Today I embark on a journey that will see me climb the UK’s three biggest ‘peaks’ (although I have some kiwis in my team that assure me that they’re just ‘inclines’ – they would know I guess) in the space of 24 hours and, if you were to see the amount of paraphernalia I have with me as I sit on this slightly stuffy Metropolitan line train, you’d think I was taking the snowy slopes of Caradhras. Not a walking expedition. Perhaps I am too over-prepared in terms of my gear and underprepared in terms of my mental state.

A bit like England really. Woy has over-prepared in attack by sticking far too many attackers, but Wilshere aside, has absolutely no craft whatsoever in midfield. So unless there will just be long balls in to channels for runners during the Euro’s, England’s expedition will fall horribly short of what the players are talking up.

To be fair though, England hardly have a glut of proper playmakers. People will point me in the direction of Alli, but he’s not a playmaker. He’s a supporting attacking-midfielder. A goalscorer. A Frank Lampard type. Which is why Woy was so desparate for Wilshere to go to the Euro’s. Quite simply, he’s all England have of that type of player.

What Woy wouldn’t give to have a Santi Cazorla along too, I bet. If only Santi had an English grandmother and had never played for Spain. Even at 31, I bet he’d have taken him despite only recently coming back to fitness. After all, he set precedent with Jack, so it would be doable. 

Except Santi’s not English, there is no other deep-lying playmaker, and the muppets who think Danny Drinkwater should have gone instead of Jack are symptomatic of the modern day ‘stars’ fans. Stats are useful sometimes, most of the time, but when it comes to football fan ‘oneupmanship’, I find it all tedious. I’m sure you could find enough stats out there to tell you Fellaini is the best target striker in the Premier League. He’s not. He’s really, clearly, not. He’s just taller than most people and has razor sharp elbows. Nikola Zigic was tall too, don’t you know, but he was also dog sh*te. 

Anyway, what else has been happening? Oh yeah, good old Tommy Rozza got himself an archetypal Rosicky finish against the Russians the day before last, which sure earns him a John Terryesque ‘one more year’ deal, doesn’t it? 

No. Because as much as we love him, we need to move on and another year of niggly injuries is not exactly what we need for next season, not with every other team buying younger, fitter and stronger players. I will cheer on Rosicky in every game he plays and I hope he stays fit the whole time, but I won’t be fooled into thinking that we could get 35 games out of him, sadly.

Another bit of info I neglected to mention yesterday, was a cheeky little assist for Hector Bellerin, which inevitably led to a few worried Gooners on Thursday. The Catalan press can talk up a signing all they want with Alves going out the door, but without much cash to flash at Arsenal and a player happy at the club, I’m less worried than I was with Cesc.

The thing about Cesc was that he always said he’d one day like to play for Barca. We’ve since found out how disruptive he was, how he engineered the move and was a general pain in the arse, but all the noises suggest Bellerin is nothing of the sort and for that we can all be grateful. Barcelona have other positions they have to worry about this summer, not as much cash as they’d like and so unless they can drop a megaton of notes on Colney, that move won’t be happening any time soon. Still, we all know how much Stan likes a Ranch and a leveraged finance deal, so perhaps that would count towards his £3million management fee for the next financial year:

Yee-Haw boys! £40million you say? I sez take it, I’m gonna use the cash to buy summa George Lucas’ home!

I’m pretty sure that is definitely the reason we’d sell Bellerin this summer.

Not sure there’s anything else blabbering on about today, is there? Probably not. I don’t want to get in to any kind of debates about the whys and wherefore’s of what Arsène said yesterday on the official site about how he develops players rather than go for personal glory (except maybe to say that perhaps it was a sly dig at Jose?), so I’ll let you have a read yourself here.