Morning all.
It’s all team news and what have you this morning. The news is that Adebayor, Almunia and Djourou should all be available for the Boro game and, thusly, the game against United on Wednesday.
Certainly the return of Johan Djourou will add some non-Sylvesterosity to the defence, which can only be a good thing, while those in the back four will probably feel a bit safer with the Spaniard behind them than Fabianaski.
Adebayor’s hamstring was enough of a concern to leave him out of the squad to face Liverpool and whatever you might think about him his physical presence, should he decide to run about a bit, could be a big factor against United. Ferdinand and Vidic are two big, strong cunts and we need to make life as difficult as possible for them.
In slightly less good news Robin van Persie’s ruptured ballbag is going to keep him out until the Portsmouth game which means he misses the CL tie at Old Trafford. Gael Clichy may be back in a couple of weeks and could make the second leg. The manager also confirmed the absences for the rest of the season of William Gallas, no surprise, and Tomas Rosicky, which is even less of a suprise than reading a newspaper article with the headline ‘New study shows Ashsley Cole is a cunt’.
All the papers seem to be focussing on van Persie’s absence for the Champions League, which is fair enough. He’s our top scorer this season. But they’re forgetting all about Eduardo who, like a Crozilian shark through murky waters, is just gliding along, waiting to take his place back in the team. And the opposition, when he faces them, will be like seals or little boys on rubber floating beds and Sharkzilian will emerge from the gloomy depths and eat them while their mothers watch, horrified on the shore.
Or, you know, he might score a couple of important goals. Which would be splendid. Although the idea of him eviscerating Ronaldo in a flurry of teeth and churning red water is also quite the picture.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here. There’s the small matter of the Boro game on Sunday first. They’ll be fighting for their very lives, not because of shark attacks, but because they need points, and fast, if they want to avoid relemagation. I’ve decided that the word relegate is too boring on its own and needs the ‘ma’ to spice things up a bit.
Playing teams who want to avoid being relamagated is always tough and we need to get back to winning ways. Not because we’re under any real pressure in the league for fourth but because we don’t want to go into the United game on the back of a confidence sapping defeat to Aliadiere and his motley crew of north-east mutants.
I shall be attending the game, going as I am to London today, so you will have the pleasure of Tom’s company all weekend on the blog. I make no guarantees as the timely arrival of the blog post of a morning but have patience and Tom will deliver.
Now then, onto the Arsecast. On this week’s show I’m joined by Amy Lawrence of the Observer to talk about Arshavin, the FA Cup against Chelsea, the Liverpool game and the upcoming Champions League games.
As well as that George has a tale of the unexpected, Sylvester’s in there and there’s news of some cutbacks due to the current economic climate.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (22mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
Right then, see some of you later. Cheers.
