We might as well get the bad news out of the way good and early. As expected Mathieu Flamini is set to miss Sunday’s game and up to three weeks with an ankle injury.
It’s a big loss, his energy and drive have been a big feature of our best performances this season. Gilberto will come in to replace him and looking at the positive side of it he should be relatively fresh having played not as often as he’d have liked this season. What we need from him are the kind of performances he put in last season. I know his pride has been wounded on a couple of levels this year but he’s always acted in a professional manner. He looked a bit sharper against Liverpool in the last few days so fingers crossed he can step it up.
And speaking of acting in a professional manner we come to Jens Lehmann. He’s not happy . In fact he’s furious and angry. He thinks he should be in the team and that he could have done something to prevent the Liverpool defeat, saying:
I wanted to win the Champions League and thought I had a good chance of playing. The fact that I won’t now get that chance makes me furious. I still haven’t been given my place back and I’m being kept out by someone who is playing his first season at a big club. To be sitting on the bench behind somebody who only started to play when he was 30 is not funny. I am very angry. Grrr, I say. Grrrrrr.
The Grrrrrs were just so we’d know he was really angry. I wonder why he thought he was going to play though. Almunia has been first choice since the start of the season, he’s just signed a new deal with the club and he’s been solid this season. Jens’ assertion that the Spaniard isn’t playing well smacks of sour grapes, it’s certainly not a comment with any grounding in reality.
It’s another sad outburst from Jens though. I will the boss give him some games at the end of the season if they become ‘meaningless’ or might he be tempted to throw in Lukas Fabianski who talks here about how much he’s enjoying life at the Arsenal.
Ade and Kolo big up Theo Walcott while Fabio Capello was positively gushing about the young man’s contribution on Tuesday night. It’s time to start him on a regular basis, Arsene. Of course he’s not going to produce that kind of thing every game but he’s capable of something and he does seem to have a knack in big games. He’s played very few in his short career to date but so far has scored in a cup final (something Thierry never did) and given us that moment of magic against Liverpool in a Champions League quarter final at Anfield. I suppose you could say Sunday at Old Trafford is a big game, couldn’t you?
Marco van Basten has offered Dennis Bergkamp a coaching role . Interesting, particularly in light of the news of a supposed link up between Ajax and ourselves.
Youngster Gilles Sunu has signed professional terms with the club.
Now, Arsecast.
In this week’s OleOle.com sponsored Arsecast I chat with GilbertoSilver from Gunnerblog about the Liverpool game, the game on Sunday and about whether our problems are more defensive than offensive. There’s the Man in the Bar, Eboue and other stuff too.
To subscribe to the arsecast in iTunes – click here . To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (17mb MP3 ). You can find the arsecast archives here . And you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
[audio:http://arseblog.com/podcasts/arsecast_episode71.mp3]Right, have a good Friday. I’ll talk to you tomorrow at some stage.
