Samir Nasri Shines as Arsenal Win 3-0, Eduardo Departs

It's Thursday morning and my old knees don't feel too good after last night's football, but it won't keep me from the task of keeping everybody up to date on all things Arsenal as I see them.

Firstly the club confirmed yesterday afternoon what we all knew already—that Eduardo has been sold to Shaktar Donetsk. The rumoured price is £6 million, and I suppose it's a fair price for a player who has played very little football in over two years as he struggled to overcome the horrific injury he got at Birmingham in February 2008.

I spoke at length about my thoughts on the subject yesterday and there's not really too much I can add to that. I will however say again that I am sad to see him go and I wish him the very best with his new club. I hope that the Arsenal fans will get a chance to show him exactly how they feel about him at some stage as I think both him and us would like that.

There's a personal message from Eduardo on the club site in which he says some very nice things about the club and its fans. It's well worth reading and I'm not afraid to admit that it brought a tear to my eye. The boss also spoke of his sadness at Eduardo leaving, but he said at his age Eduardo needed to be at a club where he would be playing and you can't argue with that. 

There was also the small matter of our second pre-season friendly yesterday as we took on Sturm Graz. It ended up with a fairly comfortable 3-0 victory for Arsenal with Samir Nasri getting two goals and Henri Lansbury getting the other.

The star of the show was Nasri, with a well-taken strike from outside the box early on and an excellent free kick just before halftime. He had a great reputation as a dead ball expert before he joined us but he hasn't had too many chances to display his ability since then, with others seemingly ahead of him in the pecking order.

Another player who got a lot of praise after yesterday's game was Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, who performed very well when he came on for the second half. JET has an awful lot of ability, and the biggest problem would seem to be how to harness that and find the best position for him to play in. Hopefully the boss can do that and we will see a lot more of him this season.

Yet again Manuel Almunia was nowhere to be seen as Lukasz Fabianski played in goals in the first half and Wojciech Szczesny took over for the second half. Vito Mannone didn't get a look in either, and I wonder if it is an indication of things to come.

Another interesting point in yesterday's game was the naming of Thomas Vermaelen as captain for the day. He's only been at the club a year, and he has Cesc Fabrigas, Robin van Persie and Almunia ahead of him in the running for the captain's armband, but he is probably the player most suited to that role in our squad at the moment.

I've always thought that a captain needs to be part of the core of the team and that the best player to have as a captain is a centre back or a defensive midfielder who can lead by example as well as making himself heard on the pitch.

There's still talk of Mark Schwarzer joining us, and apparently the deal isn't quite dead yet. There were reports yesterday that we had offered him a goalkeeping coaching role at the club when his playing days are over, but I don't know what truth is in it.

I'm still not sure that he is the right keeper for us and it looks like the boss will be giving the current keepers plenty of chances before the season starts. If we don't sign a keeper we might get an indication of who the first choice for the new season is when we play our final pre-season friendly against Legia Warsaw. The chances are that the boss will play his strongest team possible in that game, although Cesc and RVP will have been back less than a week and will probably sit it out.

There are reports that the boss will afford Barcelona an audience at some stage soon but when and where I don't know. The team are in Austria for the next five days before their next match so I can't see him flying out to meet their representative anywhere. But if and when he does talk to them, I hope he only has two words for them and the second one is "off!"

The boss also said that he hopes that Jack Wilshere will be integrated as part of the first team squad this season and it looks like he will get plenty of chances in pre-season to prove that he can do just that. He also said that he is hopeful of Campbell staying and as far as I know, he's due back from his honeymoon next week and he will make his decision then. It looks like the boss will wait until then before deciding whether we sign another centre back or not.

Finally for today there's the small matter of my Fantasy league and the fact that it now has over 100 teams in it, which means that there will be a trophy for the winner. If you want to sign up, the link is here and the code to join my league is 33954-12064 after you have set up a team. 

If you do sign up please, take the time to join Captain Arsenal's league too, as he has been a great help to me in promoting my blog on Twitter. The code to join his league is 13028-5211 and he would be delighted to welcome you to his league.

Here's the highlights from yesterday's game.

See You Tomorrow.