So, Yaya’s Sanogone then, eh?

(I’m afraid that’s the best you’ll get from me first thing on a Wednesday morning)

A loan move to Crystal Palace sees our much maligned young centre forward get an opportunity for more game time by playing for the guy who loves a Frenchman, Alain Pardieux. It’s a good move for all involved, actually, because Sanogo was getting nothing other than bench time with the return to fitness of some of our players. It was half a season of reserves football for him and, if he really is a player that Wenger sees as one with huge potential, then he will always need to do this in order to progress his career.

He’s still in London too, so that makes it easier for Arsenal to keep tabs on, not least because the fare to Palace will be sufficiently cheap enough for the scouts to sign off their expenses without many batting an eyelid.

It’s probably a good fit, football-wise, too. Pardieux will probably not set his team up to clobber their way through teams and with the pace that the wingers have at Palace – as I said yesterday – providing Sanogo gets game time he might even get goals. Maybe.

It does show the faith and belief that Wenger has in Sanogo though. We don’t usually get funny about where a player goes when on loan – Coquelin to Freiburg, Campbell to Olympiakos, Wellington to…whoever will take him in Spain – so the fact that Arsène was clearly quite forceful about the fact he wanted him to gain experience in the Premier League, shows that Sanogo is his latest ‘project’. Still, I’d rather Wenger had little ‘projects’ on one or two players, than when we had a whole squad of ‘projects’.

When I saw the news, it did make me wonder about Carl Jenkinson though, who has had a good season at West Ham and I think played last night too. I do wonder what Arsène’s thoughts are about Jenks and whether he has factored him into his thinking for the future. The arrival of Chambers and Arsène’s assertion that he was predominantly a right back when he joined in the summer, suggested to me that Jenks’ future was pretty much sewn up, that Arsenal had decided he was not of requisite quality to make it in the first team. But as the season has worn on, Chambers has looked more like a centre half and I just wonder if like Coquelin, Arsène is thinking twice about Carl for the future.

Coquelin is a perfect role model for Jenkinson in that regard. Tossed out into the wilderness and not even afforded a Premier League loan spell, he has grabbed his chance with both hands and if he doesn’t keep his place against City, then I’ll be shocked. Consistent performances as he’s been having will possibly also see him replace Arteta longer term, although I suspect that Arteta will come straight back into the team again when fit. But Jenkinson should be looking at his situation and wondering if he will get his chance. Or, he’ll be realising that his job is as a footballer and he might want to push through a permanent move to West Ham or another Premier League club. I know it sounds mad as an Arsenal fan – because he is too – but if I think about it in a non-emotional way, if I was Jenkinson I’d just want to play football. I’d just want to develop my career at a club where I play each week and once I’d got the taste of that first team football, I’d want to keep that every season.

So the real question that would need to be asked come the summer: can Jenkinson depose Debuchy? Or at least force the manager to rotate more? At the moment it’s difficult to really say either way. Debuchy has been injured for most of the season and Jenkinson has had half a season of playing well. When we get to May, if Jenkinson has had a full season, maybe is even called up to an England squad, whilst Debuchy has been in and out of the side through repetitive injuries, who’s to say that they are not both very evenly matched when it comes to the summer?

Like I said, for now, it’s just one to ponder.

Anyway, I’m offski for a day of workie, so you have fun with what it is that will be floating your particular boat today.