another game, another injury, another goalkeeping error 20 August, 2007

“We can cope with the injuries we have but it’s getting down to the bare bones. Ade should be back for Man City and Gilberto comes back in September. All the others will return in one, two or three games I hope. We’ll be alright then but touch wood we’re not adding more names to the injury list come Monday.”

Before you ask, yes I did actually touch wood when I wrote that but obviously not hard enough. William Gallas picked up an injury which will see our captain out for 3 weeks. I’m not the biggest fan of Bill as captain but I do believe he is a very good centre-back and we will miss him. He’s done something to his groin and Philippe Senderos will come into the first team in his place. Now Wenger’s decision to loan out Djourou will be put to the test.

No match report for the Blackburn game I’m afraid because I simply didn’t see it. I tried internet streams but nothing came of it, I was just stuck with the infrequent reports on Sky Sports News as they wanked over the Chelsea and Liverpool game. That was 1-1 by the way and City beat United. United controlled the game but City must’ve been alright to hold them off; we play them next week at the Grove.

The Arsenal.com match report is here if you want to read. What I did pick up from the game was it was another physical match, but that was to be expected. We got 4 yellows as did Blackburn, two of which going to Ryan Nelsen who dragged down Van Persie as he was going through on goal.

We scored in the 18th minute thanks to a goalkeeping error by Friedel and Van Persie was the one to knock it in. Blackburn equalised in the 72nd minute thanks to another stupid mistake from Lehmann. Dunn shot well but it was going straight to Jens at a comfortable height, the home fans behind the goal sighed in disappointment but Jens scuffed the save and the ball went in behind him.

I know Jens is probably more upset at this error than us fans are and I’m sure he’s going to try his best to focus from now on so we shouldn’t be harsh to him. But FUCKING HELL JENS! You can’t do that at this level. That cost us 2 points and at this stage of the season we might not think about it but silly silly mistakes like that all add up. I would be in favour of Almunia starting against City but he won’t. Please Jens, sort it out, concentrate.

I would’ve taken the point before the game but they way we conceded it feels much worse. Wenger is satisfied with the result anyway.

Thanks for reading.