Arsenal’s link club UD Salamanca began their Segunda División season this afternoon with a 0-0 draw against Deportivo Alavés.
Alavés struggled in the League last year but came into the fixture as slight favourites following a summer of spending. Pedro Botelho has had a superb pre-season after initially spending two weeks with Arsenal, he smashed a goal against Villaymoor and claimed a valuable assist away to Mérida.
Botelho started at left back in a new look Salamanca team which has had some investment over the summer despite recent financial trouble, but Håvard Nordtveit failed a late fitness test.
The Helmántico attracted a large gathering of fans ahead of the kick off, with hundreds more being able to watch on Spanish Television. Botelho made several jinking runs down the left hand side, and proved a handful all game.
Two Alavés defenders were booked for reckless tackles on the silky Brazilian, who flashed two crosses in front of the visitors goal. Both sides struggled to get any tempo as time ticked down, but Pedro was clearly one of the better players on the park.
His defending has been described as ‘naive’ at times, but today he showed much better tactical awareness combined with his natural attacking influence.
An encouraging start of the new campaign for Salamanca, manager David Admiral has challenged them to aim for promotion, and the form of Pedro and Håvard will prove decisive in the hunt for honours.
Article By – J.Sanderson
Lets all hope for a confidence-boosting salamanca promotion
j do you think that he will be a left back when he comes to arsenal or a left midfielder, coz we do have gibbs and traore?
It would be excellent all around. Salamanca would get more money, Pedro and Havard would get confidence in a winning team, and future loanees could play in La Liga.
Traore is playing on the wing for Portsmouth and says he wants to be a winger, so he is not really a left back anymore.
Pedro needs to get better at defending, but he will be a fantastic addition when he arrives, probably as Clichy back up.
Managed to get the last 20 mins of the game and Botelho looked ok. Didnt get to see that much of him, i can see what u mean about his defending, he looks much like Traore does at Left back, a winger who has to try a bit of defending now and again.
And any1 complaining that the championship would be a better place to send european prospects on loan, the football i watched today was fast, technical and of good quality. They’ll learn more about playing the Arsenal way playign that kind of football every week than randomly lumping a ball around a pitch in Norwich (not trying to pick on Norwich specifically here).
Yep greay points Johnny, the game slowed down as things drew to a close which you can understand with it being the first game of the year.
Certainly excited about Pedro though.
How did we get on last night in cannes
Not known yet mate, I will update when i get more info.
When do you think Botelho will be making his move to get into our first team?
On another note, Frimpong caught my eye earlier in pre-season. What’s he up to at the moment?
where can u watch salamanca play
Norveidt was not injured, he just wasn´t picked for the team today and spent the game in the bench.
He will likely start next week against Sevilla Atlético, as the central defender David Catalá saw a red card today and will miss next match.
Mike – Very much so, but it’s still early days.
Frimpong is away with the Under 16’s in the Cannes Tournament which we have featured all week.
irishgunner – You can’t always unless you go to the game, but certain times they are on tv.
Thanks Javier :)
Jay ive been reading your posts for a while now but i must know why the black background? its hurt my eyes so much reading your page, can you not changer it?
JS, When will the next reports from the games in the Cannes tournament come?
btw. I agree with you jawbreaker, it should be red and white!!!
last night in cannes 1-1 at full time we won on pens 2-1 our keeper saved 2 it was 3 pens each not the usual 5
hey J. i would actually like to congratulate u 4 ur “BLACK BACKGROUND”…….why well according to google a black background helps to use the least contrast & thus “SAVES ELECTRICITY”
yep its true !!!
well shocking , just check dis site “http://www.blackle.com/”
i really hope Nordtveit gets well soon he is 1 hell of a gooner lad
I want to chip in and agree with Johnny Maverik, whose thoughts are generally right to good points.
Johnny’s right about loans to Spain as opposed to Championship clubs. That game is more like rugby than the football Arsenal play, so there are two downsides.
First, the loanees we send to Norwich (again, not singling them out) will spend a season launching the ball forward and jumping into rucks of players for no particular purpose.
Second, our guys come from SUCH a different system with so much more passing and technical football, they actually spend too much time on the bench because they aren’t suited to these weekly brawls. It took Kieran Gibbs, a quality player, forever just to get a game when he went to the Championship.
We can’t be loaning out prospects — guys we’re counting on to step forward as they get older — to clubs who won’t use them properly.
I realize Carlos Vela spent a couple of years in Spain so that’s not quite a like-for-like comparison, but look how advanced he appears in our first-team set-up. Carlos could be a critical guy in how the season unfolds, especially since RVP appears crocked again and Eduardo won’t be back for some time.
Still, my main point here is to agree with Joohnny that I’d rather see the kids in Spain than the Championship. I’ll bet when we see more of Fran Merida now that he’s back, he’ll look FAR closer to the finished article than if he’d gone to Norwich.
In fact, if this were just ONE year later, I think Fran would feature prominently in Arsene’s plans for the first team.
Thanks again for the reports from Cannes, Jamie.
Do we know how Coquelin is progressing in his adventures? I was seriously impressed with the boy in what we saw of him.
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