The team news from Arsène will be revealed at some point today ahead of the Champions League game against Dinamo Zagreb, but there’s only one real piece of news we’re all nervously awaiting: the immediate fate of Francis Coquelin.

Perhaps foolishly, I pushed myself in to believing that it would not be as bad as first hoped, because he limped off. If he’d have exited the Hawthorns pitch on a stretcher then you’d worry about him. But he was able to walk off and so surely it’s not as bad as we’d think? 

I wonder if I’ll ever learn my lesson. I’m an Arsenal fan. One of the ‘in jokes’ as an Arsenal fan is the phrase ‘little bit setback’ and so I should know that any time an injury occurs it will always be worse than it looks and invariably will mean a player is always out for longer than we expect. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came off against Wednesday and the touchline reported said at the time that it was ‘just a precaution’. That was on 27th October and here we are, just under a month later, with The Ox nearing a return. That was a ‘precautionary’ situation!

So the news about Coquelin circling social media last night was that he’s got knee ligament damage and it will probably be between three and four months out. Usually, when this type of news comes from a couple of sources, it ends up being true, with the last time Wilshere was injured just before the season started being a prime example. News filtered out a day or so beforehand and this Coquelin trickle of reports has a similar whiff about it.

It will be a hammer blow to our title credentials. Arteta is injured again too and with just Flamini as the main recognised defensive midfielder, it doesn’t look too good for us, does it? 

Flamini has shown that he can pull out one good game every once in a while, but whether he can do it for a string of games is doubtful, in my opinion. He’s not got the same engine as Coquelin, does not have the same ability to spot trouble and cover the ground and has a disciplinary record that will inevitably mean that we rely on Chambers as a defensive midfielder. 

Will Arsène buy in January? Surely his hand has been forced now. Forgetting the Champions League games, we have Norwich, Sunderland, Villa, Moneychester City, Southampton, Bournemouth and Newcastle. That run of games needs to see us pick up maximum points aside from City and Southampton, before the January window opens and you’d have to say that Flamini should be good enough to do a job in most of those games. I worry about City and Southampton away, but it’s a good month until taut comes up and there are games to play, so some more pressing issues at hand. 

So I think we should be good enough in most of those games leading up to January, but in the New Year is when it gets tough, as we have a host of big games that Coke back-to-back. Flamini is not enough in those big games. We need something else and unless Arsène has got his thinking cap on now, with a view to getting somebody in at the beginning of January, we’ve got a problem. We can’t afford to be play the the transfer window in the way we usually do, leaving it until the end, we need to act and act quick.

That’s where I worry, because I’m not convinced we will act quick, if history is to be believed.

So I’m feeling a little low this morning. But there’s a game tomorrow to take our minds off it, so at least that’s something to take our minds off of the ever-mounting injuries that are derailing our league title hopes and who knows, maybe we’ll get a bit of good news on a returning player or two today.

Laters.