Happy Tuesday to you. No real team news ahead of tomorrow night but you can speculate that Cesc probably won’t play and I’d be surprised to see Henry involved too.
Theo Walcott will be though even though he’s just three games away from costing Arsenal another £1m. Thierry has urged people to give him more time, saying:
One thing about Theo for all of us to remember is that he is only 17.It is not an easy time when you are 17 – trust me, I was there. I was struggling at 17. Against Wigan, Theo had a great game. All of the opportunities we had in the first half were coming from Theo.
Certainly he had a good first half and Henry is probably feeling a little guilty that he didn’t put that great chance away which certainly would have been a boost to Theo after a good run and cross. Let’s hope the little period where he’s really struggled is now over and you just feel that a goal or an assist would make a huge difference to him.
The captain acknowledges the fact that we’re not playing particularly well at the moment but he’s of the same opinion as me – winning ugly is better than losing points playing beautiful football. He says:
Trust me, we are not going 1-0 down on purpose. Somehow we always manage to get back into it and that’s why I feel this team is growing. Two years ago I remember being behind against some teams and we did not find the resources to come back.
At some point though a dogged defence or a keeper in the form of his life is going to keep us out so it would be nice to see us go ahead by a goal or two once in a while!
The win against Wigan was Arsene Wenger’s 200th home win in his ten year reign.
Reports this morning have linked us with a summer move for Liverpool’s Scott Carson. He’s currently on loan at Charlton and impressed when we played them recently at home. It seems more and more likely that Jens Lehmann will leave in the summer and despite what the manager says about Manuel Almunia and Mart Poom I can’t see either of them being promoted to first choice. Somebody like Carson would fit the bill perfectly, young, talented and in need of first team football. Unless Benitez sees him playing ahead of Reina then something could happen here. Other keepers linked include Hearts Craig Gordon and Celtic’s Polish keeper Artur Boruc.
Robert Pires says he’s bought a Highbury flat because he loves the club so much. There was a longer version of this Sun snippet somewhere but I can’t find it. Happily he’s on the verge of making his comeback after a knee injury so fingers crossed the rest of this season goes well for him at Villarreal.
Gunnerblog has the sad story of Danny Karbootsale who grew up at Arsenal but things have gone badly for him since forcing his early retirement from the game at just 22. Good luck to him – and some people might notice that when you find a story on another blog it’s good manners to actually link to that story rather than write your own fucking version of it.
And that is about that. More tomorrow.
