Coming on the heels of what Scott Parker had to say about us after Spurs escaped from Juss Jääskeläinen and 10 foosball men, when he claimed that Spurs has “players that Arsenal would want any day of the week”, I stumbled across a rather-delicious bit of news from last year in The Daily Mail. I wasn’t paying attention back then, but finding it now shows that I have even better timing than Gareth Bale. Apparently, Wenger was interested in buying Bale from Southampton but Bale, well, bailed and went to Spurs for £7million back in 2007. It seems that the financial terms he ended up signing are similar to the terms Walcott signed with us (click the link  to read if only to remember that we beat Chelsea to get Walcott). Perhaps Bale didn’t want to follow Walcott. Nothing wrong with a guy wanting to hoe his own road.

From the Daily Mail article, I learned that Bale grew up as an Arsenal fan, which shows that he has good taste in terms of whom to root for if not in terms of whom to play for. So it goes. It might have been to nice to have him, but I’m not complaining. I don’t hold any particularly strong feelings about him one way or the other, to be frank.

Here’s the fun part of the article, though–as it turns out, Mr. Parker wanted to come to Arsenal last summer. The article seems to get a little dodgy on its own details, though, quoting Wenger as saying,”when asked if he came close to signing Bale, Wenger said, ‘yes, but we had full-backs at the time. We had Clichy, we had Cole”. I’m not sure why Wenger would answer a question about Bale by referencing how many fullbacks we had at the time, but the salient point is how it relates to Parker’s comments earlier this week about us wanting Spurs players whom we want. He has it bass-ackwards–Spurs have players we demonstrably don’t want–him. He’s a fine player, don’t get me wrong. I have to admit that I enjoy the irony of the situation. Here’s to hoping it isn’t the last bit of irony in what Mr. Parker has been saying…

Well, in news that actually matters for Sunday, it looks like Sagna will miss the match thanks to his knee injury. Gibbs is still out, and no word that I can find on Koscielny’s availability. More on that when it comes available.