Some Arsenal legends lined up a few days ago for a photoshoot to promote the upcoming legends game against Real Madrid to raise money for the Arsenal Foundation.

Faces were instantly recognisable, except for one.

Pat Rice, Robert Pires, Ray Parlour, David Seaman, Nigel Winterburn  and Bob Wilson were in the line up.

Thos 6 players have a medal haul of 13 league titles and 15 FA Cups between them, playing over 2,700 games for The Arsenal.

But it is the player wearing glasses, standing infront of Pires and Parlour that has caused some mystery, plenty of giggles, and a lot of questioning.

Jeremie Aliadiere joined Arsenal as a 16-year-old back in 1999 – the same Arsenal signed another legend in Thierry Henry.

In 2001, he led the line as Arsenal romped to FA Youth Cup victory, a side that contained the likes of Jermaine Pennant, Steve Sidwell, Rohan Ricketts and Jerome Thomas.

He would make his Premiership debut for Arsenal against Fulham in the 2001–02 season, replacing Thierry Henry in a 4–1 victory, scoring his first goal for the club the following season, in a 5–2 victory over West Bromwich Albion.

Big things were expected of the young Frenchman, but in 7 years in North London he played just over 50 games.

Injury curtailed his promising career, alongside less than impressive loan moves to Celtic, Wolves and West Ham.

In 2007, he joined Middlesbrough for £2 million, who he would stay with for 3 years before joining Lorient and then Umm Salal in Qatar.

He returned to Lorient before leaving again at the end of 2016/17, returning to Arsenal to use Arsenal’s London Colney training ground in order to build up his fitness.

Now 35, Aliadiere is without a club and playing for the Arsenal legends team.

It is during his return to Arsenal that he got involved with the legends side.

Robert Pires – who over the last 3 or 4 years has used the training ground as his personal gym, would have spent some time training alongside his fellow Frenchman. Pires, in his role as Arsenal Ambassador, is heavily involved with the foundation, representing the club at home and abroad.

This friendship has seemingly opened the door to Aliadiere to play in the legends games.

A few people have scoffed at the term “legend” being used to describe a team that contains someone like Aliadiere, and whilst he in himself is certainly not a legend, do not forget that he is an invincible.

In the 2003–04 season, Aliadiere made 10 league appearances for Arsenal ,enough to get him a Premier League medal in the unbeaten season.

That medal sits alongside 2 Community Shield victories in Aliadiere’s trophy cabinet.

At 21, Aliadiere could call himself an invincible. Not too many players in world football can do that. Certainly not Harry Kane, who despite his goal scoring antics for Tottenham and England is still yet to win a major honour.

Kane turns 25-years-old in a couple of weeks, and is at risk of wasting his talent by remaining at Spurs for his entire career.

The World Cup golden boot winner has just signed a new deal with Tottenham keeping him at the club until he is 31. With Tottenham being trophyless for the last decade, no amount of individual honours and hat trick balls will make up for a lack of team trophies in his cabinet.

Aliadiere might not be an Arsenal legend, but he is an invincible.

Fair play to him

Keenos

Some of us have waited for years for this. It’s been a while since I got to July and felt excited rather than resigned to more of the same.  Quite frankly if we didn’t make these changes I don’t think I could have managed another season.

Ivan told us about the Catalyst for Change….. like me, you may have been one of those who wanted it immediately and thought it was just more of the same spin from the club.

Looking back now, the changes, not just in personnel, but in creating a new culture was never going to happen over night.  They got this one right and despite some of the hatred towards the board, I can’t really criticise them right now, these changes were brave, bold and months in the planning.  It’s going to be easy to hold on to all the resentment many of us feel for them, but it’s time to let that go. Let’s judge them in May!

5 players, brand new back room team and what appears to be a whole new era for us as a club.

I thought they would go for the easy option, someone who would tow the line, someone they could control. Unai doesn’t seem to be that man.  As a club we now have properly designated roles and have made that important distinguish between on and off the pitch activities, so hopefully we can get on with talking about the real business….. football.

At Boreham Wood on Saturday we saw a manager standing up for much of the game, giving directions, giving praise. We saw players who were desperately trying to impress their new boss. We played some lovely passing football, movement was good and our senior players stepped up, like they should. Yes I know it was just Boreham Wood, but these games are important to bring us together and also for Unai to take a proper look at what he’s got. Not sure how many Arsenal went but it must have been 5,000. Babies to pensioners, all excited and lucky to be part of that game and the new era. I stood waiting for the coach to arrive (haven’t done that for 30 years!) and felt like I did all those years ago.  At one point on Saturday, my Dad looked at Unai and said ‘He even looks like George’, suddenly I was catapulted back to a 12 year old. The Arsenal are back.

I didn’t hear the W word once, maybe in time people will look back with some nostalgia at those years, but for now it’s all about the future.

The club have done what we asked, you could argue it was a bit late but I think most of us could agree that they’ve actually done  more than we ever expected, so now it’s up to us.  It’s up to us to get behind them, exercise some patience and to play a part in putting the The back in to Arsenal.

I could moan about not having a yellow kit, I could moan about the distinct lack of British players, but I won’t (at least not for now).

There is an air of apprehension about us right now from other clubs. I’ve heard this season is going to be the season the lot up the road finally win a trophy. I love that. I love the fact that they continue with the same old crap year after year with a misplaced belief. I love it that the past two years gave them this distorted view of their emergence and our decline. When you are a top club, the only thing that matters over time is the ethos, the class and the honours list. Think that is 1-0 to The Arsenal.

Let’s start as we mean to go on. Put the anger to bed, win lose or draw let’s remember Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Welcome back The Arsenal.

*JD*