Ok, a quick Saturday round-up for you.
The only bit of injury news that went in our favour is the fact that Philippe Senderos will be fit. It means Hleb didn’t make it and he joins Rosicky and the other long termers that we know about already. The boss is considering starts for both Theo Walcott and Eduardo and from what he’s saying they could take the places left vacant on the flanks.
The boss, who explained more about the great spirit in the camp, was cautious about today’s game though and warned against complacency, saying:
It is a big game because last season we dropped points against these teams. This weekend we have a chance to stay top.
And we’ve seen Derby are capable of pulling a result out of the hat as their 1-0 win over Newcastle on Monday showed. Arsene is right when he says we dropped too many points against teams like Derby last season. Still, with the way we’re playing at the moment you’d have to feel confident that we can get three points from this one.
The boss also spoke a bit about Jose Mourinho (don’t really care about that to be honest but Arsene was ever the diplomat) and when asked if he could work for someone like Abramovich he said:
I am totally relaxed because I just want to work the way I work. If that is not possible, I will have to assess the situation, but at the moment I must say I work like I want to work.
And that’s why he stayed at Arsenal and has stayed all these years. If we had a board that interfered or an owner who wanted to play with his toy a bit more than he should then you can be guaranteed Arsene would be off quicker than Frank Lampard to an all you can eat buffet.
And speaking of fat bastards, Alisher Usmanov revealed yesterday his intention to buy a ‘blocking stake’ in Arsenal. He said:
I want to be in a position that will allow me a blocking stake. I will then wait for it to go up in value.
So, what we’ve got on our hands is, at best, an agressive speculator, at worst somebody who will make life as difficult as possible for the people who run the club at the moment. The fallout from the website story continues though. Yesterday Channel4 news asked me to appear but as I’m really far too shy to be appearing on TV I had to say no. However, you can see the story on C4 news and MP Tom Watson brought great coverage to the story yesterday.
As of this morning all those websites remain down and Usmanov’s heavy handed tactics appear to have backfired quite badly. The negative PR this has garnered is not what they had in mind and as I thought all it has done is made people more aware of the bullying tactics being used. It has made people search for and find the original Craig Murray articles and a rake of new websites have gone up with that content. The story has become far, far bigger than it would have done if it had just affected Arsenal blogs and the coverage it has received across the blogosphere has been great. Rather an own goal, you have to say.
Again Chicken Yoghurt has the full list and the comments make for interesting reading.
Moving away from that again Lasanna Diarra has been talking about his move from Chelsea to Arsenal. The last player who came the same way couldn’t stop talking about Chelsea but the new boy says he’s got nothing against them but he just wanted a transfer away from the club.
And that’s really about it. I’ve got a busy morning then I might try and catch the game in town somewhere later, depending on various other things. If not I’ll try find a streaming stream which will stream the game to my streaming thing.
Come on you reeeeeeeeds. More tomorrow.
