Good morning to you. It is teeming down with rain here in Dublin and I am faced with a large dog who wants to go out. He does not appear to be listening to reason.
“It’s lashing out, Archer, old pal”
“And?”
“I don’t wanna get soaked”.
“So?”
“Erm … not sure how to make this any clearer”.
“Feeble humans with your weak skin. You should be fur lined like us!”
“That’s easy for you to say”.
“It’s not easy at all. I’m a dog, remember?”
At which point I suspect I’ve had a cup of bourbon rather than coffee. Still, you have to take the ups with the downs, roughs and smooths, wets and drys and all that. I might look for investors so I can create a massive indoor dog park for days like today. There’d be coffee, perhaps some Danish pastries (or even pastries from different countries), free wifi and a dry environment for you to let your dog off to run around with other dogs until such point as he or she is so tired their tongue hangs sideways out of their mouth.
Us ‘owners’ remain dry, backs of cars do not resemble some kind of hairy swamp, and your beloved pet does not give off the honk of wet dog all day. If interested in this idea, please send cash money only to 7, Dublin.
As you can gather there’s very little going on in terms of Arsenal news. Theo Walcott is out of England’s trip to Poland having stayed overnight in hospital following the frankly ridiculous challenge from the San Marino goalkeeper on Friday night. Apparently he’s got a bruised lung which sounds like not a nice thing to have at all and, according to the Sunday Mirror, he’ll be out for around 2 weeks. That means he’ll miss Norwich and Schalke, at least, but provided there are no complications he could be back for QPR or the Capital One Cup game against Reading.
And speaking of ‘back’, the Mirror reports that Jack Wilshere is eschewing days off in order to get himself properly fit. Said Capital One Cup game is the game marked for his comeback but providing he’s not suffering any reaction to his reserve outings, it’s not inconceivable he could make a substitute appearance before that. It might not be a bad thing either, I’d say there’s a kind of psychological barrier to overcome having been out for so long.
Reserve/U21 football is one thing but he’ll need to know he can mix it at the highest level before he can start to find form and match sharpness. With a couple of home games in the week leading up to that COC fixture if we’re comfortable enough in terms of the scoreline I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Arsene gave him a few minutes in preparation for his first start.
Beyond that there’s a story linking Andrei Arshavin with Fulham in the January transfer window, which would appear to be a decent solution for all parties. The Russian was available to clubs in his home country for free this summer but there was a desire to stay in London for a number of reasons. He’s made just two appearances, one in that cup I keep having to talk about this morning, and a 14 minute Premier League cameo on the opening day of the season.
He’s been left out of the match day squad for over 50% of our games this season and despite the manager’s words it’s fairly obvious that he’s not counting on him at all. If we can get some small amount of money back for him in January it would probably be the best thing all round. It’s a shame how it’s ended up but that’s pretty much down the player, in my opinion.
Right, time for my feeble human skin to brave the elements. Have yourselves a good Sunday.
