Andrei Arshavin: Either Dennis Latcher Is Deluded or the Media Are Bored

Arsenal's Russian assassin—particularly if you are Pepe Reina's goal—Andrei Arshavin has enjoyed such a tremendous start at the Emirates, that most Arsenal fans have taken to nicknaming him "AK-47".

As enjoyable as Arshavin has been on the pitch, he has also been as enjoyable off it.

Not one to shrink from giving his opinion, Arshavin has given his thoughts on women, driving, economics, and football itself.

However, virtually from the time he arrived at Arsenal he has had to put up with the idiocy of the British gutter press.

At the time of his signing, numerous media outlets claimed that the deal had fallen through and Arshavin had been spotted at London City Airport to hop a flight back to Russia.

In fact, he was having dinner with his new employers.

Oh, and the airport was shut due to heavy snow.

Over the next months he was continually linked with a move to Barcelona—a team he has long admired.

I doubt Arsenal fans are as deluded to think that if Arshavin had a choice in January between the North London club and Barcelona, the Russian would not have chosen Barcelona.

However, Barcelona failed to take the gamble, one indeed they didn't need to take, and Arshavin put pen to paper in North London.

Now that Real Madrid has signed Kaka, Ronaldo, Benzema, and Albiol, the British rags have decided that Barcelona must be feeling left out, so have linked them with Andrey Arshavin yet again and crazily based on quotes made even before he joined Arsenal.

Today, Sky Sports News and that bastion of honesty Goal.com have decided that Arshavin is "unhappy" at Arsenal and his agent is begging Barcelona to make an offer.

"Before anything else, Barcelona should make a formal offer," Lachter told COM Radio.

"Then we can sit down and speak."

This quote appears both on SkySports.com and Goal.com under the respective headlines "Barcelona to make a formal bid for Arsenal star Andrey Arshavin" and "Barcelona Should Bid For Arsenal's Arshavin—Agent, Arsenal will not be happy after Andrey Arshavin's agent invited Barcelona to try and sign him..."

However, Sky Sports in its "article" goes on to admit that Arshavin in fact parted company two weeks ago with his "agent" Dennis Latcher.

The following appeared on Andrey Arshavin's own web site (via translation):

“The official site of Andrey Arshavin reports about the curtailment of collaboration between the Russian team captain and Arsenal player Andrey Arshavin and Dennis Latcher.”

So either Dennis Latcher is a very deluded man who still thinks he is agent for a player who parted ways with him after the end of the season as he sought to represent himself.

Or perhaps Latcher wasn't talking about Arshavin at all. Not once in that little snippet of a quote is Arshavin mentioned.

Indeed, the quote could be a year old when Arshavin was looking for a move away from Zenit St. Petersburg.

Either way it is a sad indictment of Sky Sports who acknowledge that Latcher no longer is the player's agent but ran the story nonetheless.

What's even more disturbing is that the story first appeared on Goal.com and a slightly different copy ran on SkySports.com about 10 minutes later.

Perhaps Rupert Murdoch needs to put a sand pit with buckets and spades into his employees' offices because they are getting so bored now that they aren't bothered if the story is complete trash.

Then again, did they ever care?

*The Goal.com "article" has since been removed