february 18th
We’ll start this morning with team news ahead of tomorrow’s FA Cup 5th round tie against Sheffield United. With next week’s Champions League game in mind the boss is ready to rest a few players to keep them fresh for Bayern Munich. He says “Certainly some of the players who have played a lot of games recently will get a breather.”
That means Henry and Vieira will most likely sit it out while we’ll also be without Edu and Sol Campbell through injury while Ashley Cole still has the flu. Edu should be fit for next week but Sol seems almost certain to miss out. With those players out of the side it’ll be Double-F in midfield as Fabregas and Flamini do their thing while Robin van Persie will start up front. Manuel Almunia (what a thoroughly nice bloke he appears to be) will be in goal as the second choice keeper always plays in the cup and we might see Emmanuel Eboue at right back. It’ll be a tough game against a team with nothing to lose.
Lauren talks about life at Arsenal, how his fight with Patrick Vieira was nothing serious, our form this season and about José Antonio’s homesickness – “If you taped me 24 hours every day, all my conversations, I would say many things that people wouldn’t like!”
Arseweb has a nice piece on UEFA’s new rulings which clears things up a bit. José Mourinho has a dig at Arsene Wenger with regard to English players – easy to do when you can spend as much as you like on a player and at the end of the day Chelsea only have one more regular first teamer who’s English (you can’t convince me Joe Cole is a regular) so you can go stick it José, you scruffy cunt. And surely Chelsea have to take some of the blame for inflating the prices of English players. Glen Johnson for £6m? Scott Parker for £10m? Give me a break.
So there you go. I’ve got a match tomorrow on that cool new astroturf which will make a change from the skin-stripping dirt pitches we normally play on. Sliding tackles ahoy! What are you up to for the weekend then?
