Brilliant line-up announced for the Emirates Cup

Arsenal have surpassed themselves this year with massive European giants Juventus and Real Madrid, along with Hamburg, travelling to North London to help their pre-season preparations in August this year.

The inaugural Emirates Cup will hopefully become a fixture in every year’s pre-season calendar, and with the likes of Robinho, Buffon and Van der Vaart amongst many others all hopefully making an appearance against The Gunners.

Once again there will be two games on each day of the weekend from the 2nd to the 3rd of August, and like last year there will be three points for a win, a point for a draw and a point for each goal they manage to score. With the attacking prowess that the like of Real and Juve are bound to offer, this should be a wonderful weekend of entertaining football for every Arsenal fan to enjoy.

This is what Edelman, Arsenal’s Managing Director, had to say on the tournament:

“After the huge success of last year’s tournament, we are very proud to be hosting the Emirates Cup again in August.

“We are also delighted at the calibre of the three visiting teams to this year’s Emirates Cup. The combination of Arsenal, Real Madrid, Juventus and Hamburg will offer an extremely entertaining weekend of football for the supporters at very good prices, and will also provide the teams with a very competitive level of pre-season preparation.”

Here are the fixtures in full:

Saturday 2nd August 2008
Real Madrid C.F v HSV Hamburg (2pm kick off)
Arsenal v Juventus FC (4.15pm kick off)

Sunday 3rd August 2008
Juventus FC v HSV Hamburg (2pm kick off)
Arsenal v Real Madrid C.F (4.15pm kick off)

This pre-season tournament adds to the already confirmed game that is to be played against Stuttgart on the Wednesday before this set of games.

Match ratings: Arsenal 1 - 1 Liverpool

Seems a bit pointless to do a match report for such a half hearted match, so i will instead just post match ratings.

Manuel Almunia - 5 - Did well enough, maybe could have done more with the goal though.
Justin Hoyte - 4 - Just not at it for mst of the match, needs games to improve and while he’s not getting games he won’t improve, so at the very least a loan spell is a must.
Kolo Touré - 4 - Keeps making little mistakes we’re not used to seeing from him.
William Gallas - 6 - Did alright, our most solid defnder easily.
Armand Traore - 5.5 - Terrible first half, much better in the second half. As I write this he is battering Tottenham’s Reserves on the left wing - he needs playing time but has massive potential. 

Gilberto Silva - 6 - Did a tidy job in the second half, far better than he has done in other games he has featured in.
Mathieu Flamini - 6.5 - Tried very hard as ever, didn’t look half as tired as Fabregas did, but didn’t quite cut it going forward.
Cesc Fabregas - 5.5 - Drifted in and out of the game, glimpses of the real Fabregas but generally poor. Must do better on Tuesday.
Emmanuel Eboue - 3 - Terrible yet again - doesn’t protect the defence enough, hasn’t got the quality at the other end either.
Theo Walcott - 6 - Poor first half, but did well in the second half once again.

Nicklas Bendtner - 6.5 - Should have scored two, but held the ball well and a good header for the equaliser.

Subs
Emmanuel Adebayor - 6.5 - Ran and ran, but didn’t really offer that much of an attacking threat.
Gael Clichy - 6 - Not much to say, wasn’t spectacular but wasn’t bad either.
Alexander Hleb - 5 - Vital moment to win the game and is control let him down for once. Typical.