More injuries! 7 March, 2008

I was asked yesterday if there was any injuries after the Milan game, my answer was, “Probably, yeah. It wouldn’t surprise me.” Of course there were! Diaby picked up a problem after his 90 minutes in Milan. Also, there was a friendly versus Colorado Rapids yesterday at the training ground in which Walcott and Denilson got injured. Just perfect. With Eboue suspended that leaves us with very, very few wide players.

There were quite a few first team players risked in this friendly yesterday. Robin van Persie played an hour without feeling any effects from his injury, which was good. Denilson came off with a hamstring strain and Walcott complained after the game with a thigh problem.

I think it’s a bit silly risking players when our squad is so thin as it is. It’s crazy. We’ve paid the price for that now and we’ll have to field an irregular side against Wigan. Hleb will be on one win, but we’ll have to probably lose Fabregas from the middle and play him out wide. Either him or a full back will have to play the or maybe even Bendtner, I don’t know!

Rosicky is still 10+ days away. However saying that, you know once he’s back he’ll just be out again. It’s incredibly frustrating all these muscle problems he picks up. Arseblogger pointed out in today’s Arsecast that we can’t really rely on him anymore and maybe Wenger might have to think about his future at Arsenal. He’s a great player, but only for about four games before he gets injured again, you need stability in the first 11 and with him coming in and out it’s just not working.

A lot of our injured players are very close to returning though. With the exception of Eduardo obviously everyone could be back in about two weeks. I think Toure might be back next week, van Persie was on the bench in Milan so he can’t be far off and Rosicky will be back in a fortnight, Diaby shouldn’t be too long out hopefully, I think Song’s fit now and Djourou’s meant to be back too. As for Denilson well we’ll just have to see, he could be a couple of weeks plus and Walcott will maybe miss a week or so.

I was thinking today though, we’re still top of the league even after all these injures we’ve had this season. Imagine where we’d be with a fit squad. Van Persie started the season really well but then he got that injury, however with him coming back soon, that could be our added ingredient that will help us in the title run in. I’m excited about van Persie’s return; I really think he can make the difference in these last couple of months.

There are loads of other ‘bits’ of news on Arsenal.com today, but nothing very important other than those injuries. Wenger says he wants to avoid the English teams in the Champions League draw and he says that Premiership clubs could rule Europe in the future.

There was also this headline: Wenger – Trophies are not everything to me. Which worried me a little bit but he’s talking about how he wants people to respect Arsenal for the way that they play and that not always the best team wins the cups.

Think that’s about it for today. Oh yeah, my Dad’s photo didn’t win the competition. No Opus for me then. It was the kid holding the ticket that won. Thanks to everyone who voted though, would’ve been really good if he’d won but oh well. Cheers anyway though, it means a lot.

Thanks for reading.