So the new Barclays Premier League season 2011-12 kicks off in just a few hours and when most teams are making final preparations to get their season going (after having a pre-season to bed their new players in) Arsenal are still right in the middle of the Fabregas and Nasri saga. It is just unbelievable.
How are the team supposed to focus on todays match against Newcastle when all of this hangs over them? It's become more than a farce now - season after season - when Wenger should be concentrating on strengthening the team and plugging the gaps that existed the season before, he spends most of the summer in a dispute with Barcelona.
I think this is seriously going to harm our chances of doing well this season. We limped into fourth place last season, have still to qualify for the Champions League proper and now we will have to fight off a resurgent Liverpool as well as the likes of Man U, Man City, Chelsea and Spurs. We could be playing the the flipping Europa League next season! I really hope that's not the case.
Until recently, like in many areas of London, if you walked through the streets of central Brixton after the shops had closed you'd be met by rows of imposing grey steel shutters.
Many businesses rank the protection of their livelihoods higher than any aestetic impact and these ugly looking barricades, whilst offering security, make many of our streets look like barren ghost towns after dark.
Recently however, the drab-looking shutters along the streets of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road in Brixton, South London have been brightened up.
Shops such as Brixton Wholefoods, Atlantic Meat Market, BEM Music and Clear Prints Digital have been transformed with colourful and interesting grafitti art.
The man responsible, Malarky, is a street artist, originally from South London and his work has been featured on shop shutters in Madrid and Barcelona, where he lived until recently.
I think that they are great and bring an interesting dimension to the streets of Brixton. Hopefully some of the other businesses will follow suit.
