Evening all… and it’s time for a good old fashioned Monday Round Up… it’s been a busy busy day in the wonderful world of Arsenal. So, where do we start… well, let’s start with yesterday’s game… and if you were there you would have heard the awful chanting coming from the Birmingham end.
There’s only one Martin Taylor, one Martin Taylor…
Obviously aiming the chant at Eduardo. In my opinion, it was bang out of order and really sad to see that type of chant sang – and in order to be heard, it must have been sang my the majority of the visiting fans and if you ask me, it’s a clear sign of disrespect, a clear sign of immaturity and an insult to a player who has spent the best part of the last 18 months recovering from such a horrific injury.
Arsene took time out to comment on the chant and said:
“That was frankly atrocious. They [the Birmingham fans] will not be remembered for the quality of their taste with that kind of remark. I didn’t say a word [when I heard the chant], I just thought ‘that’s low’. Eduardo was here for the game. I don’t know how he felt about the chants. I just put that in the ranks of stupidity, you want to forget about it and not talk too much about it because there’s not a lot to say. With people like that, one starts to say something stupid, everybody follows, even intelligent people. People lose their identity together, and their sense of responsibility.”
And he’s hit the nail on the spot. The timing of the chant was when Liam Ridgewell went through Theo Walcott. Ouch. Very distasteful and surprise surprise, Birmingham have k’od one of our players.
On Theo’s return to the side after being injured for the whole of this season, that challenge from Liam Ridgewell has seen him sidelined again – with a medial knee ligament, and normally that’s a month out plus a bit of recovery time. You’ve got to feel sorry for the boy, it’s hard to recover from an injury only to be injured again.
“The news is not good. We are without Theo Walcott for longer than expected. We thought it would be just 48 hours but it is a medial knee ligament, which is what I feared after the game. He will be out for three to four weeks.”
On Saturday we had Walcott and Rosicky start the game, but for tomorrow’s game, they’re now both injured! How quickly a squad can change – only a few days ago, we were analysing the problems we’ll have when we have a fit squad. Eduardo and Bendtner as also both out, so it looks like it’s going to be a thin squad. Actually the squad was announced today, take a look:
Vito Mannone, Manuel Almunia, Carlos Vela, Robin van Persie, William Gallas, Bacary Sagna, Kieran Gibbs, Thomas Vermaelen, Mikael Silvestre, Gael Clichy, Andrey Arshavin, Fran Merida, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Cesc Fabregas, Emmanuel Eboue, Abou Diaby and Alex Song.
Actually not that weak.
We’ll probably see Clichy and Sagna come back into the first XI – I’d like to see Vela, Van Persie and Arshavin make up the front three, but I have a sneaky suspicion that Eboue will play and Vela will be on the bench. More team news tomorrow…
In other news, the good news is that Nasri is set to play in the reserves against Wolves on Wednesday and so will Fabianksi, so it’s like 2 in 2 out at the moment… hmmm very annoying.
And finally, I’ll leave you with an Arsene Wenger prediction…
“What is interesting in the League is it is much tighter than everybody predicted before the season,” said Wenger. “There are six or seven teams that have a chance at the moment. ”So we have all to be happy, take that potential in an intelligent way and think that when we are cruising we have to keep focussed and not lose it. Chelsea have lost against difficult but not unbeatable teams. For a while everybody thought Chelsea would be out of reach but that was certainly not the case this weekend and that gives everybody a possibility. Sometimes the fixtures [make a difference] as well. We were lucky to play at home this weekend but Liverpool played away. It’s difficult away from home. After the last international break we lost at Manchester City. If you look the two teams that lost at the weekend, Chelsea and Liverpool, played away.”
Interesting from Arsene… I wish there was only one team that could win the league and that was us… but hey… it’s going to be a challenging season!
