In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And Guinness.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darknesss. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night,” and the “dark stuff” he called Guinness. And some time later, when he had invented people and pubs and seats and barrels and pipes and pumps and pint glasses, the people did drink the Guinness and the Guinness was good.
The next morning the people did *boilk* and God did laugh at them saying, “Wait till you need to go for a poo. It shall be all black and probably a little bit burny”. God is a bit of a bastard like that.
Morning to you all. I do hope you’re feeling in finer fettle than I. Yet through rain, shine, hangovers, hangunders and various other ailments, a steaming fresh Arseblog is evacuated from the bowels of the blogosphere each morning.
We’ll start with Jens Lehmann who is probably feeling worse than I am. After publicly challenging the manager and declaring that he expected to play this weekend against Bolton, Arsene Wenger has left the German under no illusions about who is in charge by dropping him from the squad entirely. The manager pointedly made sure everyone knew he was fit then told everyone he wouldn’t be involved at all this weekend. Ooops. You didn’t expect that, did you Jens.
Of course it would have been hard to drop Almunia who has done well since he came in and challenges to authority like that are often wswiftly dealt with by Arsene. We saw similar last year when Thierry Henry’s demands to be involved for a North London derby saw him dropped from the squad for a month, with the cover of a convenient ‘injury’. I’m of the opinion that Jens’ ‘injury’ was the same kind of ‘injury’ as Henry’s and though the manager has challenged him to win back his place you have to think it’s the beginning of the end for him. It would be a shame if his time at Arsenal ended on a sour note but not a huge surprise either.
In the absence of Robin van Persie it looks like Eduardo will be the man to take over and the boss is confident he can fill the gap. He’s also looking to use Theo as a striker more as well, which probably suits him better than being out on the right wing. Nicklas Bendtner will get games too but as the boss says he’s more a replacement for Adebayor than someone to actually play with Adebayor. It does liven things up a bit though with three players competing for places and that can only be a good thing.
In other team news Philippe Senderos misses out with a back injury so William Gallas returns, Gilberto will be on the bench (providing centre-half cover) after a long trip back from Brazil and Tomas Rosicky will also return to the squad. Whatever the troubles Bolton have had recently we cannot be complacent today. Like Madonna, we need to get into the groove again, but let’s not forget that getting rid of Sammy Lee might galvanise the Bolton players who will have a point to prove now that he’s gone.
It’s always dangerous when a club sacks their manager before you play them, plus we’ve been cursed by Arsene Wenger and Cesc Fabregas winning the manager and player of the month awards respectively. But we don’t believe in superstition (he says eyeing his lucky socks). I keeed, I keeed. If we perform like we have been performing then we should come away with the three points, so fingers crossed. The game, for those of you in Ireland, is on the free to air Setanta Ireland channel. Kick off 3pm.
Not much else to tell you other than I’m going to neck some painkillers, drink some coffee, then attempt to go about my business without groaning every few seconds.
More tomorrow and come on you reeeeeeeds.
