Monday News: The players are back to training 21 July, 2008

Good Monday to you. There’s not a lot going on today as the squad have been travelling to Austria. However, today’s the day that some of our internationals were due back, including Emmanuel Adebayor.

Apparently he was in training today, as expected. Wenger said at the weekend that he expects Adebayor to stay. The manager wants him to stay, but after what a fool he’s made of himself this summer no one really knows what to expect. As I’ve said before, if Ade is going to stay at Arsenal this season then I want some sort of formal apology to the fans and the club.

He’s going to get a horrible reception next season if he stays without saying anything. There were songs sung about ‘Greedybayor’ on Saturday at Underhill and I expect them to continue in protest.

I’m not sure if the whole squad is back in training, but I know most of them are. You could excuse Cesc Fabregas for another week seeing as Spain reached the final of Euro 2008, but then again he didn’t play every single minute of their games so you never know. There’s no information or pictures up on Arsenal.com anyway.

After the Barnet game Arsene spoke to the press and said he was looking to bring in at least one more player. He said it would be a maximum of two but he hopes to get one in. He (obviously) didn’t name any names but I think it could be midfielder he’s after. We know that he’s enquired about Gareth Barry and Xavi Alonso; if he was to get one of them then I think it’d really boost the team. We’re not used to big name signings, especially Premiership ones. If a deal can be done in either case, I’d be really happy but we’ll have to wait and see.

Back in May, Arsene hinted we might be buying a defender but there hasn’t been much news on that this summer. If it does happen it won’t come at a great surprise but we haven’t been linked with anyone yet.

As usual, when asked about signings Arsene reminded us that we have players coming through the youth system and players coming back from injury. He reminded us that we have van Persie and Rosicky coming back but if either one of those can pull together a string of games without injury then I’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

Wenger also said he expects more from Walcott this season. He’s backing him to carry on improving and cement a place in the first team. Theo has just taken on the no.14 shirt and a lot of expectation will come with a move like that. Of course realistically I know that nothing is going to change because the number on his back is different but if he’s asked for that number he must be up for fighting for a first team spot.

Sagna’s also been talking. He missed the end of last season through injury but he hopes to be on top of his game come mid-August. His dismisses that he might suffer from ‘second season syndrome’ and is hoping to win some silverware.

That’s it for today then. We play Szombathelyi Haladás from Hungary tomorrow evening, not sure what sort of a team we can expect to put out for that one but hopefully there’ll be some news about it tomorrow. Thanks for reading.