We have officially entered the interlull and for the next 11 days the amount of club football news available will be at a premium as we all search for a few scraps of information on our beloved Arsenal to report. I will attempt to make this time as interesting as possible for anyone brave enough to keep reading as I run through our season so far and all the current standings in the fantasy football. I'll also keep an eye on our players as they ply their trade for their countries and we all hope that they come back in 1 piece.

Speaking of our players we have 15 of them away on international duty although only 5 of those players have truly competitive games to play as they attempt to qualify for the World cup. The other 10 have friendlies or in the case of Eboue they are playing a qualifier having already made it to the finals. If it wasn't for our glut of injuries we would have a lot more players away this week but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Anyway it would seem that Wacott, Wilshere & Fabianski will be back when the interlull is over and Denilson and Clichy should follow soon afterwards. Bendtner however looks like he will have to have an operation on his groin injury and the length of his absence isn't certain yet. I can't find anything telling me how long Vela will be out and he isn't reported as being away with his country on the club site either. Is it just me or is he fast becoming the forgotten man at Arsenal.

Our captain has spoken about the players' fear of our fantastic goalscoring run coming to an end at some stage and he says that the fear of that is what is keeping the players focussed as they know they must keep it up to win the title that they want. A lot has been made of all the goals we're scoring at the moment and how they are being shared around the team. It is great that we have a threat from almost any player in the team(with the possible exception of the goalkeeper and the full backs) and it makes it harder for our opponents to defend against us. No team has ever scored 100 Premier league goals since it's inception in 1992 but at our current rate we will blow that completely away. However as our captain says that could dry up as it did last winter when we had that terrible run of 0-0 draws in a row but we were missing him at the time and playing without any confidence.

There's plenty of talk about Darren Fletcher saying that our boss has made him a marked man by referees and his manager is again blaming referees on their defeat to Chelsea. It's funny that Manure are a little upset by losing 2nd spot in the league to us and in my opinion Fletcher is getting what he deserves. How he ever got away with the challenge on Arshavin at Old Trafford without giving away a penalty is still a mystery to me and I'm sure any referee who saw it will have taken note of it and also his miopic manager claiming it was a fair tackle afterwards. They may have had some decisions go against them recently but these things tend to balance out over a season and we haven't had a penalty, that I know of, since Eduardo's "dive" against Celtic but I don't hear our manager complaining. As long as Manure continue to fade we will hear more and more from their manager complaining about all and sundry. Long may it continue. That's it for today.

Here's a little bit of our Russian maestro.

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And to finish today's title track from The Cure. No matter how many goals we score it's never enough as I always want more.

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See You Tomorrow.

The unbridled joy after our win against The Spuds on Saturday has subsided a little this morning as the harsh reality of returning to work after having had 3 days off sets in. With our position as North London's number 1 club no longer in any doubt(not that any Arsenal fans doubted it anyway) we can now forget about The Spuds and concentrate on a week that could be very important for us.

First up we have AZ at home on Wednesday night in our Champions league group and a win in that game will mean that they cannot catch us in the group. Olympiacos travel to Liege on the same night and it's a win win situation for us if we can beat AZ. If Olympiakos win or draw we will have qualified but if Liege win we will only need a point at home to them in our next game to qualify and a win in that game would win us the group. After that we travel to Wolverhampton for an evening kick off next Saturday in a game that will see us go 2nd in the league if we win. With the 2 teams ahead of us playing each other on Sunday afternoon it means we will make up ground on 1 or both of them if we can beat Wolves. In fact if Chelsea win it will mean that a we would keep 2nd place ahead of Manure with a game in hand and Chelsea would have a 5 point lead over us with us having that game in hand too.

A few weeks ago I said that 4 wins in a row would have us on top of the table as the next international break kicked in and we have got 2 wins and a draw in the first 3 of those games. A win at Wolves will make it 10 points out of 12 and with all 12 points our worst possible position would have been 3 points behind Chelsea with that game in hand. That draw at West Ham and the manner in which we threw away the 2 points really grates but after Saturday we look to have put it behind us.

So as you can see 2 wins this week will leave us in a real healthy position going into that dreaded interlull and I fully expect us to go out and get those wins. Our ladies beat Keynsham 4-0 yesterday to reach the semi final of the Premier league Cup and continue yet another great start to their season. The reserves have a home match against Portsmouth tonight at 7 and our youths lost 3-1 at West Ham on Saturday with our goal coming from Chuks Aneke. The Carling Cup quarter final trip to Man City has been set for Tuesday December 1st and as of yet it is not scheudled for TV although that might change. As far as I know the TV companies have not picked their live matches for the new year yet but as we're in November I would imagine they will have to do it very soon. I certainly hope so because I want to go to the Everton match which is set for Saturday January 9th but having seen the other fixtures that weekend I have a horrible feeling that our game might be switched to the Sunday. I can still go but the sooner I find out the better as the flights are so cheap at the moment.

On the injury front it seems that Bendtner will be out for at least a month with the groin injury he picked up on Saturday and we are now on top of the physio room injury league table with 9 players out at the moment. Of those 9 players 4 of them are listed as being down for a return next Saturday and we could certainly do with Rosicky in the squad at the moment to put some pressure on Diaby who didn't have the best of games at the weekend. The other 3 due back are Wilshere, Vela and Traore and they will at least increase the options the boss has for the trip to Wolves. Finally for today I read an article yesterday that said the reason that Almunia was out for so long was due to a family tragedy and if it's true my sympathies go out to him and his family. These things can be very hard to cope with and if it effected him a lot the boss was right to wait until he was ready to return. It certainly makes more sense than the "chest infection" story. That's the lot for today.

Here's the highlights from Saturday's victory as I only showed the goals yesterday.

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And here's today's title track from Jah Lion. The boss commented on all of The Spuds claims about being our equals or even betters in some cases by saying that the talking would be done on the pitch and he showed that he was the one with the wisdom and they were full of hot air as we suspected.

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See You Tomorrow.

We played Liverpool last night in the last 16 of the Carling Cup at The Emirates and it was a very enjoyable match to watch. The boss went with the expected team more or less with the inclusion of Eastmond the only real surprise. We played some very good football at times and the new system seemed to suit Nasri very well. He seemed to be at the heart of everything that we did throughout the game and he lasted very well considering that he had only played an hour of football before last night.

To be fair to Liverpool they played with 10 different players from their team on Sunday and we went 1 better by playing a completely different team. In the first half our 2 full backs looked a little lost at times and Gibbs in particular seemed to be caught out of position a lot but in the 2nd half they managed to up their game and Gilbert got in some very good tackles and interceptions with Gibbs also improving. Senderos had a fairly solid game with 1 or 2 lapses and to be fair to Silvestre he had a good game. Fabianski got his first game of the season and despite some good takes on some crosses he was still reluctant to come off his line too often and his kicking of back passes was not great either. In midfield I already mentioned that Nasri had a very good game in my opinion and Ramsey did quite well although he was careless in possession a few times. Eastmond played the holding role and he had a good game before coming off near the end looking absolutely knackered. Merida played well enough too although I would have liked to have seen him do a little more on the ball. He took his goal really well and he has a lot more to offer in the future I'm sure. Eduardo looked lively throughout and it would have been nice for him to mark his comeback with a goal but unfortunately he never really got any of the clearcut chances that fell to others. Bendtner had a very odd game as his passing at times was awful and he completely switched off as Liverpool equalised but he made up for it by taking his goal very well.

Early on there were chances at both ends ad Degen missed from 10 yards out for Liverpool and Bendtner from even nearer for us after some very intricate play. Our opening goal came when Eastmond won a tackle just outside the Liverpool box and the ball ran to Merida who buried it from the angle of the box on the right side into the top corner of the net on the keeper's near post. It was a great goal and I hoped that it would spur us on to more but Liverpool came into the game a lot more after that. A high ball was played to Babel who headed it back to Insua as Bendtner daydreamed and he ran forward and buried a fine shot over Fabianski to even things up. It stayed that way until half time and as the teams came off I was looking forward to more of the same.

In the second half Arsenal continued their good attacking play along with their sometimes nervous defending and eventually we retook the lead when Bendtner took a ball off Ramsey's foot in the box and turned and fired it into the roof of the net. As the game wore on Liverpool brought on Benayoun and Aqualaini to try to salvage something and they put us under a lot of pressure. At times we tried to over complicate things in defence when we should have cleared the ball but tried to be too clever. There was a good shout for handball against Senderos late on as he blocked a shot with his hands but it did seem like ball to hand to me. We brought on Randall, Watt and Coquelin for Eastmond, Bendtner and Merida in the second half and we managed to take the ball into the  corners to run the clock out which was thouroughly professional if a little unArsenal like.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable game in which Liverpool played their part and our youngsters now face a quarter final tie against one of Chelsea, Manure, The Spuds, Aston Villa, Man City, Blackburn or Portsmouth. It's unusual to see all Premier league clubs only in the Carling Cup at this stage but it appears that the competition is being taken a little more seriously this season. I would imagine the quarter final draw will be on Saturday on Sky as usual and it means our rearranged league game against Bolton on December 2nd will have to be rearranged again.

Ahead of our Saturday lunchtime game against The Spuds Robbie Keane has been claiming that they have a better squad than us. I wondered to myself if they have any world class players in their squad and I realised that they don't but we have Cesc, Arshavin & RVP who are all far too good for them. We also have Gallas, The Verminator, Rosicky, Theo, Nasri & Eduardo who would all walk into thir team. He can talk all he wants about how good he thinks they are but our players will do the talking at 12.45 on Saturday as we put them in their place as also rans in the race for the league title and the bragging rights in North London. That's it for today.

Here's the goals from last night.

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And to finish today's title track from The Smiths which is for Robbie Keane and his big mouth.

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See You Tomorrow.

It's Saturday morning again and the start of a long weekend here in rainy Dublin. I had to work until 7 last night and played football at 7.30 which was no mean feat as I had to travel 7 or 8 miles and collect 2 people on the way. We were a little late starting but that doesn't make much difference usually as there is no one playing after us and we can play on until 9 if we like which we always do. Much to our surprise at 8.30 we had to leave the hall as 10 basketball players appeared from nowhere and our game was over. It left us all with a very strange feeling of not having finished what we had started. Needless to say from here on in I will make sure that everybody is there well before the appointed time and we get full value for our money.

Anyway that's enough about my petty trials and I'll get down to the important business of Arsenal and all that is happening in the world of Arsenal. Unfortunately there isn't too much to report before we play West Ham tomorrow at the unusual time of 4.15. I haven't made any plans yet but I imagine that I will be watching the game in The Strand in Bray as per usual with my fellow Wicklow Gooners. The club have said that Eduardo will be available again after his injury as will Senderos as well probably but Rosicky won't make it and a decision on Bendtner will be made after training today. The real dilemna for the boss is in between the sticks as he has Almunia, Fabianski & Don Vito all fit and raring to go but only 1 of them can play and 1 more can sit on the bench. That means that we will have 1 very unhappy goalkeeper sitting in the stands and knowing that he will probably play against Liverpool in the Carling Cup next week but wanting to be in the first team squad. In my opinion he will stick with Don Vito and Almunia will warm the bench again with Fabianski starting on Wednesday night. I'll preview that game on Wednesday morning and I'll preview tomorrow's game tomorrow morning when there will hopefully be a little more to report. Finally for today Henri Lansbury bagged himself a brace of goals for Watford last night in a 4-1 win over Sheffield Wednesday. That's the lot for today.

Here's a little tribute to Eboue.

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And to finish today's title track from Bob Marley. Time will tell who our best keeper is but personally I'd prefer a new keeper to arrive in January who is genuinely world class.

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See You Tomorrow.

There was an awful lot written yesterday about the 13 years the boss has been in charge at Arsenal and most of it was very complimentary but there were  a few people out there who couldn't resist having a go. I was on Twitter last night and somebody linked an article about Arsenal and when I opened it I found it was by Myles Palmer on Arsenal News Review. It's a site I used to quite enjoy reading even if I didn't always agree with his opinions but somewhere around a year or so ago he appeared to lose the plot and now I don't even consider reading what he has to say. It was actually amusing to see how anti Wenger he appears to have become and I now know that I have missed absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever.

Ahead of our match with Blackburn on Sunday we found out yesterday that Theo and Bendtner will both be available again but Eduardo has had a slight recurrance of his thigh muscle injury and he will be out for a couple of weeks. He was risked when he came on as a sub on Tuesday night and that risk backfired although he did create the opening goal so it may well have paid off in fact. I wonder will he be available for his country over the next 2 weeks as we face another international break. Ahead of that break the boss said that we should see both Nasri and Fabianski very soon afterwards and that's very good news indeed. Almunia will be assessed today but the boss doesn't think he will be quite ready to face Blackburn and we should see him after the break again. Can somebody please tell me what was wrong with him as I have heard he had a chest infection among other things. I think 3 weeks is a very long time for a player to be out with a chest infection although I do realise that Arsenal players seem to recover slower than players at other clubs.

I'm sure the boss will have a lot to say today about our match on Sunday and our opponents too. If I recall correctly we have beaten them quite easily in recent seasons and of course it's always nice to put a few more goals past ex Spud Paul Robinson. I think he has conceded something like 450 goals against us in his career so far and long may it continue. It would be nice to give Big Fat Sam another stuffing too but luckly we won't have a game for 2 weeks afterwards as our players are bound to be kicked up and down the pitch and the standard of refereeing this season has been awful in the Premier league.

Thierry Henry said yesterday that he still loves Arsenal and he will come back one day as he feels he belongs with us. He would like to return to work with the boss and I'm sure all of us fans would love to see him back too although I'm not quite sure what role he would fill. A team mate of his at Barcelona, Xavi, has said that he would love Cesc to join him over there as he is a footballer with Barcelona DNA. They didn't think that when they let his contract run out in 2003 before he joined us and in my opinion the DNA here stands for "do not appreciate" as in we do not appreciate their continued statements about our captain. With all the money we have available(it must be at least £70 million) we should start asking about their players just to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Henry could show any player how to act towards a previous club and speaking of which it emerged yesterday that he who shall remain nameless got a 2 game suspended ban and a £25,000 fine for his goal celebration atgainst us last month. I hope that's the end of it but I suspect we might hear a bit more from his big mouth prior to their trip to The Emirates in April. That's the lot for today and I'll preview the Blackburn tomorrow I suppose or maybe even on Sunday. By the way I have just realised that we have 5 games in 15 days after the international break and that certainly will keep things busy here.

Here's a clip of 1 of my favourite moments under Arsene Wenger as Leahmann saved a last minute penalty against Villarreal to put us into the CL final in 2006.

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And to finish today's title track from New Model Army. As the saying goes "No pain, No gain" and we have certainly had the pain with all the injuries so it's time for the gain now.

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See You Tomorrow.

The club announced record profits for the year ending 31st May 2009 yesterday. The profit of £35.2 million was accumulated in a year when we bought Arshavin for a reported fee of £20 million and the boss has said that he is very happy with it. If you consider that we have made a profit of another £30 million at least on transfers since than it shows you how much money is available to the boss to improve the team if he wants to. However, he has made it blatantly obvious that he is happy with the squad he has at the momentand he doesn't see the need to spend any of that lovely lucre. I still think we could do with another defensive midfielder in January and I'm also a little concerned at our goalkeeping situation but that does seem to be improving at the moment.

We play Olympiacos tonight in our second game in our Champions league group and it appears that our injury jinx has struck again. Denilson has been ruled out for 2 months with a small fracture in his back and Bendtner was involved in a minor car crash on Sunday and he won't be risked tonight. Theo won't play either as he lacks match fitness but the boss intends remedying that before Sunday and he should be available for that game as should Bendtner too. Thankfully Eduardo will be available and hopefully he will feature in the starting 11.

The goalkeeper and defence pick themselves and Cesc and Song are bound to play in midfield. I would like to see Rosicky alongside Cesc with RVP, Arshavin & Eduardo up front but I have a bad feeling that Diaby will get a game from the start. Olympiacos have Olaf Mellberg and Matt Derbyshire in their team and they have had a good start to the Greek league as they are in 2nd place with 13 points from 5 games. Greek teams are notoriously bad away from home in the Champions league and if we can press them from the first minute we should be able to win and win well. I'm predicting a 3-0 win for us as we set ourselves up to win the group. Tonight is the first of 3 home games in a row for us and 3 wins would be absolutely fantastic and with Blackburn & Birmingham to come in the league we are well capable of it.

Our Carling Cup 4th round match at home to Liverpool has been confirmed for Wednesday October 28th and not the day before as previously announced. Our ladies started their league campaign on Sunday with a 1-0 win at Birmingham. Our youth team won 4-2 at Fulham on Saturday with 3 goals from Afobe and the other from Garantia's new favourite Ozyakup. Spain's under 20s beat Nigeria 2-0 at the under 20 World Cup with both goals coming from Fran Merida.

The match is live on the TV tonight and I would love to be in The Strand in Bray watching it with my fellow Wicklow Gunners but I have to go to yet another family wedding. My uncle is getting married tomorrow evening and it looks like the meal will be during the Arsenal match so I'll be lucky to see any of it. It's in a very posh hotel so the chances are that the bar won't even have a TV with the football on which means I'll be relying on my phone to keep me up to date via Twitter. To make matters worse my uncle is an Arsenal fan as he went to college in London in the 70s and he sent me over a lot of arsenal programmes at the time.

Finally for today the boss becomes our longest serving manager ever this week and he has spoken about how the club appointed him in the first place. He said they were probably crazy to do so but he then qualified that by saying they were more brave than crazy. He was interviewed for the job a year earlier when it went to Bruce Rioch and he reckons the highlight of his time at Arsenal so far was the unbeaten season of 2003/04 and I wouldn't dare to argue with that.

Here's the highlights of our game in Liege 2 weeks ago.

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And to finish today's title track from Space which i put together myself. We made a record profit in the last year but the boss is resisting the temptation to spend it.

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See You Tomorrow.

Well my prediction for last night's game went out the window before I had even made myself comfortable on the sofa to watch the game. Arsenal were caught like a rabbit in the headlights and found themselves 2-0 inside 5 minutes after two defensive blunders. First of all Song put the ball out for a corner under no pressure as he seemed unsure of letting it run through to Mannone and when the corner was cleared Eduardo inexplicably back heeled it just outside our box and a Liege player pounced on the loose ball. As he closed in on the Arsenal box nobody closed him down and he shot low into the corner on the keeper's near post. In hindsight Mannone should have covered that post but he took one step in the wrong direction and was beaten by a well placed shot. However he could also have expected a little more protection from the players in front of him.

After such a disasterous start we needed to get a foothold in the game and the only way to do that was to get our passing game going and concentrate hard to ensure there were no more stupid mistakes. However Eboue managed to miscontrol a pass on the halfway line and as Standard charged forward we retreated to the penalty area. The Standard player ran towards the penalty area and as he turned inside Gallas he was upended by a sliding foot from Gallas right on the line of the penalty area. It was impossible to tell if he was in or out of the area but the referee gave the penalty and it looked right at first as the player fell into the area. We were a little unfortunate to concede the penalty but that's the way our luck has been going recently. The Standard player got up and stroked the ball into the corner of the net to make it 2-0 and Mannone picked the ball out of the net for the second time with only his second touch of the night.  

After that we struggled to play any sort of cohesive football for the rest of the first half and the delivery from our free kicks and corners was very poor at best. It was starting to look very dodgy as the only Arsenal players on the pitch that were playing well were Vermaelen and Rosicky. All that changed in the last minute of the first half when Diaby eventually did something good. He turned on the halfway line and beat his man and sprinted forward with the ball. As he reached Standard's penalty area he played the ball into the right hand channel for Bendtner who did very well to hold off the defender and turn and shoot between the keeper's legs from a tight angle and in to the far corner. Suddenly we had a lifeline and the complexion of the game had changed completely.

The second half began much like the first had as Arsenal were slow out of the blocks and Standard almost scored again. However by this stage Mannone had grown a little in confidence after the 2 early goals and some dodgy kicking and he dealt pretty well with anything that came his way. He managed to control his penalty area far better than I have seen Almunia do in recent games and Arsenal gradually started to gain control. We had a few half chances but as the clock ticked towards 80 minutes it was starting to look like Standard's defending was going to pay dividends.

We got a free kick on the left as Eduardo was held back and Cesc floated the ball towards the far post. Eduardo tried to head it but missed and the ball carried through to Song at the far post who looked a mile offside but as it turns out he wasn't. However he did stop the ball with his arm before poking it across the goal for The Verminator to stab it home from 1 foot out. We must have had 5 players in the six yard box when the ball went into the net and it was obvious that the players wanted to get a result even if they were playing very badly.

Suddenly the pendulum had swung in our favour and Standard were all at sea. We won a corner on the left and as the ball came into the six yard box from the corner two Standard players failed to cut it out at the near post and Eduardo somehow managed to get a knee to the ball and divert it into the goal. You could see the relief on the players' faces and we only had 9 minutes left to defend our lead. Ramsey was on at this stage for Rosicky and Sagna was on for Eboue and we Ramsey won the ball just inside their half and surged forward. If he had played the pass to Bendtner a little softer or if Bendtner had trusted his left foot enough to try to trap the ball on it we might have gone 4-2 up but neither thing happened. Standard tried to throw everything forward at as the end approached and Clichy made a fantastic tackle just before the end to stop what looked like it might be an equaliser. It might well have been the only good thing he did all night as he had another nightmare. He wasn't the only one though as passes were misplaced and possession given away all night.

However, we got the away win we wanted and a lot of drama with it too and we brought our losing streak to an end even if we were very lucky to do so. My prediction was a 3-0 win for Arsenal with Eduardo getting on the scoresheet and if it wasn't for the first 5 minutes I had it exactly right. The plusses on the night were the performances of Rosicky and Vermaelen and also Mannone after his uncertain start. Bendtner said he would score if he was played in the central position and he lived up to his own billing which is another plus for us. On the negative side Clichy looked very poor yet again and Song seems to have lost the intensity he had at the start of the season. Gallas had a dodgy night too and I couldn't understand how Eboue was in the team ahead of Sagna. Diaby was at his frustrating worst at times and we again gave away 2 goals rather than having the opposition make them.

From here we move on to a home league game against Wigan at the weekend and we should have RVP and denilson available again. We have to get our tempo and concentration going from the kick off as we need to get some Premier league wins under our belt after 2 straight defeats. I'll be watching the match with the Wicklow Gunners in The Strand in Bray as it's live on Setanta and I'll be looking forward to it as I couldn't make it last night as I'm still unwell. I am feeling a lot better today and I'm sure I will be up to a beer or 2 by Saturday afternoon. My sister and her boyfriend will be over from Dubai and they're both Arsenal supporters and they intend coming to the supporters club with me. I'll have to be on my best behaviour as he's a season ticket holder at The Emirates and you never know when that might come in handy. That's the lot for today.

Here's the highlights from last night.

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And to finish here's today's title track from Radiohead and it was used because we were lucky to get out of the hole we had dug ourselves.

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See You Tomorrow.

ps Happy Birthday to my yougest son Sam who is 14 today(enjoy the chocolate cake).

The international break is over at last and now we can get back to another month of real football before we break for internationals again. In that time we have 7 matches in 23 days starting with our trip to Man City on Saturday and finishing with a home game against Blackburn in the league on Sunday October 4th. In between there are league games at home to Wigan and away to Fulham, Champions league games away to Standard Liege and at home to Olympiacos and a chance for the kids in the Carling Cup at home to West Brom.

These are all games that are winnable for us if we can keep our momentum from the first 5 games going and the defeat to Manure has not affected us. I think the manner in which we played at Old Trafford will stand to the team as we were by far the better team and we were missing our captain and star player. With so many games in quick succession it is important that we get as many players as possible back from injury and to that end it was good to see Rosicky played almost an hour for his country last night in a 7-0 win over San Marino. Cesc also started for Spain and he got their first goal in a 3-0 win. Bendtner managed to get on the scoresheet again for Denmark as they drew 1-1, with Eduardo netting Croatia's consolation goal in their 5-1 defeat against England. As of yet there are no reports of any of our players being injured and I'll keep my fingers crossed that it remains that way. Theo and Nasri were reported to be training this week and Vela and Fabianski can't be too far away either and all 4 of them would be very welcome additions to the squad. If we can get them all back it will leave Djourou as our only long term absentee and the chances are we won't see him again this season even though there has been no official word from the club yet.

With the players coming back to the club today after their various trips around the globe the manager will assess their bumps and bruises before he gives his customary press conference on Friday. In that I would imagine he will tell us the situation with Djourou and also update us on the return dates for our injured players. Some of our players have done very well for their countries this week with Bendtner getting 2 goals and RVP, Cesc, Eduardo & Ramsey all managing 1 goal each. Let's hope they can continue that form against City on Saturday as we show Adebarndoor the difference between a football team and a team of mercaneries. That's it for today as there is still very little to report.

Here's a clip to prove that class is permanent as Denis Bergkamp scores for Ajax seniors(thanks LA).

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And to finish here's today's title track from New Model Army. Today is a good day as the international break is over. Let's hope it stays that way and we get all our players back in 1 piece.

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See You Tomorrow.

It's Friday morning and the weekend is almost here. As expected we have no players to come back from injury with the exception of Eduardo who it would seem has recovered from his tight groin which stopped him from playing on Tuesday night. I suppose that the boss is still keeping him on the bench for the moment because he has to regain full match fitness after his horiffic injury. When he is up to it I would like to see him start as our first choice striker as even though we're playing very well at the moment the front 3 still don't seem to be clicking. All 3 of them are putting in an awful lot of work but it could be said that they are all playing out of position and they aren't 100% sure of what the others will do at times.

I'll give a run down of what team and tactics I think we should use against Portsmouth tomorrow morning but suffice it to say the manager doesn't have too many choices. He's very loyal to his players and with 2 wins away from home out of 2 I'm pretty sure the team won't have any changes in it. The club will have a red and white scarf on every Arsenal seat in the stadium to try to encourage the fans to give the players a big welcome for the new season. 

We are again being linked with Van der Vaart as Madrid are keen to offload him but I am sure he will have a host of clubs looking for his services. He is said to be keen to come to the Premier League and there can't be too many clubs that would tempt him besides us. If it's true that he's available at £6 million it's a steal and we would be crazy not to sign him. We have made 3 new signings as 3 new Senior Executives have been appointed by the club and they will all report directly to Ivan Gazidis. There were reports that Bendtner had signed a new contract with a big raise but that has been denied for the moment by his father. I would imagine that it will be tied up pretty soon though.

In the world of Fantasy Football 1 of the teams in the Oleole league is doing incredibly well and is in 23rd place overall out of almost 1.8 million teams. Well done to Amer Fatayer and I hope he can keep up the good work. The Oleole Arsenal league is in 59th place out of 158,000 leagues and again that's some achievement for such a small league. I had a pretty good midweek myself and I have progressed to just inside the top 40,000 teams so I'm happy enough with that for the moment. There's a lot of tactics involved and even though the Football Guy has had what appears to be a bad start his past record is impeccable and to be ahead of him at any time is a good thing. That's it for today.

Here's a clip of Vermaelen's superb chase back and saving tackle against Celtic on Tuesday night.

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And to finish today's title track from The Damned. The club are trying to "Ignite" some passion in the fans by providing scarves and asking them to use them to get behind the team.

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See You Tomorrow.

The international matches seem to have gone well enough from an Arsenal perspective as there are no injuries to report yet as I write this. That may change later in the day as the players make their way back to the club from various destinations around the world. Let's just hope that we will have a full squad available for the trip to Everton in 2 days time. Obviously we won't have Rosicky & Nasri and it appears that Djourou is a doubt after he was sent back from Switzerland on Tuesday as a precaution due to an injury he was carrying. Vela won't be available either as he will probably only arrive back on Friday and he will be suffering from jetlag too I'm sure.

As a result of Djourou's injury and the fact that Vermaelen missed the last 3 pre season friendlies due to injury the rumour mill now has it that we will sign Hangeland before Saturday. Another central defender we were supposedly interested in is Neven Subotic of Borussia Dortmund but the player has denied that he will be joining us. Another player who was linked with us is Lee Cattermole and we won't be signing him either as he has just signed for Sunderland. I can't say I'm too upset as I cannot see any way a player of his limited abilities could do anything for our team. It would appear that Steve Bruce will bid for more or less any player that we are rumoured to be interested in and he has already signed Cana and had a bid for Chamakh turned down. He's welcome to them all as I only want Arsenal to sign the very best of players who will be good enough to command a first team place immediatly. If the rumours about Hangeland are true it will create genuine competition at the centre of our defence and that can only be good.

For some bizzare reason Nicklas Bendtner has changed his squad number from 26 to 52 as he says that the number is a special one for him personally . He has offered to replace any jerseys for fans who have bought them with his number on the back since June 2009 and it will cost him somewhere in the region of £10,000 according to reports in the papers. Whether the number 52 is a special one to him or not I think it's ridiculous that a player in a squad of less than 30 players can wear number 52 on his back. The fact that the club pander to these inane requests only proves how pampered modern footballers are. In the good old days the players were handed their jerseys in the dressing room and the only number above 11 was the substitutes jersey. Mind you in those days the pitches were like ploughed fields, common assault was seen as a fair tackle and trouble on the terraces was a common occurence.

The curse of leaving Arsenal has struck again as former player Alex Hleb has admitted that he never should have left us and that our manager made him a better player. To be honest I delighted to see things going awry for him at Barcelona as I can remember when he was there only a couple of months he appealed to his friend Cesc to join him there. He is now at Stuttgart on a season long loan and his career has gone backwards. I wonder if he would still like to see Cesc at Barcelona? Speaking of Cesc there are more stories about Barcelona wanting to sign him within the week or waiting until next summer as they won't pay over the odds for him. They can say what they want as the player is not for sale nor does he want to leave. I'm really bored with them at this stage and I am developing a distinct dislike for a club I admired a few years ago. The manner which they go about their transfer dealings is totally reprehensible and I hope their little Empire collapses around them this season.

Finally for today here's the link to join the Fantasy Football and it's also in the links in the side bar. The codes for each league are as follows

Oleole league code  4383-1847

Oleole Arsenal league code  4383-1835

Oleole head to head league  4383-1828 (we only need 5 more teams to complete this league).

I Know The Score predictions competition link & Oleole league code  FC85F-XSC

Here's a clip of Eduardo's goal for Croatia last night.

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And to finish today's title track from Radiohead. It's for Bendtner and his "lucky" number 52. Hopefully we will be lucky with injuries after the internationals too.

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See You Tomorrow.