Boa viagem Baptista

Julio Baptista, Arsenal’s Brazilian player on loan for the season from Real Madrid, seems to be reading from the Jose Antonio Reyes script of blaming the lifestyle in England and the weather for his own lousy form.

Baptista’s nickname is The Beast and he’s a big old boy but he doesn’t have the ability to match his size. Real Madrid realised that and let him come to Arsenal after he couldn’t win a starting spot in a poor Real team. With Arsenal he’s only started eight Premiership games and it would have been less if Henry and Van Persie weren’t injured.

He’s been telling The Times how bad teams in the north of England are and how ‘the weather over here is killing me. We’ll get one day of sunshine for every 30 days of rain, and it is driving me to despair. My girlfriend and my mother are frightened about not seeing the sun in England.’
He needs to get out of bed more, its been beautiful weather for the last month, I planted a couple of plants this week and the earth is absolutely dry as a bone, even a foot down, we haven’t had rain for ages.

Baptista’s had one moment of glory with Arsenal, scoring four goals against Liverpool in a Carling Cup game, that’s about it. His control is not that good, for someone his size he should be more aggressive, he doesn’t make a tenth of Drogba’s impact and he needs lots of attempts to score a goal. He’s taken two penalties for Arsenal in the last couple of months and missed them both and had an incredible miss in the 4-1 defeat at Anfield recently.

Blaming the weather and other non issues is taking the easy way out. I don’t think Arsene Wenger would have offered him a full time contract and The Beast is saving face. If he’s in an Arsenal or Real Madrid shirt next season I’ll be amazed.