Good morning everyone from a beautifully sunny Dublin. I suspect as I slept somebody towed the whole country 850 miles south and we’re now sitting off the west coast of Portugal. It’s the only plausible explanation.
We’ll start with Jens Lehmann who is under the spotlight after his early season mistakes and he’ll be in action tonight against England. He’s not dwelling on the mistakes though, saying:
I can only judge myself – the mistakes I made were so simple I am not concerned. I don’t have any fundamental doubts about my basic ability as a keeper. It hasn’t thrown me off balance. I don’t feel under pressure – life goes on.
Which is, I suppose, exactly the attitude you want. You don’t want him to get all Manninger on the situation and lose confidence. He did try and explain teh Blackburn error but was rather cryptic. He said:
There was a reason why I didn’t catch the ball but I really don’t want to explain why – mostly because there are so many English journalists about, I know them by their faces and I don’t want to give anything away
How mysterious. Whether he starts on Saturday against Man City remains to be seen. He certainly seems confident that he’ll keep his place but we don’t know what the manager is thinking. With Almunia now the crossbar champion, the manager might decide to throw him in. Let’s face it, Jens has never once hit the crossbar in his Arsenal career. Shoddy work, I tell you.
There were some ripples of fear around yesterday when William Gallas gave an interview to a French newspaper about his injury. When he said ‘You will not see me again until October’ there was the thought that his injury was much worse than it first appeared but it seems he was referring to the French national team whose next meet-up is then.
Arsene Wenger talks about how Theo Walcott’s shoulder injury has made him slower and only now is he regaining his pace. Theo played for England U21s last night, as a striker, and they drew 1-1 with Romania’s U21s. You do get the feeling Theo is lost a bit on the wings and playing up front is probably his best position. That said if he could find his feet on the right hand side he’d bring something to the team we don’t have. Update: Turns out he played left wing for England last night. Oh well.
That’s it really. Boring, I know, but what can you do? Fingers crossed all our players, and there are quite a number, who are in action tonight come through unscathed and ready for the visit of the unlikely league leaders on Saturday.
Until tomorrow.
