was organising things well but Davis was slightly underwhelming again. I guess he needs a bit more time to get up to speed after so long without regular football. Clint looked busy on the right without getting particularly involved, and Lee Cook was essentially missing in action, as left wingers are wont to be. McBride and Healy looked alright, the former missing a number of good chances. There we go: just a friendly and not important.
What I do wonder about is the logic of using Rosenior and Konchesky in midfield in the second half. I can’t forsee a situation where you’d want this to happen in a league game, so either Sanchez is using these games as a chance to get his fullbacks used to playing up the pitch, or something altogether weirder is happening. Despite my reservations about Liam, you might want his pace against Arsenal, but he hasn’t played at right back since Middlesbrough away last season, so that’s hardly ideal. I can only conclude that he’s not in Lawrie’s plans. As ever, we’ll just have to see.
The weekend is here so I’m happy. Hade and I are going to Lille on Sunday, back Wednesday, so that’ll be nice. I’ll see if I can find a Jean II Makoun shirt to bring back. Meanwhile, I’ll be writing tomorrow, after which I’ll leave you in Brian’s capable hands for a few days.
Bring on the bloody season! And my Arsenal tickets! Postal strikes are all very laudable but there are times when the consequences are more than a little annoying to innocent bystanders. Oh well, good luck to them and hopefully they’ll get what they want.
I hope you get you tickets vs. Arsenal and damn, I wish I was joining you. I also wish the that the team can keep some consistency and hold Arsenal close.
I will most likely not catch the Community Shield this weekend. And even though they are two teams that I would like to both see lose, I can’t help get a bit excited about the fact that this signifies that the season is upon us.
Hooray football, hooray beer, hooray life!
Comment by bqsoccer — August 3, 2007 @ 9:43 pm |