Good ol’ Arsène and his day early pressers. He’s enabled me to talk about the game ahead on Sunday a day early, which is great, because I’ve been dying to sink my teeth in to it. Well, I have been and still am, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be absolutely bricking it come Sunday. 

Anyway, back to Arsène and his presser, in which there’s *clears throat for a Professor Hubert Farnsworth voice* GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! Özil is back and so is Alexis. Hap-e-days!

Let’s be honest, both should have been back, but with Arsenal’s luck with little bit setbacks, I half expected Arsène to tell us Özil’s leg had fallen off due to an aggressive dose of leprosy, so I think we’re all within our rights to be pleased that we’ll have our two marquee players back for Sunday.

But Arsène wasn’t done there, oh no, he wanted to sprinkle more hundreds and thousands of injury news goodness over our metaphorical Sundae by announcing that Coquelin is back in training ahead of schedule too. Supposedly a month ahead of schedule, so he might even be available for the beginning of February, which is my estimation rather than Arsène’s assertion.

Those three players back in to the team make an outfit looking like they were running out of steam suddenly look like some of the cavalry has finally arrived. Does it feel like it to you too? The players we’ve had have defended the fort admirably, but they were running low on bodies and so with this injection of returning talent, the hope is that we’ll be excellently placed for the last 16 games of the season. I certainly hope so, because there are some bloody hard matches in there and we’re going to have to be better going forward than we were at Stoke last weekend.

I can understand Arsène’s reluctance not to play Alexis from the start, but he’s had two weeks worth of training in him and he’ll be like a powder keg surrounded by sparks (tip of the cap to Bonnie, there), so I say we just let loose on that horrific football team. He’s a big game player and this is a big game. Everyone needs to forget about Chelski’s league position, because we know that they will be playing as if they are fighting for the title on Sunday, not like they all hate each other like it seems like they have done all season. Apart from that one time we played them, of course.

We have options on the bench too, now, which is only going to be strengthened with the return of Rosicky, Welbeck and then eventually Wilshere. All creative players. All capable of doing more in the final third and now it’s time that we kicked it up a gear and found some consistency both home and away. But let’s start with three points at home this Sunday.

Arsène was also asked about ground sharing The Emirates with the Spuds, which he pretty much dismissed out-of-hand, which is a fairly obvious response to a pretty stupid question. I doubt the Spuds fans would want to do such a thing, but setting that aside, why on God’s green earth would we want to do that? What help have they given us with the stadium other than to do some unsavoury reupholstering of seats that had been ripped apart? Or toilets that had been smashed? If they had it for the whole season, we’d end up with a derelict building by the time May came around. That’s not worth the supposed £15million a year, is it? No siree Bob, so we’ll let them trundle on up to Milton Keynes, leaving North London to the proper club in these parts.

Sharing our stadium with the Tiny Totts…pfffh…I’d sooner share an afternoon with some of the morons they get on Celebrity Big Brother, although I’d probably have to suggest a weapon of some kind to keep them far enough away that I can’t see or hear their irrelevant jibber-jabber.

Anyway, that’s probably enough of my waffle for one day. You have at a good one, y’hear?