Morning all, welcome to Friday. Last night I dreamt that I won a contract to paint the stadium but the club’s insistence that it be painted with Tippex made it a very fiddly and time-consuming job indeed. It was taking ages, and I wasn’t allowed to hire anyone to help me.
Anyway, on with early team news ahead of tomorrow’s crunch game against John Terry’s Philandering Flock, and the manager has confirmed Mikel Arteta’s absence but says the injury is just a ‘bad sprain’ and nothing more serious than that. Which is good news, I suppose, but doesn’t alter the fact that he’s going to miss what’s left of the season. If only he’d taken a blow to the head, his lego-hair would have protected him.
Laurent Koscielny returns from suspension while Francis Coquelin, although back in training, doesn’t appear likely to be in consideration with the boss suggesting two months without playing means facing Frank Lampard’s Ring Kissers is just a bit too early. Perhaps he might make the bench, considering the injuries/absences we currently have in the midfield department.
But Abou Diaby is back with Arsene saying:
He played one half on Wednesday and he will be alright now I think. We still have to be a bit cautious with him because we had so many setbacks. If all goes well he will be in the squad.
And therein lies the difficulty of Diaby. You have to be cautious to even get him fit enough to be in the squad, but how long he might last if he does come on against Jose Boswinga’s Rampant Swingers has to be in the manager’s thoughts too. For me starting him is far too big a risk in a game from which we have to take at least a point and ideally three. The race for third isn’t quite neck and neck but unlike season’s past we have got to finish strongly, we’ve got to buck the trend so to speak, and Arsene knows that well.
We just want to win the next one. I believe our target is just that. We have to think that we have been on a great run, we have a fantastic opportunity but we also just need to focus on the next game and win it.
Only the third place guarantees you to be in the Champions League anyway.
There is a nightmare scenario, you know. We could let things slip, finish fourth with some other bunch of ne’er do wells in third, while Petr Cech’s Helmet Sporters finish outside the top four and win the Champions League. Excuse me, I just need to be sick onto my shoes at the thought of that. And I’m not wearing any shoes. That would mean that the team that finishes fourth would then be placed in the Europa League which is a tournament so crappy they ought to play it with those 99c plastic ‘Cup Champion’ footballs you could buy from your local newsagent back in the day.
So, if that doesn’t provide any further motivation for tomorrow’s game then I don’t know what will. Obviously it’s a long-shot but not beyond the realms of possibility. We have to make sure that we finish third. It means we can plan our summer better, plan our transfer business better (hahaha), not worry about an August qualifier against a team that might be pretty good, and dammit we should want to beat Michael Essiens Stud Scrapers anyway. We’ll look ahead to that game in more detail tomorrow.
In other news Andrei Arshavin says he doesn’t know why Arsene Wenger lost faith with him. You know, I’m rarely surprised by a footballer’s lack of awareness but this is right up there. To be fair to Arshavin, what can he say? ‘Well, yeah, he lost faith with me because I didn’t work hard enough, on the pitch, or at training, and was generally a bit of a lazy plumper’, but still.
Remember, this is a guy who, not long before he left, asked if the warm-up before a reserve game against Norwich (I think it was them anyway), was going to be particularly hard. What was he going to do if the answer was yes?! Anyway, he’s at Zenit now until the Euros and with just a year left on his contract I suspect Arsenal will move him on a knock-down price this summer.
Bonus reading: Tim Stillman’s column from yesterday – More fat cloggers please.
Beyond that not much happening so let’s crack on with this week’s Arsecast. Joining me to discuss Wigan, Arteta, Ramsey and more, is Goodplaya. There’s some Talkshite radio in there plus some thoughts on handshaking and too much affection in football.
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 (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes). To download this week’s Arsecast directly – click here (23mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
[audio:http://podcast.arseblog.com/arsecast/arsecast_episode238.mp3]We should get more from Arsene on tomorrow’s game against David Luiz’s Sideshow Bobs when he meets the press, coverage and updates on Arseblog News which, incidentally, crossed the 1000 post threshold yesterday in just over 10 months. Thanks all for reading and to the contributors for their fine input.
Right, breakfast time, back with more of this tomorrow.
