Nasri’s bloody injured, Djourou’s not & news round up 18 August, 2010

News broke earlier today that Samir Nasri will undergo minor knee surgery that will see him out for at least a month. It was a shock and a massive disappointment hearing the news, not only because he was out stand-out player in pre-season but that it has only been announced now that he picked up an injury on Sunday – I was totally unaware he had a problem and looked fine all 90 minutes. Well it was confirmed today that he picked up a meniscal injury, which with a quick Google tells me that he’s torn the cartilage in his knee.

This was supposed to be Samir’s season; he’s fully settled in England now and talk from the training camp is that he’s twice the player compared with when he arrived. He had a fantastic pre-season winning man of the match almost every game, that was coming off the back of missing out on the World Cup and is obviously out to prove a point. I have always been a fan of Nasri and I was surprised to see that he wasn’t selected for France, we benefited from that though having him back from the summer all fresh and very hungry. But now this, I hope he can return from the lay-off and come straight into the side with the impressive form he’s shown already this season. Get well soon Samir.

I guess this injury is good news for Jack Wilshere though who will almost certainly continue in to side for at least a few more games. Chances like this are what turns a reserve/youth player into a proper first team member so hopefully he benefits from it. Also coming in is Cesc Fabregas who missed the opener through a lack of match fitness but should be back by now. He has all this week to get ready for Blackpool on Saturday and I expect to see our captain starting. I’m really looking forward to our opening home game, it was nice to be back for the Emirates Cup but this is for real now and I can’t wait. I’m sure all you with tickets are getting excited too and the club are urging us to get in extra early on Saturday for the official renaming of the stands including the new Clock End clock and unveiling of some new banners. So make sure you’re at your seat at 2.45pm the latest, I know I will be.

Back to injury news and it appears Johan Djourou is fit which is handy with Koscielny’s one match suspension coming up. Johan has had terrible luck with injuries his whole career and I’m surprised to hear that he’s fit actually because I thought I heard he had another couple of weeks out but we’ll hear confirmation from Arsene on Friday. If that Telegraph article is correct then I’m looking forward to seeing Djourou play and hoping he can maintain a bit of fitness for a while, we’re dangerously low on centre backs at the moment so we can’t have everyone getting injured and sent off.

Hopefully Arsene has a signing up his sleeve though; he’s said a few times that he intends to add at least one more centre back but I’m not hearing anything as yet. The only news today is that we could be in fact losing one more defender in Armand Traore. Well, you can argue if the term ‘defender’ is an accurate description of his job title. I don’t think anyone will have any complaints about letting him go though, he’s the third choice left back so he’s probably not going to get any game time here. If there are unlikely quite possible injuries to both Clichy and Gibbs I’m sure we’ll manage with some Flamini-style replacement anyway like we did in 2006.

David Seaman thinks we should buy Schwazer and Fabianski would like us to sing his name. Maybe one day we will.

That’s about it really for today, as I’m sure you’ve read elsewhere the Arsenal Fanshare scheme was launched today. I think it’s a great idea but I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to get involved buying a 1/100th of a share for £100 but it’d be nice to own a tiny piece of Arsenal and get to go to the AGM meetings and things. Maybe I will. If you want to read more on this go here.

Build up to the Blackpool game to come this week. Until then.