I wish you all a happy and *boilk* free Saturday in the vain hope that the universe will reward my good wises and thoughts and render me free of the *boilk* which is *boilking* the shite out of me. Not literally though. Well, not yet, at least.
Still, at least there’s football today to help me through. I was expecting a whole lot more team news but I can’t seem to find any beyond what we knew yesterday. At least the team will be a bit of a surprise then. We have to wait and see about Nasri and the thinking about Threeo is that he’ll probably start on the bench after playing two games in a week for England.
The boss has been talking about Theo again, revealing he knew he wanted to sign him after seeing him play against us in the FA Youth Cup. Apparently we’d sent scouts to watch him more than 50 times. Which must be boring as fuck for a scout.
‘What have you got lined up for me today, boss?’
‘Go to Southampton and report back on Theo-‘
‘Walcott, yeah yeah. I know’.
Back to today though and it’s traditionally a tricky fixture. The tired old media lines about how Arsenal don’t like travelling to the north-west will be spewed out again but Blackburn are a tough, physical side. As well as that this is the first time that Paul Ince will have faced one of the top clubs in his short Premier League management career and he’ll be desperate to show he’s got what it takes. I expect a very motivated Blackburn side today and we’re going to have to be 100% focussed with no international hangover if we want the three points.
I think we’ve got the quality to do it, we have Robin van Persie who loves scoring against Blackburn, and we know that we don’t want to be playing catch-up this early in the season. Three points an absolute must today, especially in light of the lack of transfer activity. Things have calmed down a lot and as I’ve been saying good performances and good results will keep things that way.
Speaking of Robin van Persie he has ruled out any move to Moneybags City and reveals that the manager did try to bring in a certain player but the price being asked was too high. I think we all know who that was but it’s interesting to hear it from one of the players.
I know you know this already, what with Arseblog having exclusively given you the news yesterday, but here’s confirmation that Mineiro took part in a behind closed doors friendly at the training ground this week.
There was some bad news about Tomas Rosicky as well. His return had been earmarked for the middle of this month but it seems he’s as far away as ever. The Czech national coach, Petr Rada, says:
Tomas has started another stage of recovery, including training with the ball. But recently his knee reacted badly to that.
While Rosicky’s agent says:
Without the permission of Arsenal I am not allowed to be more specific on Tomas’ health.
The injury he suffered was very serious and very, very rare, I’m told, so nobody really knows how to estimate the recovery period for it. However, at this stage I think I would be surprised if we saw Rosicky in an Arsenal shirt again. I think we need to plan for life without him and if he does make it back then it’s a nice bonus. Fingers crossed he can beat this though.
And that’s really about it. The game is on TV over here today, which is most excellent. Here’s to the three points, talk to you tomorrow.
