Koscielny To Sign Today and Arsenal To Feature in Nine Live EPL Games

Good morning from an overcast Dublin yet again as it seems the fantastic weather we had has almost deserted us. It's still humid but there's no red hot days and the forecast for the next few days is even worse. It means I'll have to stay indoors to watch the second World Cup semi final tonight and probably the final on Sunday too as barbecues are a thing of the past.

The Arsenal players who weren't on World Cup duty returned to duty yesterday as pre-season training got underway. I had hoped that we would get to see a few new names at the first training session but Chamakh was the only new face on view and we can only hope that there will be a few more when our World Cup players return. 

It's an indication of just how long a season this will be for some of our players as both Cesc and RVP are still involved at the World Cup while some of the rest of the squad are preparing for the start of the season. With our first competitive match only 39 days away we can expect both Cesc and RVP to only return to training two weeks before that. At best that will give them a three week break and that will leave them with a very long season before we finish up next May. They won't even have the benefit of a winter break which has been considered by the FA but will take at least one more season to implement. 

Thankfully we managed to finish third in the league as it would be even harder on the squad if they had to prepare for two Champions league qualifiers against an unknown opponent. That task will fall to the Spuds and they won't find it easy but I expect that they will progress.

The TV schedules for the first few months of the season have been released and Arsenal have had nine of their games altered. As expected our opening day trip to Liverpool has been switched to the Sunday afternoon slot on Sky and it won't be an easy game for us. Thankfully Liverpool are the only English team with more players left at the World Cup than Arsenal although two of those players would seem to be there on a holiday as they haven't seen any action yet.

As usual the TV companies have decided that they would like to see Arsenal suffer if it's possible and of our nine live TV games seven of them are away from home.  We are on the TV live after every single one of our Champions league group games and four of those five that are scheduled are away from home. The one that isn't scheduled is away to "Manure" which will of course be live too.

On the plus side it means that us fans will get to see Arsenal even more than usual and hopefully we will have a fantastic start to the season and be runaway league leaders from day one. If we're going to do that a few signings are needed and it would appear that the Koscielny saga will eventually come to an end today. According to some reports the club will officially announce his signature today and we can then move on to the other players that are needed.

There are a host of players linked with us again today and Joe Cole is one of them. It's not new for him to be linked but as he's a free agent I would imagine his future will be sorted out very soon. I'm not too sure if we need him or not as we have quite a few similar players who are just as injury prone as well but he does have skill and experience and they aren't a bad thing to offer to us.

A potential swap between ourselves and Juventus for Melo and Clichy has reared it's head again today but I can't see us wanting Melo or selling Clichy. Both Ozil and Tasci are also suggested as being possible targets but we would only be interested in Ozil if Cesc left and I personally don't think that will happen. Tasci is a centre back and of course he's going to be linked to us as we have a severe shortage in that department but I don't know if there's any truth in the rumours.

In the World Cup RVP's country won through to the final last night with a 3-2 victory over Uruguay. It wasn't a great game but at least we'll have a player in the final and it's just a pity he plays in the same team as van Bommel. After tonight's game we will know if he will have an Arsenal opponent in that final as Spain take on Germany in the other semi final. It's still unclear if Cesc will start or not but in my opinion Spain will win if they play Cesc for the whole game and if they don't it can go either way. That's it for today.

Here's a few goals from John Radford.

See You Tomorrow.