It's Monday morning yet again and I can't understand how it came around so quickly. I went to see The Specials play live in the Olympia in Dublin last night with my younger brother and they were fantastic. First of all we went to the Foggy Dew and Sunday night there is the Reggae and Ska night which was just what we needed to get us in the mood as we saw Return Of The Bionic Rats thump out some great ska and reggae songs from years gone past along with some very good material of their own. It really got us in the mood as did the beers that accompanied the music and we then headed to the Olympia for what we knew would be a great gig. When The Specials took the stage we weren't disappointed as we were in the upper tier of what was built as a theatre and the floor rocked as we all danced in front of our seats. They turned out great song after great song and I have to say that they were every bit as good as they were at Oxegen last July but this time we got over an hour and a half instead of the 40 minutes that they were allotted at Oxegen.

Anyway enough of my thrilling weekend and on to all things Arsenal. It appears that the only Arsenal news appearing anywher concerns the injury suffered by RVP playing for his coiuntry against Italy on Saturday night. Depending on what you read he will be back playing in 6 weeks or he won't even be able to resume training for a minimum of 8 weeks. Either way it's a blow to Arsenal and it's one we need to overcome at once before it threatens to destroy our season. If the 6 week scenario is true we will see him back at the start of January and I hope that that is the case but as with all Arsenal injuries we never know the full extent of what is wrong with him and how long it will be before we see him back in the team and terrorising defences. I do know that Eduardo is the natural succesor to RVP but I also know that he can't play the position in the same way that RVP does and we may have to adopt a slightly different style to accomodate him. Other than that Theo and Vela are waiting to get a chance and any team that has to play us while RVP is injured will not get an easy ride from either of these 2 talented strikers. With nothing else to report and me needing to take it easy after last night that's it for today.

Here's a clip of Rambo's goal against Scotland for Wales.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from The Specials recorded live at The Olympia last night by me. To be honest I can't find an Arsenal connection for the title but who cares as I had the time of my life at the gig.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

I watched the Ireland v France World Cup play off last night and I was glad to be an Arsenal fan as we are lucky enough to support a team that knows how to play football. I'm Irish and it was hard to watch my country playing so poorly but to be honest the only players in the Irish team who looked up to the standard last night were Given and Duff. Ireland had only 41% of the possession at home and although France created very little the goal was inevitable as Ireland dropped back further and further and opted to kick the ball straight back to France at every oppurtunity rather than trying to use it. France got the 1-0 win thanks to a deflected shot from Anelka that was going nowhere and to be honest Ireland had the 2 best chances of the night but they were stopped by a mixture of good defending and good goalkeeping. The thing I took out of the game from an Arsenal perspective was the performance of the French goalkeeper Lloris who looked every bit the goalkeeper we need to step in and claim the number 1 jersey for Arsenal. He commanded his area, made all the right decisions and played very well with the exception of 1 kick the was sliced into touch. It might be a bit premature after seeing him only once but I would love us to sign him in the January transfer window. The Arsenal players in the French team, Gallas and Sagna, played well and came through unscathed which is the important thing. The was a curious incident at the end where a fight almost developed as Lassana Diarra turned his back on an Irish player who tried to shake his hand. Throughout the game he had complained to the referee about perfectly legitimate challenges being fouls and he was pretty poor also. I'm fairly glad that he left us as he seems to be thr type of player that we could do without.

I had thought that there was very little going on in the world of Arsenal but when I turned on my computer this morning I read the news that RVP had injured his ankle playing for his country against Italy. Having seen the tackle I don't think we can blame the Italian defender as the ball was there to be won and RVP was just a little unlucky. He did look to be in a lot of pain but as yet there is nothing on the club site about it as per usual. In fact as I type this there has been nothing at all on the club site since last Friday. I know the interlull is in full swing but surely there is something of interest for Arsenal fans to be reported on the Arsenal.com. I digress from RVP's injury at this stage and I have read varying reports about the length of his protracted absence from the team but I don't suppose we'll know what the exact situation is until the club decide to tell us. Having just been voted the Premiership player of the month for October I suppose the injury was bound to happen and the question now is who will replace him in the Arsenal team. With Bendtner also out for up to a month it would seem to put Eduardo at the top of the pecking order and he did manage a couple of goals for Croatia in a 5-0 win against Liechenstein yesterday. Theo is due back from injury very soon and Vela can play in that position too but I don't know if any of them can fit into our new system as well as RVP did. We will see next Saturday what the feelings of the manager are on who his successor will be as we make our trip to Sunderland.

Apparently Aaron Ramsey played very well for Wales yesterday as he scored 1 goal and made the other 2 in a 3-0 win against Scotland in a game in which he totally outplayed Darren Fletcher. He is pushing very hard for a starting berth alongside Cesc in front of Song and ultimately I think the boss has him earmarked to replace Cesc if and/or when he does move on. Hopefully if that happens it won't be for a very long time and Ramsey will have forced his way into the team before that. Another Arsenal player to get on the scoresheet for his country was The Verminator who got 1 of Belgium's goals in a 3-0 win against Hungary. There are plenty of stories about potential targets for us in the transfer window and also a ridicilous story about Liverpool looking to sign Eduardo in January too. I won't bother naming any of the players here as it's all idle speculation but the 1 story that might have a little bit behind it is that Senderos says that he might be on his way in January. That's it for today and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that RVP isn't out for too long as I'll be over there in January and maybe February too to see my beloved Arsenal.

Here's the highlights from the Belgium game in which The Verminator managed to score from a set piece.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Tears For Fears. RVP was hurt last night and it hurts all Arsenal fans and possibly our chances of winning something major this season.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

It's Monday morning again and unfortunately the weekend is over yet again. As the mornings get darker and the nights get longer the thing that can cheer us all up is the form of our favourite football team. Luckily I'm an Arsenal supporter and we are playing the sort of football at the moment that would cheer up anybody watching it. That's the good news but the bad news is that after tonight's game between Liverpool and Birmingham the dreaded interlull returns for almost a fortnight and we will find ourselves with very little Arsenal news to report. During that time I'll try to keep an eye on the Arsenal players as they play for their countries and give my own particular twist on any news that there is. I'll also have a look at the fantasy football and see how I'm doing in all the Oleole leagues that I've set up and others too.

Having missed most of the football over the weekend I managed to play catch up last night and see all the goals on MOTD 2 as we ran out handsome winners over Wolves on Saturday to move us up to what turned out to be a second place we kept as Chelsea beat Manure yesterday. There was very little mention made of us overtaking Manure for 2nd spot with a game in hand but I would expect no more fron the BBC. I did notice in the highlights of The Spuds v Sunderland game that Darren Bent won a penalty when he was caught by the keeper but it turned out that he was on the way down before there was any contact and the commentator said that The Spuds were hard done by. It looked quite similar to how Shrek won his penalty against us at Old Trafford but if I remember on that occasion Shrek was "very intelligent" in what he did unlike Bent who of course is not a current England international. I also wonder if poor old Drogba will get his yellow card recinded after he was booked for diving against Manure. Karma is a strange thing and it was funny to see his reaction to being the sinned against for a change. I also wonder will the Manure player who purposely kicked him in the chest get his just deserts from the FA. The challenge was very similar to the one which earned Eboue a red card against Manure at Old Trafford a couple of seasons ago and if there's any consistency from the FA Evans(I think it was him) will get a 3 game ban from the FA. Knowing what the FA are like I would imagine that he will get off scot free for fear of offending their manager.

Our performance against Wolves on Saturday wasn't the greatest but the fact that we ran out 4-1 winners was a testament to how our attitude seems to be a bit better recently. The manager picked the defence I expected him to pick and he also had the expected choices of Cesc, RVP & Arshavin in the team but I was surprised to see Diaby play the role that Song has made his own this season in defensive midfield. I can only imagine that it was the boss trying to see if Diaby can fill that role when Song is away on ACN duty early in 2010. With Ramsey eventually getting a start in midfield the other attacking spot was taken by Eduardo.

From what I have seen and read it would appear that we were under the cosh early on as Diaby showed that he's not as adept as Song at playing in the defensive midfield role. However Diaby got injured after 24 minutes and he was replaced by Song which immediatly gave the team more balance. Not long afterwards we took the lead when a corner from Cesc was deflected into the Wolves net by a defender under pressure from Eduardo for an own goal to put us 1-0 up. Seven minutes later it was 2-0 couttesy of another own goal from Wolves as we broke quickly. Ramsey played a ball just behind Eduardo and as he attempted a return pass it was deflected home by 1 of their defenders to give us a comfortable lead as half time approached. At that stage I was standing in the supporters club in Bray as I sneaked out of the wedding I was at between courses. Unfortunately I only stayed a couple of minutes which meant that I missed Cesc's goal on the stroke of half time which gave us a commanding lead.

The move that led to Cesc's goal was a thing of beauty as Cesc played the ball to Sagna in our half and then continued to move quickly forward. When Sagna played the ball in to the feet of RVP he immediatly laid it off to the unrushing Cesc and Cesc managed to finish easily from close in with only the keeper to beat. It was halfway through the second half when Arshavin added the 4th and final goal, for us, of the afternoon when a corner was cleared out to him and he volleyed it through  a sea of legs and into the bottom corner. In the last minute we managed to concede our usual goal with a header from a corner but the result was no longer in doubt at that stage.  With 55 goals to our name so far this season we are certainly guilty of playing some very attractive football and we are a joy to watch in my opinion.

The boss was happy with the result and he said that he rested Song but as I said earlier I think he was experimrnting and he may not like the outcome of the experiment. He thought that after the early part of the game we dominated procedings and we could have had more goals if our finishing was a bit better. It was a good result and with Chelsea to come to The Emirates soon after the interlull we find ourselves in a position where we can genuinely challenge for the title. The feeling among Arsenal fans is that this could well be our season to regain our league title after a gap of what will be 6 years next summer. I'm still in the "hoping we can sustain" our challenge camp but if we don't I certainly won't be saying I told you so. Our youth team managed a 6-0 win on Saturday morning at home to Charlton with Deacon(2), Freeman(2), Henderson & Yennaris scoring the goals to keep them on top of the league. Our ladies managed a 3-2 win at Chelsea yesterday to remain unbeaten in all copmpetitions so far this season.  I'll leave it there for today as I have a lot of reading to do to catch up on all the blogs I've missed in the last 2 days.

Here's the highlights from Saturday again.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Gregory Isaacs. I may be too late with my match review but I think my excuse is acceptable.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

The massive sense of disappointment that I felt after Sunday's draw with West Ham has faded enough for me to start to feel a little bit optimistic about our chances for this season. The majority of the players will not be playing against Liverpool in the Carling Cup tomorrow night and it means that they will have had almost a full week to sort themselves out before The Spuds visit us on Saturday. A win against West Ham would have been great as a win against The Spuds would have put us on top of the table even if it was only for a few hours next Saturday. That's not going to happen now but if we have actually learned our lesson from Sunday's game it could well happen later in the season. The point has been made that instead of trying to defend our 2-0 lead that we should have scored more to completely finish them off and the way we defend that seems to make sense to me.

As a result of our draw with West Ham the so called experts have written us off yet again and that suits us just fine. Our captain believes we have the desire and the ability to win the league but he thinks that there is a lot more pressure on other teams who have invested an awful lot of money in new players in the transfer market. We should have Nasri, Bendtner & Eduardo back to full fitness by Saturday and that will put a bit of pressure on the players in the team which will hopefully make them up their game just enough to help us bring St. Totteringham's day a little bit closer. I have said many times before that I would love to see Vela get a run in the first team but he wasn't even on the bench on Sunday. It must be very frustrating for him to see Eboue play as 1 of our front 3 as he can't get into the side. Along with Ramsey and Wilshere I would like to see how Vela does in the first team when he has all our other top players playing with him. I'm sure they will all play against Liverpool in the Carling Cup but it will be as part of a second string side and even though I'm sure they will play well but it's hard to judge in a match like that.

The majority of the first team will have had almost a week without a game for the first time this season and that will surley help in the build up to Saturday's local derby. I'm sure The Spuds will play a lot of their first team in the Carling Cup tonight and that will hopefully tire them a little with our players getting that much needed break. Realistically for them it's their only real chance of a trophy and it offers Europa league qualification too which is a good thing for a smaller club like them. I'll deal with that game later in the week after our match against Liverpool is out of the way.

In the fantasy football the Football Guy's friend Amer still leads the way but IAWWT has cut his lead to 7 points and I'm a further 23 points back in 3rd place. In the head to head league my team continues to sweep all before them with 10 wins out of 10 but I'm playing IAWWT this week and if he can beat me it will tighten things up at the top again. For anybody with a fantasy team don't forget that both West Ham and Aston Villa have 2 games each this week and their players are a good choice to transfer into your team if you can get the right ones. I seem to have given the kiss of death to Blackburn's David Dunn after tipping him as a good fantasy buy last week he has contracted swine flu and who knows when he will be back to his best when he does return. That's it for today.

Here's a little bit of Ramsey and Wilshere.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Deprche Mode. It's a plea from me to the team but I'm sure it's one that can't be lived up to.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

As the international break seemingly drags on endlessly there is a sparsity of Arsenal news out there. There was an interview with Cesc yesterday where he said that it's a great honour to be linked with Barcelona but he would also like to win another trophy with Arsenal. He also used the age old expression "we will see" when he was asked about his future. I know when I tell my kids we will see it means there's not a hope of whatever they want happening. I have said before that I think we need to win a trophy this season to keep Cesc but a trophy could also be the signal for his exit. It's hard to tell what next summer will bring as Madrid have bought a lot of players and if they can recapture the Spanish league it could mean we will see a genuine offer from Barcelona for Cesc.

It's hard to know how the boss and the club would react to an offer of €50 million for our captain but I do think that they would genuinely consider it. Ramsey is looking more and more likely to be the player to directly replace him and I think he is going to need more game time this season. The goal he scored for Wales under 21s at the weekend was very good and he looks ready to step up to me. The obvious problem is that there is no obvious place for him in the team at the moment but if we want him to progress he has to play more often. Denilson's place in the midfield 3 seems to be set in stone but I wonder if Ramsey will push hard enough to make the position his own.

Cesc also said that we will not be bullied by anyone and in the game against Manure we did show that side to our game but it's just a pity we couldn't keep our concentration enough to finish them off when we were clearly the better team. If we can play that well against City this weekend we are more than capable of getting a win up there. It seems that we might have Theo available for the game which is a boost and Cesc played for Spain so we can expect him back too. Rosicky was said to be fit for the Manure game but he didn't play and he didn't play for his country either but I imagine he needs to be played back in. I think that we might see him get a few minutes against Wigan and a Carling Cup start against West Brom if he hasn't had another set back. As I said there's not much else happening so I'll leave it ther for today but I can smell the weekend approaching as I start to consider my options for my Fantasy football team.

Here's a clip of Ajax showing us how Pires and Henry should have taken the penalty that I linked yesterday.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from The Smiths. I wonder how long Cesc will be ours, will Ramsey get his chance to stake a claim and if we will eventually see the return of Rosicky.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

It emerged yesterday that Stan Kroenke has increased his stake in the club yet again. His stake now stands at 28.58% and he is getting closer to the stage where he has to make an offer to other shareholders to buy their shares. That limit is set at 30% and he doesn't have very far to go now. He is a fairly media shy man but his personal wealth is estimated to be $3.5 million which he has acquired from his property development company. This figure might be a little out of date as the value of property worldwide has decreased over the last few years but I'm sure he is still worth a pretty penny. He is listed in the Forbes 400 list of the 400 richest Americans and he is joint 105 th on that list at the moment. He has interests in various Sports franchises in America and he is married to Anne Walton whose family own Wal-Mart and are worth an absolute family. He will be 62 years old later this month and that's not too much else that can be said about him. The club weren't interested in him originally but when Usmanov showed up they turned to him fairly quickly as he was by far the lesswe of 2 evils.

In transfer news Cesc is again being linked with both Madrid & Barcelona with Barcelona's president in particular making statements about Cesc being his best option in the current market. I was under the illusion that players under contract could not be approached but obviously the rules don't apply to Barcelona. When will UEFA clamp down on the likes of Barcelona trying to unsettle players through the press? We all know that Platini would prefer to spend his time inventing ways to stop English teams winning the Champions league and signing top class players. It would appear that he has been helped in this task by Alistar Darling who seems to have scared off a lot of top earning foreign players by raising the tax rate to 50% for anyone earning over £150,000 a year. Has anyone else noticed the lack of top class players coming into the Premiership in this transfer window? Another thing that struck me is that Manure don't seem to be able to sign anyone of note. It looks like Madrid have told all clubs that they will beat any offer Manure make for 1 of their players this summer and it will be interesting to see if they can get any good players to replace the ones that left.

Carlos Vela seems to have recovered from his injury scare and he will be available for Mexico's last group match in the Gold Cup. Their last match ended 1-1 with Panama with crowd trouble and a stream of red cards & fights. The latest Arsenal player to say that we will have learned from last season is Aaron Ramsey and I hope they are all right. The Ladies fixtures for next season have been announced and they start off with a home game against Chelsea. That's more or less it for today except to say that I have a barbeque planned for later in the day and it looks like there might be a deluge. Thankfully we will have plenty of beer and food. I was also hoping to go to Oxegen on Sunday to see The Specials but circumstances did not allow it. It now transpires that I have a very good chance of getting 2 VIP passes and if that's the case I will be there for sure.

Here's a clip of Kolo in action for us as I can't remember linking him before.

LINK

And to finish today's title track from Simple Minds which is for our possible future sole owner.

LINK

See You Tomorrow.

Don't forget to sign up to the fantasy football.

LINK

Here's the codes

Oleole League - 4383-1847

Oleole Arsenal League - 4383-1835

Oleole Head to Head League(limited to 20 teams) - 4383-1828(10 teams still needed).

And finally don't forget Lady Arse's league which is on her blog today.

LINK 

On The Ball - 4383-1777

At this stage on a Friday we should be looking forward to a match the next day or at the worst on Sunday. I should be contacting friends and making arrangements to meet up at the supporters club for a drink or two whilst watching our beloved Arsenal. Instead I will be back to work on Monday before we play our FA Cup 4th round replay on Monday night. The 6th round draw will have taken place before we know if we will be playing Burnley in the 5th round or not. I know it's only a matter of 2 days from Saturday to Monday but it makes a huge difference in terms of our chances of playing our 5th round game on a reasonable date(if we beat Cardiff). The prospect of watching Arsenal sober scares me a little as I might realise how poorly we are playing. I have to ask is the FA Cup deal with Setanta that important that it take precedence over everything else.

In terms of a team for Monday our options are very limited. Besides the usual suspects we will also be without Eboue(suspended thankfully), Diaby(injured again), Adebayor(injured), Arshavin(ineligible) and possibly Ramsey(injured). I would imagine Denilson, Nasri & Song are dead certs to start in the manager's eyes which leaves 1 place up for grabs. I hope Vela gets his chance on the left with Nasri on the right. I would also think that Bendtner will start alongside RVP with eduardo coming on at some stage. Thare should be a great roar when he enters the field of play and we have badly missed him for the last year. 

In other news the boss has said that Tony Adams was not given enough time at portsmouth and he thinks the sacking of Scolari by Chelsea was a massive mistake but that they have got a good replacement. He also feels that Gallas is showing that he is a real pro at the moment and he is glad Arshavin can't play against Cardiff as it gives him another week to get him ready. Basel Gunner watched the French match on wednesday and he said that our boss said Diarra left us because he had no patience and he was unwilling to fight for his place. If he had stayed he would be in the team every week now but he did end up at Real Madrid so he's probably happy. Finally we have been linked with Kranjcar of Portsmouth yet again. How boring.

Here's a clip of how good we used to be a few years ago. It's our 7-0 win against Middlesboro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-AIVEbuHr0

And to finish the title track from The Specials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnZtRvxY9nE

See You Tomorrow.

Have a good St. Valentines day with your loved one whether they are male, female, black, white or any other race, creed or colour. If there isn't a special someone in your life don't worry. There's always alcohol.

There were "No Surprises" in the manager's team selection yesterday. We all thought Rambo & Song would play in central midfield and they did and with Rambo having a fairly poor game and Song being himself it left us with very little drive from central midfield in the first hour. Things changed when Diaby came on and despite losing the ball a few times I thought he did well enough. The first time he lost the ball he took an elbow straight to the mouth and it looked like it hurt but he soon got on with the game. I believe we will have the same referee for the replay but I hope not because his performance was poor. He missed that elbow on Diaby and the studs up challenge on Sagna and even though it wasn't a dirty game both Cardiff players could have been sent off if the laws were applied properly. However he did manage to book Eboue for getting tripped in the box and even though I don't think it was a penalty it certainly wasn't a dive either. I suppose his reputation precedes him and you can't blame referees for thinking he is diving as he has done it so often in the past. He's a bit like "the boy who cried Wolf!"

Anyway, back to yesterday and our performance against Cardiff. I thought RVP was again our best player and to be honest not too many others put in a great performance. Fabianski did nothing wrong and he controlled his area very well which was nice to see and very different to Almunia. The defence was solid enough. I know we gave up a few half chances but that is to be expected. The opposition will always create something no matter how good our team is. With so little drive in midfield for most of the game it wasn't surprising that we didn't create too much ourselves but when we did create gilt edged chances unfortunately they were missed. Nasri was played in during the first half but he hesitated and the keeper managed to pull off a save. Towards the end Adebayor missed a very good chance from close range and in fact he almost missed the ball altogether. I wasn't impressed with him again when he came on. He kept dropping deep, passing the ball and standing back and admiring his handywork. He should be getting himself into the box to get on the end of any ball played in even though he did miss that sitter when he got in there.

I thought Song had one of his better games but he still isn't good enough to make us world beaters. Do you remember the impact Vieira had when he came into the first team? We need another fantastic buy like that from Wenger but where that player is I don't know. Bendtner did well enough but he didn't grab his chance again and he seems to do better as a sub at the moment. Nasri was also fairly average and Eboue was his usual self which means he did very little of any use. I thought we should have scored when we had a 4 on 2 break from a Cardiff corner but RVP played Bendtner in on his wrong foot when he had 2 players on the other side. Eboue was one of those players which is probably why he chose to pass to Bendtner. In the good old days we would have buried that chance.

Let's hope we can up our performance level for our trip to Everton on Wednesday night and also for the replay on Tuesday February 3rd which is on Setanta live again by the way. I'm sure Almunia, Adebayor and probably Denilson will come into the team for the Everton game and we then have West Ham on Saturday before the replay. It's going to be a busy week for us and 3 wins out of 3 would be fantastic and leave us in a strong position in the league and with a tie we would be big favourites to win in the cup. I'm not getting too far ahead of myself here but I am a little optimistic I know. 

In other news Rosicky started individual training last week according to his agent. I hope everything goes well for him and maybe we will see him by mid March if that is the case. Arshavin is appearently waiting on a decision from Arsenal with regards to his transfer. I would imagine that he is waiting on us to up our offer but it doesn't look like we will. We have been linked with Nzogbia of Newcastle again but we would be mad to buy a player who is no better than any player we have right now. We need to buy top quality players for the first team as I have said all along. That's it for today. 

Here are some very limited highlights of yesterday's game with thanks to Boxofficefootball again.

http://www.boxofficefootball.com/ukbox/football-update/cardiff-0-arsenal-0-fa-cup-highlights/

And to finish the title track from Radiohead.

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=qqsyXdj_p_I

See You Tomorrow.

Our manager may well be saying that he has money in his pocket but at the moment he just can't get any players with that money. Appearently Zenit have said that they are still in negotiations with us for Arshavin and that it should be concluded quite soon At this stage who knows one way or the other but we always seem to wait until the last minute and I expect things to be finally settled on February 2nd. There is no news about any other players of note joining us and even though we keep things private something usually leaks out. I can only assume that the boss thinks we don't need anyone else. Personally I think we need 2 more players as I have said since I started this blog in July.

The boss had his press conference today and he had an awful lot to say. He thinks Denilson deserves more credit from the media for how he has played this season but personally Ithink although he has done well enough he isn't and won't be the standard of player we require in our first 11. He also believes trophies will come with the squad we have at the moment as they just need some maturity. I think we could buy some of that maturity and speed up the process a little as it is almost 4 years since our last trophy and our only realistic target this season is the FA Cup. He also says that he believes the FA Cup is still glamorous  and to be honest any trophy would be glamorous this season. He thinks RVP is too hot to handle at the moment and I have to agree with him there at last. He also says that team mates don't need to be friends and that Gallas and Toure do get on with each other.I do agree with him but it doesn't help when they are fighting with each other like Adebayor & Bendtner or Gallas & Kolo. 

The fixture list has managed to make United's life a little easier next week and the boss has said that it is an unexplainably unfair advantage but I don't think he is doing a Rafa. He does have a point about them having 6 days between matches while the rest of theteams at the top have only 3 days between games. Rambo has mixed feelings about going back to Cardiff this weekend but I'm sure he'll put in a good performance if he plays. Gallas & Song are both available for the game but Song should not play and the defence is playing alright at the moment so I don't see the need to change it. Seeming as Kolo is our captain I think he should be first choice.I said yesterday that I didn't believe that Atletico made an offer for Eboue and when you hear €8 million being offered you know it isn't true. As for Bendtner turning Hoffenheim - the boss said we will not be selling anyone in the transfer window so it is more likely that he turned down any offer if one was made. Rene Steer has joined Gillingham on loan for a month and I hope the experience does him some good.

Ahead of our trip to Cardiff the boss has said that he has a lot of respect for Dave Jones and he thinks he's a good manager. Dave Jones had his trials and tribulations in the past but he is doing a good job at Cardiff. The boss also said that there is no room for sentiment as regards Rambo going back to Cardiff on Sunday. It will be a tough game and we can win it if we approach it with the right attitude and concentration. Let's hope there are no slip ups. That's the lot for today.

Here's a clip of Rambo scoring a very good goal for his country.

 http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=zOmaiSnvALo

And to finish the title track from Denis Brown.

 http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=uCJRkUrY_yM

See You Tomorrow.

It appears we have been "Waiting In Vain" for Arshavin to sign for us as we cannot agree a fee with his club. There is talk of him buying out his contract and becoming a free agent which is doing a "Webster" I think but I suppose with 11 days left in the transfer window we can expect a few more twists and turns. I do hope we sign him but we should be looking elsewhere also as our first priority should be a defensive midfielder. I also think we need a centre back but we have seen the emergence of Djourou recently which has eased my fears slightly.

Eduardo has made his second comeback for the reserves tonight at Stoke and while I don't know the final score yet it was 2-2 with 5 minutes to go and I think Wilshere might have got 2 goals and Eduardo was still on the pitch which means he probably got 90 minutes under his belt. The countdown can now begin to his return to full match fitness and the first team. We had just started to see how good he was last season when he had his horiffic injury and in 3-4 weeks we should see him again.

The boss has said he is delighted with the progress of Rambo as he is well ahead of where he thought he would be at this stage. I thought when we signed him that he would be a long term replacement for Cesc but hopefully he can break into the team sooner than that though I'm not sure what position he will fill. Adebayor reckons we need some belief and if we can show enough belief we can still win the league. We are showing a good fighting spirit and a lot of committment at the moment even though we aren't playing too well. The style of play is improving very slowly and I hope we can keep our challenge for 4th place up(for the moment I won't even consider anything better than that).

Finally I have realised that I never gave Bendtner the credit he was due after another good performance as a sub at Hull. I have criticised him a lot this season but after some very poor performances he has done very well as a sub in the last 2 games. I hope he keeps it up as it can only be good for us. That's it for today.

Here's a clip of what Adebayor can do when he is on form.

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=duHse4_iItg

And to finish the title track from today by Bob Marley.

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-341591613808627499

See You Tomorrow.

Update: The reserves did draw 2-2 and Eduardo played the 90 full minutes with Wilshere scoring both goals.

As it stands The Spuds are in extra time after losing 3-0 at Burnley and if they don't score they are going out as I understand it. There is a God if they lose.