“I can now officially say I am an Arsenal player” – the irony of a statement from an unofficial, or ‘fake’ Santi Cazorla Twitter profile, that still managed to dupe a hell of a lot of people into thinking that there was an announcement about to be made on the protracted transfer saga of a Spanish international.

We all know that fake profiles are just the way of social media life nowadays. Attention seeking morons pretending to be somebody else for nothing more than a little attention. Extremely pathetic and a source of much irritation for those people that use Twitter as a social platform to converse with like-minded individuals who might have something in common. In my case, and yours too, it’s about talking to, and hearing from, fellow gooners.

So where’s the problem if they aren’t actually doing any harm to anybody? I guess there isn’t really a problem, until you learn that media organisations are beginning to pick up these phantom accounts and use their content as a facts-based ‘story’. Sky Sports last night took the bait and ran with the news that Cazorla had admitted he’d signed. Which of course he hadn’t. In fact, after seeing the story appear I did a quick Google search and found out through forums and a Twitter link to the Malaga profile that the account had been deemed fake about a month ago. That’s all it took. I’m no journalist, I don’t get paid to write, yet a few seconds on a search engine and I found my answer.

What all of this essentially boils down to is that when media sources that you actually thought were a little bit closer to the truth are using their own ‘sources’ like that to determine what to publish, we’re probably all better off just being cynical to everything and waiting for official confirmation before getting our hopes up. It’s pretty obvious this deal is going to happen – no smoke without fire and all that – but lets wait until its official and say “who cares who broke it first?”

An Arsenal XI played Dartford last night, and whilst I know the score was 2-1 to Dartford, I can’t really go into too much detail because I didn’t watch the game. What I did do last night was to flick on to the Arsenal website occasionally – for no reason at all – and see that Abou Diaby is looking forward to playing with Mikel Arteta this season. Whether or not that actually happens I guess depends entirely on Abou on two counts: 1) he stays fit, and 2) he gets regular game time. Assuming Cazorla is done and Sahin is close, competition in the middle of the park is going to be tight. When Wilshire comes back I have Diaby down as a fifth choice midfielder, which means even his own fitness might not get him the game time he needs. Anyway, it’s good to see him training properly and having a decent pre-season and lets hope he’s become allergic to the treatment table.

Olivier Giroud thinks Arsenal can upset the odds like Montpellier did last season and win the league. I like his ambition and it’s good that we’ve got somebody who’s just tasted victory and wants it again, but I’m not too sure I like the comparison with a team that was probably seen to be the same sort of club size as a team like Fulham, maybe I’m being a bit of a football snob though. We are a big club and every player should believe we could win the league. If any players don’t, then we should be showing the exit of London Colney to them.

I think that will probably do me for today. Have a good Friday people, and remember to only refresh the Arsenal homepage every 15 minutes – otherwise you might just go mad.