They’ll be a press conference today, so I’ll be fully expecting Arsène to stroll in, put his middle fingers up to the skies and declare that November can kiss his shiny white hide. After injuries and dropped points that really shouldn’t have happened, he’ll be keen to stress that we’re still two from top spot and there’s plenty still to play for. 

And he sure is right. The hope is that we still have enough players to play for by the time 2016 rocks up on our doorstep. 

The good news is that Koscienly isn’t doing too badly at all. He’s in line for a possible return against The Mackems tomorrow and I for one will be glad of that. With other players dropping like flies for prolonged periods of time, it’s good to have one guy who will pick up a knock, shake it off and be available for the following weekend. 

The other good news is the possible return of Theo. I suspect he’ll have a benched role to play tomorrow, but if we can give him some game time in the second half, then that would be fantabulous. It is certainly a timely return; with the enforced absence of Alexis it means that we’re likely to see Theo and Giroud on the same pitch for the first time in a while. I’d imagine Theo will be told to revert to his former position on the wing, with Ramsey almost certainly moving centrally, but thankfully it’ll be a position he’s very familiar with. 

The worry is the absences of Alexis, Arteta and Cazorla. The fact that Arsène isn’t able to give a date on the latter and the former is the biggest worry of all for me. That tells me that we’re not going to see them for the rest of 2015. Perhaps I’m wrong and reading too much in to things, but if it’s a minor knock the club are usually able to tell quite quickly and declare it to the public that it is only a few weeks out, so by admitting there isn’t a timescale normally means bad things. We can only hope – in both cases – that the players have some sort of horse placenta-infused elixir of life potion that they can take to speed up the recovery process. With no other players returning from injury until after Christmas, we really are almost out of options in the first team.

Still, Arsène’s confident we can challenge, or at least he’s said so on the official site. Arsène wouldn’t lie to us, would he? Would he? WOULD HE!?!?!

Ahh yes, there’s another returnee too, in the shape of Kieran Gibbs! I think it was Gunnerblog who said yesterday that with all the Arsenal injuries at the moment, it kind of got lost that Gibbs spent a week or so on the sidelines too, such is the nature of our plight at the moment. I know it feels like we Arsenal fans bleat on a bit about injuries a little too much, but it’s probably because two things seem to happen to us that don’t seem to happen at other clubs:

1. It’s our best players, first teamers I mean, who always get crocked for long periods of time; and 

2. When we get injuries, they all seem to happen in the same position.

I think it started in the season where we lost all of our left backs in the mid 2000s and ended up playing Pascal Cygan as a full back. Poor old Pascal had enough trouble lumbering around as a centre half, so for him to try and plod around on the wings was as painful as it sounds. 

It’s that volume of players inured in one position that probably makes us seem more vocal than others. If City lost Aguero, Bony and Iheanacho, they’d probably feel quite hard-done-by too, and rightly so I’d wager. So whilst I’ve seen a lot of ‘Arsenal don’t have it nearly as bad as other teams’ around in the last week, it’s worth pointing out those two facts. Newcastle in particular, for example, have been cited as one club with injuries. I looked at their situation about a month ago though and of the ten players they had injured, I counted five who have a genuine impact on the first team, so that gives you an idea about how some of these narratives have been built by the journos. Just thought I’d point that out.

Anyway, time for me to blog-off, so more tomorrow when I’m on my way to the game.

Laters.