So the club yesterday confirmed Robin van Persie’s injury and the prognosis that he’d be out for around 6 weeks. Now that it’s official we can all run around and panic, throwing our hands up in the air like sometimes we feel like doing. I know, I know.
What did emerge yesterday is that Robin is set to try a revolutionary new treatment, apparently with the blessing of the club, whereby he’ll travel to Serbia to have his ankle massaged with placenta fluid. Seriously. He says:
I am going to receive treatment from a female doctor. She is vague about her methods but I know she first massages you for a long time with placenta fluid. I’m going to give it a try.
It can’t do any harm and if it helps it helps. I have been in contact with Arsenal’s chief physio about it. The club has allowed me to have this treatment done.
It does seem odd but like he says if it helps, it helps. I mean, if there was the possibility that smearing his foot with late term abortions while quaffing great big goblets of stem cells would help I’d be all for that too. Anyway, 6 weeks from today would see him return at the end of the December. Then we have to take into account is it 6 weeks before he can return to training or 6 weeks before he plays again? I suspect it’ll be the new year before we see him.
The question now is what do we do without him. The obvious choice is Eduardo. Actually, at the moment he’s pretty much the only choice. Bendtner has just had his goolies operated on, Theo Walcott is still out with whatever it is that’s wrong with him this time and Carlos Vela … well … I’m not sure Carlos Vela is even with us. I suspect he may have been kidnapped by nasty banditos but with the club using all the money we have to prettify the stadium we haven’t been able to pay the ransom.
After that it’s youngsters like Watt and Sunu so Eduardo it is. Whether he can stay the pace and play the amount of games we’re going to need him to play remains to be seen, but he’s confident he can get his shooting boots back on and not his missing boots after the chances he spurned against Sp*rs. He says:
Against Tottenham I missed one big chance in particular, when I was one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Maybe I had too much time to think about what I had to do. Sometimes it is better when you have less time to think and can act instinctively. But I will not worry about that chance, I feel strong in my head and my body. It is good that I was in the position to have the chance because if you keep doing that, then the goals will come.
He got a couple at the weekend in a Croatian friendly against Lichtenstein, a notoriously difficult team to score against, and there’s now an onus on him to perform for us. He’s had the luxury, so to speak, of not being essential to the team, to come on from the bench without a great deal of pressure, but now we need him so fingers crossed he can do the business. Without Bendtner and van Persie (who is 6’1) we are bit on the teenchy side up front though. Eduardo, Arshavin and let’s say one of Rosicky/Nasri aren’t going to knock centre-halves on their arses, are they? I’m sure we’re practising lots of running through people’s legs in training.
Carles Puyol is the latest to do Barcelona’s dirty work in tapping up Cesc, saying not only does he hope he joins but that Barcelona don’t pay very much to sign him. Does he think there’s a January sale or something? I know they’ve bought a few players off us in the past but Arsenal is not like some kind of coffee shop. You don’t get one free on your fucking loyalty card. Twats.
Arsene Wenger says Patrick Vieira needs to leave Inter Milan to get into the French squad but pretty much ruled out him moving back to Arsenal. He said:
If I had to bet, I would put my money on another country. It’s complicated for him to come back to this country.
I wouldn’t bet against Arsene Wenger, no sir. And while we definitely need somebody to step in and do the job Alex Song has been doing when he goes away to the ACN you do have to wonder whether Paddy would have the legs for the Premier League anymore.
Beyond that not much else happening. Tomorrow sees the final round of WC qualifiers plus another group of meaningless friendlies. Get your lucky socks on and hope for the best. There’ll also be an arty kind of competition tomorrow too, more details then.
Have a good one.
