British long-distance runner Mo Farah has completed a fantastic Olympics for Arsenal fans with his second gold medal of the competition, this time in the 5,000 metres. A week ago Mo won the 10,000 metres on “Super Saturday”, but I don’t think that I was the only one who knew that he wasn’t quite finished.
Farah won with a time of 13 minutes 44 seconds, becoming only the sixth member of an elite group of athletes who have won both long distance events at the same Olympics.
Twitter is full of congratulatory messages from Arsenal fans, including a few who have suggested that Arsenal should erect a statue of Farah holding his two gold medals outside the Emirates Stadium. This is obviously hugely unlikely; the statues should be reserved for former Arsenal players and managers only, and there are a number of other players who deserve statues. I do think, however, that there is a possibility that he will be invited to parade around the stadium before the opening game of the 2012/13 season against Sunderland.
In other news, Arsenal will play their final pre-season friendly tomorrow away to FC Koln. The Gunners have been at a training-camp in Germany all week, with a squad that includes newcomers Olivier Giroud, Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla. The squad also contains Laurent Koscielny, Robin van Persie and Per Mertesacker, none of whom have yet featured for Arsenal in this pre-season. Tomas Vermaelen has captained Arsenal in our previous pre-season games so it will be interesting to see if Wenger continues with this or reverts to RvP as captain. There were rumours on Twitter earlier in the week that the Dutchman had left the training camp to negotiate a deal with Manchester United, although these have been proved to be incorrect.
The match kicks off at 4pm BST and is being shown on both ESPN and Arsenal Player. Wenger’s team choice will be particularly telling as it could indicate who will start next week against Sunderland.
