To get my football fix every day, I usually have a quick peruse of a number of sites, including Sky Sports. But over the years the number of sites that i ‘trust’ to deliver information that isn’t clickbaity has diminished. So can you imagine my disappointment when a non-Arsenal fan came to me in the office yesterday and said “you might want to have a read of this”. It was an article from Arsène’s presser yesterday in which he was supposed to have said “be more like Spurs fans”. That’s what the headline suggested anyway.

Yet the actual story itself was softer than the extreme title. Plus, when I actually watched the press conference on the official site, I quickly realised that Arsène didn’t say that at all. All he effectively says is that every team needs their fans to get behind their team and Arsenal fans are no different.

Sigh. Looks like Sky are falling down in to the dark abyss of gutter clickbaiting too. Now it just means I have to take most of what they say with a pinch of salt. Probably should have been doing that anyway to be honest. After all, they did take one of our heroes and turn him in to a terrible pundit. Thierry was god to us, yet watching him analyse any football match these days is like watching X-Factor – all 1,653 series’ – on a constant loop. It’s a horrendous torture that deserves to be in a place more like Guantanamo Bay rather than prime time TV.

I suppose it’s the same everywhere with mainstream media. We’ve already had Koscielny’s comments completely butchered in translation, as I speculated earlier in the week, so I suppose it’s a good thing that we have channels like Arseblog to actually wade through the festering stench that is modern journalism in this country. I don’t understand why the media in this country feel like people are so ignorant; sure there are plenty of doughnuts that frequent each town and city – Brexit showed that – but by and large most fans I meet have common sense and don’t believe the clap-trap that the perpetrators persist with when they load up NewsNow and other sources with cluckbaity crap.

Nothing I can do though, other than to continue to give you what I have, which is an unfiltered version of The Arsenal.

As for the presser yesterday, there was plenty of chit-chat about his contract and like the polished politician-type person he is, Arsène was asked a couple of times and all he said was “I have nothing to add other than what I said last week”. Which is interesting because the cameras were on him yesterday and unless I’m wrong in this assumption, when he spoke about being offered a new deal, I believe it was to the written press where the cameras were not to be seen. Clever Arsène, clever.

Anyway, we all know where we are with this and we all know that he’ll sign a new two year deal at some stage, he just needs to get a good run of wins behind him before he does it. We’ll deal with that when it happens, because quite frankly right now, I don’t want to contemplate another two Groundhog Days.

Instead, let’s return to the ‘now’, in which Bellerin should be back this weekend. He trained yesterday and by the sounds of it, it’s just the doctors that need to be convinced, which I have absolutely no problem with whatsoever. Where the wellbeing of the player is concerned we all just need to think about what’s best for Hector, so if he makes the squad tomorrow, we can be confident that there is a clean bill of health.

Elneny also returns and I must say, that’s a welcome one from me, because our squad has been threadbare in midfield for too long. Whether he goes straight in to the team however remains to be seen because I don’t think Arsène is the kind of guy who will hang the Coq out to dry after last weeks abysmal performance. He probably deserves to be dropped, but I suspect he’ll be given another chance, so Elneny will probably be a gradual integration in to the team.

The same can be said about Cech – not the ‘gradual integration’ thing, but the manager not hanging him out to dry. There was talk about it in the press conference yesterday and whilst Arsène didn’t confirm or deny whether the Czech stopper would give way to Ospina, I personally can’t see him shelving him just yet, it’s just not Arsène’s style. He’s a man with patience and I think Cech will benefit that this weekend. However, Arsène seems to have less of it for his ‘keepers than he does some of his outfield players, so I wouldn’t expect too many more performances like last Saturday to be tolerated by the manager. But for now, in public, he’s doing what you’d expect him to do and that’s back his goalie.

And I think it’s probably the right thing to do. Sure, Cech’s form at times has been a little questionable, but he’s still a decent goalkeeper and you have to hope that a mistake like that is something we won’t see again. We all talk about him being beaten at his near post, but let’s not pretend that we see the kind of mistake he made for the third goal last Saturday every week, because to my mind that’s the first mega howler he’s had. With Almunia it seemed to happen every week!

And on that not – remember the ghosts of goalkeepers past – I’ll say my cheery-bye to you all.