Sign of The Times.
Today’s blog will be short and sweet as the fall out from our defeat at Porto continues. In my opinion we have a real goalkeeping crisis at the club with Almunia not good enough for a team with
our ambitions, Fabianski completely blowing his chance to show what he can do and the other 2 contenders lacking both experience and maturity. To add to that the boss has given the kiss of
death to James Shea apparently as he has been given a new long term contract and if he is to be coached in the Arsenal way all his potential will disappear as he becomes a flapping nervous
wreck.
Cesc spoke about pulling together and needing to get back on track for the 2nd leg. He said that Porto are favourites to progress as they are 2-1 up at the moment but Arsenal don’t look at it
that way as they just want to play the game. In a roundabout way he said we will take it one game at a time from now to then with league games to concentrate on and also a round of
international friendlies coming up. I don’t know about you but I am dreading these international friendlies and what they might do to our already depleted squad. At this stage I think we just
have to accept that we will have anywher between 5 and 10 players out permanently and get a couple of more players in during the summer to cover all eventualities. There does not seem to be an
end to the injuries and it goes beyond a bad runnow. The club have to examine every single aspect of training, preparation, diet and relaxationto see if they can find a cause and then work to
remedy that.
Ahead of tomorrow’s game at home to Sunderland at the unusual time of 3pm Steve Bruce has said that Sunderland need to end their long run of games without a victory which stretches right back
to their victory over us at their ground on November 21st. I’m absolutely certain that they will get about us and attempt to put us off our game by kicking us at every opportunity as it seems
to be working at the moment when other teams do it. Cattermole and Cana will target Cesc and we will need to be strong to withstand their physical approach. The only players who might return
are Song and Almunia as Gallas, Eduardo and Arshavin will miss out with their injuries and surprise, surprise we can add Diaby to the list of injured players again. When will the hurting stop?
That’s it for today and I’ll preview the game tomorrow.
Here’s a little bit of Eboueand his trials and tribulations and his comeback too. He has to bepushing for a starting berth now, even in my opinion.
And to finishtoday’s title track from the Belle Stars. It’s a sign of the times for Arsenal that Sunderland will take a physical approach tomorrow, half of our team is injured again and we
don’thave a goalkeeper worthy of the name. It could be worse though.
See You Tomorrow.
