Friday Update: Injury news ahead of Chelsea clash 28 November, 2008

Wow, a lot can happen in a week since I last spoke to you. Gallas was stripped of he captaincy, dropped, brought back in again, Fabregas been made Arsenal captain and our new Cheif Executive named. Two of the biggest problems at the club have now been sorted and spirits have been lifted.

The day Cesc was announced captain was an exciting day. I think a lot of people went on to Arsenal.com that day seeing the headline and felt positive about the åfuture. Cesc was born to wear that armband. The player himself has been saying all the right things and even led us to our first victory and first goal in what seems like forever in his first game. The future looks bright for Arsenal under Fabregas and I hope that’s the case.

The next game will be a big test for the new skipper as its Chelsea away on Sunday. He says we’re going out to win and we will not sit back. I think Fabregas can be a very inspirational captain, if he can re-capture his form his drive is all we need to get the team going again.

The 1-0 victory wasn’t the most convincing start to our ‘comeback’ so this weekend’s game is a perfect chance for us to officially prove we are out of that bad streak and off on a new tangent under Cesc Fabregas. I think the players will be well up for this game, and so does Arsene Wenger. He says we always pick up our game against the top teams, which is all good saying that but the negative is that we drop our game against lesser teams – this needs to stop.

Arsene’s also been talking about a couple of ex-Arsenal players now at Chelsea in Ashley Cole and Nicolas Anelka.

There’s some good injury news ahead of Sunday’s big game. Emmanuel Adebayor, Bacary Sagna and Samir Nasri have all been passed fit. Those are three important players who you expect to come straight into the first team. We have been a bit short on players recently so this is really good to see. We are still without Diaby, Walcott, Toure, Eboue, Rosicky and Eduardo, which is a shame, but most of those should be back soon and possible Rosicky early in 2009.

I’ll talk more about the injury situation tomorrow and what possible options we have against Chelsea. Wenger has hinted that Aaron Ramsey might get a start by bigging him up in today’s press conference:

“He is 17, nearly 18, and is a player who has personality and a fantastic engine. He is always available and doesn’t hide. He has good vision and I believe he will be a very big player in the future.”

From Wenger’s description there he makes him sound a lot like Mathieu Flamini last season. If Ramsey can get somewhere near that standard for us what a signing he will be. I do like him as a player and I do see good things for him but I’m not expecting much of him yet. However he has done well when he’s come on for us recently. In games where we’ve lacked spirit and imagination he’s come on and put in some great passes. More of that please Rambo.

That’s about it for today then. I just want to quickly apologize (again…) for not keeping the site up to date this week. It’s been a very busy week of Arsenal news but an even busier week for me personally, I had two projects to be finishing and whatever spare time I did have was spent with an old friend who came down who I haven’t seen in ages. With the busy month of December coming up I’m going to do my best to get back to posting every day.

Thanks for reading. Happy Friday.