Good morning, it’s fairly quiet this morning but consider it the calm before the storm. Arsene will meet the press today ahead of tomorrow’s trip to Villa Park and we should get a good idea of what sort of team we’ll be putting out.
Hopefully there won’t be any new injuries and there is the possibility of getting one or two players back. Despite being told Aaron Ramsey would miss 21 days on January 18th, he was in the squad and played against Stoke on Sunday, so there’s a little chink of light. Normally three weeks is anywhere between two months and forever so perhaps we have found some kind of magical healing elixir or gone forward in time to get one of those things Scotty Doctor McCoy (cheers, gooner) had in Star Trek which you just waggled over the injured area to make it better.
There was talk of Nicklas Bendtner making his comeback for the Villa game and that would certainly be a boost. Whether he’s ready to start is another thing but we’ll get more info on that from the boss later on. With the imminent arrival of both Eboue and Song, who I would expect to see in the squad for Sunday’s game, our depth is looking a little more profound if not quite as fathomless as we would like.
The club confirmed the departure of Philippe Senderos while Arsene revealed William Gallas has been playing on the edge in recent times. He’s been carrying knocks and strains and aches and the manager is unsure if he’s going to last the 90 minutes each time he plays. I know the boss had high hopes for Djourou this season but his injury left us short of options. You just wonder why, when he knew Djourou was crocked and he had no real intention of playing Senderos, he didn’t move for someone in the summer to provide cover for the centre-half position. We’ve got that now with Sol Campbell but we’ve been lucky that Gallas and Vermaelen have stayed fit as long as they have.
The manager’s collection of flappy goalkeepers received a boost yesterday as Vito Mannone signed the ubiquitous ‘long term’ deal at the club. He did ok when he came in earlier in the season but you can’t help thinking he’s another one who could really benefit from going out on loan and playing regularly. He says he wants to go on and become Arsenal’s number 1. You can’t fault the ambition.
Nothing doing in terms of transfer speculation despite some vague rumours about Huntelaar. I’m sure Arsene will be asked today if he has any plans to bring anyone in and I’m sure he’ll tell us he’s ‘not close’ to signing any new players while assuring the press they’ll be the ‘first to know’ if and when we do. Which we won’t.
For those of you on the Mailing List, apologies for the recent problems. I thought I had them fixed but the thing appears to be a bollixed as a common Robin van Persie. Will try and find the source of the problem today, sorry again.
And that’s about that. Final thought for today – why does Jermaine Defoe have a tattoo of a cock on his hand? That is a rhetorical question, by the way.
Till tomorrow.
