19 July: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazite)

by Tony Attwood

The 2008/9 pre-season had the usual level of comings and goings with Mathieu Flamini, who had had a superb season in 2007/8 moving onto Milan at the end of his contract, and Lehmann joining Stuttgart on a free, Gilberto signing for Panathinaikos, Hleb going to Barcelona, and Justin Hoyte going to Middlesbrough.

Coming in we had a new physio Neal Reynolds who replaced Gary Lewin, and the signing of new contracts by Sanga, Song, Clichy and Adebayor. Carlos Vela at last got a work permit, Aaron Ramsey came from Cardiff, Nasri from Marseille, and Silvestre from Man U.

The club played nine pre-season matches starting on this day…

  • 19 July 2008: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazile)
  • 22 July 2008: Szombathelyi Halads 1 Arsenal 1 (Walcott)
  • 28 July 2008: Burgenland XI 2 Arsenal 10 (Wilshere 2, Bendtner 4, Vela 3, Walcott)
  • 30 July 2008: VFB Stuttgart 1 Arsenal 3 (Vela, Bendtner, Wilshere)
  • 2 August 2008 Arsenal 0 Juventus 1 (Emirates)
  • 3 August 2008: Arsenal 1 Real Madrid  0 (Adebayor) (Emirates)
  • 6 August 2008: Huddersfield Town 1 Arsenal 2 (Watt, Barazite)
  • 8 August 2008 Ajax 2 Arsenal 3 (Adebayor 2, Bendtner) (Amsterdam)
  • 9 August 2008 Sevilla 1 Arsenal 1 (Vela) (Amsterdam).

So once again Arsenal crammed in both an Emirates tournament and the one in Amsterdam.

And then they were straight into the play off match for the Champions League (as a result of coming fourth in the league the previous season).  The results were

  • 13 August 2008: Twente 0 Arsenal 2 (Gallas, Adebayor)
  • 27 August 2008: Arsenal 4 Twente 0. (Nasri, Gallas, Walcott, Bendtner)

As for the 2008/9 season itself, that had a mixed start, with the encouragement of a 1-0 home win against WBA on the first game being deflated by a 1-0 defeat to Fulham away in the second.

Footnote: Barazite never played for Arsenal, but he did get 30 games on loan with Derby and 9 on loan with Vitesse before being sold to Austrai Wien in 2011 – scoring 12 in 34 games – a rather good return rate.    His longest spell at any club was 2014 to 2017 with Utrecht for whom he played 75 games and scored 16 goals.

His final stop was playing 14 games for Buriram United in Thailand in 2019/20.  Although he never played for the Dutch national team he did play for this country at under 17, under 19, under 20 and under 21 level (9 games at this level).

At that point we lose sight of him – another Arsenal youngster who played across the world, but has now vanished from public view.

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