Arsenal V Burnley: Bring It On

Friday, 05 March 10

To say I am excited about my trip to the Emirates to see Arsenal play Burnley tomorrow is an understatement. I haven't been to see Arsenal in just over a year after my January trip was cancelled due to the weather, and I am absolutely "over the moon" at the prospect of watching Arsenal playing live and meeting some very good people before and after the game.

I also have to pay a trip to the club shop as my youngest son wants some Arsenal merchandise and I have no choice but to buy it after taking years to get him to support Arsenal after his initial choice of Wycombe Wanderers. His older brother is a lost cause as he is Wycombe until he dies.

It just shows the effects that computer games can have on an impressionable child as his support goes all the way back to our first football manager game on our first PC in 1998. If the creators of the game hadn't thanked Wycombe for their inspiration in making it then my son would never have brought them from the lower leagues of English football to be European Champions and the dye would not have been cast.

However, as I've said before "If my aunt had balls she would be my uncle" and that simply isn't the case. Anyway, I digress and back to my trip to the Emirates. I'll be up at 4 AM to drive to the airport for a 6.25 AM flight and I'll be in Stansted at about 7.40 if everything goes to plan.

I'll have a few hours to kill before checking into my hotel but as it's only 10 minutes walk from the stadium I'm not too concerned. I'll do my best to get a hat full of photos and put them on my Oleole page as I've being neglecting it recently.

To the important business of Arsenal and we have got some news to report today ahead of tomorrow's game. First of all it both Arshavin and Denilson are available again after injury(although I didn't know Denilson was injured) and Diaby is a possibility to play as well. The boss rates him at 50/50 which is even money to me but to Ryan Shawcross and Stoke it means you have about a 10 percent chance of getting the ball.

Campbell is also a doubt as he has a slight calf strain and Gallas is still out with his injury. Vela will not be back from his international match in LA in time to be considered as the problems of signing Mexican players again rears it's head.

At least with Brazilians they play their friendlies in Europe and the players can return to their clubs immediately but Mexico play late on Wednesday nights and with them being at least five hours behind us the player is realistically only returning to the club on Friday's with jet lag and cannot play. 

From reading a run down on the finances linked on LadyArse's blog yesterday I ascertained that the only Premier league club that are being run on a sound financial basis are Arsenal and if UEFA bring in the rule changes that they want for Champions league qualification we will be the only English club eligible to play.

With that in mind I don't hold out much hope of those rule changes coming in but we can always live in hope. If other clubs have to get their houses in order we can expect no purchases at inflated prices and to be honest there would have to be wage cuts too but again I won't be holding my breath. 

According to Stoke City both Shawcross and Pulis have been in contact with Aaron Ramsey and will continue to stay in contact with him throughout his rehabilitation from his horrific injury last Saturday.

Pulis also said that Shawcross had received 300 messages of support from Arsenal fans after the incident, which I find surprising, and I wonder if they are casual fans or real ones as any real fan I have spoken to is less than impressed by the challenge made by Shawcross and the amount of sympathy he has received since compared to Ramsey.

I wasn't totally surprised when I read yesterday that Pulis had looked at the challenge again and that he thought that Shawcross was lucky he didn't injure himself. That only backs up what our boss said about it being an unacceptable challenge and for Pulis to make a remark like that after the injury Ramsey received is completely believable of him but in the context of our player an absolute joke.

The boss has said that the injury is not career threatening but it's too early to predict a realistic date for him to return. He also said that the squad as a whole have yet another reason to win the league as they want to do it for Ramsey. At the last count the messages of support for him on the club site were over the 60,000 mark and still flooding in.

Cesc won the player of the month award for February, in a month where we went from title contenders to also rans and back to title contenders again and it's the shortest month of the year. As the saying goes "Football is a funny old game."

There are rumours linking us with a couple of players today. Apparently we are interested in Mesut Ozil of Werder Bremen and his talks with them over a new contract have broken down so we are obviously linked with him as we will look to find a replacement for Ramsey for the next year.

We are also linked with Felipe Melo of Juventus with them apparently wanting RVP, Clichy or Sagna as part of any deal but I can't see us letting any of those players go this summer. We have complained about missing RVP since his injury so why would we sell our best striker when he returns from that injury although we do supposedly have a pre contract agreement with Chamakh but I see him as back up to RVP.

That's it for today but there should be a full preview of the Burnley game early tomorrow and I will look forward to three hours of sleep tonight.

Here's a little bit of what Juventus want but can't have.

See You Tomorrow.