SoccerBlogs

Arsenal will be trying their best to give Julio Cesar a thoroughly miserable time today. The 33-year old Brazilian keeper has been one of the rare plus points for the relegated team this season, often keeping them in matches with great reflex saves and his command of his penalty area.

Harry Redknapp is well aware that Premier League teams will be looking at some of his better players and knows that some of them will not be keen on trying to fight their way out of the championship.

Arsenal should defeat relegated QPR comfortably today as they aim to secure third place and a Champions league spot. QPR on the other hand will be reeling from the relegation they confirmed last weekend against Reading.

Harry Redknapp has already confirmed that he will stay with the club in the Championship next season and chairman Tony Fernandes has stated that promotion back to the top is not guaranteed in one or even two seasons.

Lukasz Fabianski has been an Arsenal player long enough to know all about the bitter rivalry between the Gunners and Tottenham Hotspur. The fact that the spuds have been pushing for a top four finish and Champions League football recently, while Arsene Wenger has been struggling to keep Arsenal there with very little money, has made this all the more tasty recently.

I can't fault the amount of goals that Olivier Giroud has scored for Arsenal this season, but he doesn't seem to have the urgency of a top-class attacker. I especially get exasperated with his post-miss performances; the blowing of cheeks; the holding his head in his hands; his banging of fists on the ground.

There were reports back in January that Arsenal were considering hijacking the transfer of the French striker Loic Remy from Marseille to QPR. Harry Redknapp was splashing the cash in a desperate attempt to halt his team's slide out of the Premier League and into the Championship. Although Remy has scored three goals in his five games, his presence does not look like it will be enough.

We do not know if Arsenal tried to sign Etienne Capoue from Toulouse in January, but he could have been the player Arsene Wenger was referring to when he said that a club had rejected a late transfer window offer for one of the Arsenal targets. Toulouse had sold Sissoko to Newcastle, and would have been left very light in midfield if they had also sold Capoue.

By Tony Attwood

The notion of a club's fans booing and jeering their own side, their manager, the board and anyone else locally they don't like was probably initiated by the fans of Woolwich Arsenal in the 19th century. (For more, see The Crowd at Woowlich Arsenal)

It has long since continued at Arsenal, [.

It sometimes seems as if Arsenal do the scouting for all of the other teams in the Premier league, because once stories hit the papers about some player that Arsenal have been watching, then the likes of Tottenham are usually being linked with them. It is common knowledge that Arsenal are looking to bring in a strong and defensively minded midfielder in January because of the recurring injury problems of Abou Diaby.

If Arsenal are serious about signing the West Ham midfielder Mohamed Diame as a permanent or temporary replacement for the injury prone Abou Diaby, then Arsene Wenger might need to act sooner rather than later, as the new QPR manager Harry Redknapp has identified the 25-year old Senegal international as the man to help him avoid relegation from the Premier league.

Football manager sackings are like buses in the Premier league this season, with two coming along at the same time this week. Arsenal could benefit, if the so called new manager syndrome kicks in for Chelsea and QPR this weekend. The bookies must have made a killing on Chelsea being the first club to sack their manager, as the early season favoutites were Liverpool, Southampton and Reading.

Every time Arsenal face Tottenham, we have stories hitting the press from their players or back room staff, claiming that Arsenal's time is up and the Spuds are about to become a top three or four club. Yesterday it was the motormouth, William Gallas, and today the assistant manager Steffen Freund is putting his case forward.

The arrival of the former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has made a significant difference to the fortunes of QPR in the last few weeks. Even though they still remain bottom of the table, they have collected several points since the arrival of Redknapp. Redknapp said a few weeks ago that he would like to strengthen the squad in the January transfer window by bringing in a few and selling several players.

Harry Redknapp insists that Queens Park Rangers will not engage in panic buying in January in a bid to lift themselves off the foot of the Premier League table.

QPR are six points from safety, and with a tough run of games coming up against Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, West Ham and Man City, and Redknapp admits he needs new additions in the window.

By Andy Ward

Harry Redknapp swapped his comfortable place on the Match of the Day sofa this week for the altogether more pressurized cauldron of uncertainty that is the Queens Park Rangers hot seat.

Nearly as many managers have come through the revolving doors at Loftus Road as players in recent years, quite an achievement when you consider that the R's have assembled virtually a new team in each of the last three seasons.

Queens Park Rangers unveil new manager Harry Redknapp who faces a daunting task keeping the club in the Premier League. The Loftus Road club are bottom of the Premier League with four points from 13 games and seven points from safety.

"We've got to do better to give ourselves any chance of getting out of this mess," said Redknapp, who replaced the sacked Mark Hughes at the weekend.

Former Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp has responded to reports linking him with the vacant manager's position at Blackburn Rovers. Blackburn have found life difficult after being relegated from the Premiership, and Redknapp has moved quickly to distance himself from the vacancy.

"It's not something I would look to do or look to do in the future.

I can't quite understand it myself and most Arsenal fans are feeling pretty good this week with the news that Harry Redknapp has been sacked by Spurs. This is credit to a manager who has made our neighbours a genuine threat for the first time in what feels like forever. And yet, most Spurs fans are happy too!