Frimpong could be out for the season and Squillaci could be on his way 19 August, 2010

Bad news is breaking this afternoon that Emmanuel Frimpong has done his cruciate ligaments and will be out for 9 months (the whole season). The story is spreading on twitter and Young Guns are reporting it too. He’s with the reserves in Ireland for a mini-tournament out there with United’s reserves and Shamrock Rovers but obviously wont play any part after this bad injury in training.

Frimpong played a large part in pre-season this year and was looking to break into the first team as cover for Alex Song but it looks like that’s not going to happen until the 2011/12 season now. It’s such a shame to get an injury like this and I hope he can fulfil the potential he has shown in the future. There’s no official word on this yet from Arsenal.com but I’m expecting something soon, the initial diagnoses says he’ll be out until May so I’m not counting on seeing anything from him again this season.

Edit: It’s official. Six to nine months they say.

So that leaves us a bit short in defensive midfield, our back up to Song is… no one. Wenger will play Denilson there no doubt but I still can’t agree that he can play there. However I don’t think that means Arsene will buy anyone other than a defender or a goalkeeper this transfer window. Denilson will get game time there, whether we like it or not and there’s Craig Eastmond who broke into the side last year but looked like being overtaken by Frimpong this season; this might be Eastmond’s chance to establish himself now.

In transfer news we’ve had a bid turned down for Sevilla’s Sebastien Squillaci. He was left out of the side’s Champions League qualifier against Braga to avoid being cup-tied and Sevilla have confirmed that it was due to an approach from Arsenal. They have described the current offer as ‘insufficient’ but their decision to allow Squillaci to sit out last night’s game leads to me believe they will listen to further offers for him. He’s 30, which would be an unusual signing for Wenger, but we have lost a lot of experience in defence with Campbell, Gallas and Silvestre all moving on. Squillaci has won a lot of trophies in his career so maybe Arsene has seen that as a quality he thinks we need to add to our squad.

He wont be coming in as first choice, but instead a direct competitor for Djourou and Koscielny to be Vermaelen’s partner. That will be really healthy for the squad to have those three fighting to make the first team. Other clubs would just splash out £20m or £30m if they needed a first choice central defender but we can’t really justify spending that much on one player, as much as I’d like to see us make a bold move in the transfer market like that I just don’t see us doing it at the moment. This could be a good addition if it does go through and it would mean we have 4 decent centre backs in the squad. Squillaci plus one more would be perfect but we’ll see how this story develops.

Finally today, it looks like Lansbury could be joining Watt on loan at Leeds and Jay Simpson is close to securing a transfer to Hull.

Tomorrow will be Arsene’s pre-Blackpool press conference so expect to hear a load of news on Nasri, Frimpong, Schwazer and Squillaci. This is the second day in the row I’ve had to report an injury so hopefully no more tomorrow Arsene.

Thanks for reading.