Hey folks, hope you’re all alreet? I had a charity casino night last night, so a few Sol’s and some Chateuneuf du Pape are conspiring to make me feel very old and very tired ahead of a day in the Big Smoke. 

Arsenal-wise, however, there is the freshness of a new season upon us and so it is that we’ve also had our first ‘team news’ of the season with Arsène addressing the assembled media to talk injuries ahead of the Community Shield. 

There are question marks over Ramsey and Özil but he thinks they’ll be fine, so the only major absentees appear to be Coquelin and Gabriel, both of whom are squad players so I reckon we’re pretty much at full strength for Sunday. 

Well, except the inevitable Alexis question, which was of course posed to the manager who gave the inevitable responses, which included hits such as:

  • He is over the flu, yes. I told you it was never a problem for us.
  • I will not give you anything on that.
  • he will stay and he will respect that.

It’s all stuff we’ve heard before and to be fair to the club and to the manager they have been resolute in their stance. I think I’ve always been clear in my belief that we should look abroad so we don’t see him twaddle off to City in the summer next year, but it seems the club are giving a big ‘eff you’ to the prospect of caving with a player having one year on their deal. I just hope this doesn’t come back to bite us in the arse in nine months time. 

That it could be worse than that with Özil and the Ox also not signing a new deal isn’t something that I find too comforting either, and once again Arsène was unable to give any kind of news and whilst I know he can’t say they’ve signed deals when they clearly haven’t, what we as fans look for is little glimmers of hope on his words or facial expressions. I don’t think we’ve got anything on that front at the moment and that is worrying. Very worrying.

He did however clarify the Perez situation and if ever there was a question mark about whether he’d go or not previously, Arsène’s admission of a ‘congestion’ of strikers put a big fat ‘for sale’ sign on Lucas’ head yesterday, so hopefully that will sniff out some suitors for him.

He’s a good player and wherever he goes he will get goals, so hopefully he finds a place that is good for him and that he’s happy, because I think he did all he could in an Arsenal shirt but Wenger just never really fancied him.

Righto, righto, it’s off to work I go. Catch you tomorrow.