march 25th
19.55 – Arsene Wenger received a phone call this morning from Paris. He was hoping for good news, but knew deep down it was likely to be bad. The news came through that Robert Pires had damaged his cruciate ligament and would be out for several months.
‘Merde’, he thought, ‘what a great load of bollocks this is. I wish he’d landed on that Dabizas bastard instead, then none of this would have happened’.
He took the long walk from his office to the training pitch where the players were finishing up for the day. “Garçons” he said, “I have some bad news about Robert, he will not play again this season”. Nobody said anything at first, then a lone, plaintive sob broke the silence.
“There, there Oleg”, he said, putting an arm around his Ukrainian defender, “I know, I know”.
“You know why this happened, don’t you?” asked Kanu. “It’s Danish witchcraft. That red nosed, pig farming, bacon advertising, scotch drinking leviathan has called on the ancient Norse gods to strike down the man who humiliated him last week”.
“For sure” said Dennis Bergkamp, “I tried some Dutch witchcraft on him after he saved that penalty, Unfortunately it just made his cheese mouldy and his clogs unwearable”.
All the while Vieira, Henry and Wiltord stood in silence, brooding, contemplating life without the 4th musketeer. “You know what this means”, said Henry. Vieira and Wiltord looked up. “One for all, and all for……”
“JUAN!!” said Juan. “Quiet you” said David Seaman, and put Juan back in his pocket, “I told you stay in there and keep your mouth shut. I can’t bring you anywhere, can I?”
Thierry Henry’s reaction to the Pires injury here. French manager Roger Lemerre blames the gruelling schedule for Bob’s injury here.
13.33 – The news we all feared. Pires is out for the rest of the season. He’s suffered serious cruciate ligament damage and is to undergo surgery this week. Obviously he’s going to miss the world cup as well.
It’s a huge blow for Arsenal at this stage of the season. To lose the most creative player in the team is going to make life very hard for us, but I suppose the form of Dennis Bergkamp will help to a certain degree. In terms of the team, I’d play Freddie out left and one of Wiltord, Lauren or Parlour on the right. Arsenal always seem to thrive when up against it, and I hope this makes the rest of the players more focussed and determined to win something this season. Let’s hope Bob can be back with the squad as soon as possible, coz when there’s laps of honour to be done, he deserves to hobble around on his crutches and be part of it.
The other thing to consider is how will it affect Bob. He’s been playing the football of his life, and would have starred in the World Cup. Will he ever recapture the form of this season? I guess it’s a test of the mental strength of a player, as well as the physical. Maybe it’s just me, but this type of injury seems to be more prevelant over the last few seasons? Is it because players are such finely tuned athletes that when something goes wrong, it goes really wrong? They’re like thoroughbred horses. For a full list of our injuries this season, see March 23rd.
Anyway, I’m sure the player of the year award will cheer him up a bit when it comes, but in the meantime Arseblog would like to wish Monsieur Pires all the very best in his recovery and we’d like to thank him for his incredible contribution to our season so far.
Get well soon.
11.15 – So Liverpool are top of the league. I really hate Liverpool, the bain of my life for many years. Try growing up an Arsenal fan with a Liverpool supporting brother when they were winning all the time. Not only that, it was my little brother. Granted, he’s been very quiet right throughout the ’90s, but he’s starting to annoy me again now.
The signing of the season has to be Jerzy Dudek though – what a great goalkeeper he is. I think if Arsenal had signed him like they were supposed to, we’d be a few points clear at the top of the table. He was so close to joining us that the people that run www.arsenal.com even put his player profile up the website. Then it all fell through and we signed Richard Wright. Hurrah. Dudek replaced Sander Westerveld at Anfield, apparently Houllier wanted rid of the Dutchman not long after he signed, but just didn’t have the heart to tell him. Sorry.
Meanwhile, Paddy has had a right pop at Deportivo La Coruña for their dismal showing against Bayer Leverkeusen last week. Read about it here. He also says that he’s going to talk to the club about prolonging his stay, which we’re glad to hear. He’d been accused of making empty promises by saying he’d see out the 2 years left on his deal, forcing Arsenal to sell him.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that I still haven’t heard a thing from ITV after sending yet more emails. Obviously they’re too busy trying to bankrupt half the football clubs in the country.
