Arsenal: Cesc Fabregas Stays & Preview Of Gunners' Trip To Legia Warsaw

It's Saturday morning and that means that we only have a week to go before the Premier league returns. I can feel the anticipation building already and I just can't wait for the action to begin. Unfortunately Arsenal fans will have to wait an extra day before we get to see our team kick off their season but the trip to Anfield is a mouth watering prospect so early in the season.

With next week's game in mind I think that the manager will pick the strongest team he has available to him in today's final pre-season friendly match against Legia Warsaw.Obviously both Cesc and RVP won't be available to play as they have only just returned to training but I was hoping that we would get our first glimpse of Song. He is a very important player in our team and we will need to have him in the team for next week's game. However Song and Diaby did not travel to Poland and Arshavin has a slight injury and might not play either.

I would imagine that Nasri will fill Cesc's play making role as the chances are he will be called upon to play there next week too if Cesc isn't up to speed with the rest of the squad in terms of match fitness. With Chamakh playing the striker's role in RVP's absence the spotlight will be on him too as he is likely to play from the start at Anfield too.

I'm sure Bendtner must be very disappointed that he's injured yet again because he would probably have got a few chances to play early in the season as RVP is eased back into action. If Chamakh can do enough when he plays Bendtner will find himself even further down the pecking order than he was last season.

The latest reports would seem to suggest that we won't see him in action again until October. At first the boss said he was a week behind the rest of the squad but that week has now become two months. Is it just me or does that remind anybody of what happened any time a player got injured last season.

It would seem that the goalkeepers for today's game will be Fabianski and Szczesny as we are playing in Poland and as far as I know the game was part of the deal that brought Fabianski to Arsenal. The boss said yesterday that there are four keepers fighting for the jersey and he will pick three in the squad and send the other one out on loan. From what he said it does seem that he is no longer considering buying a new keeper and in my opinion that is a bad mistake.

I'll be saving my season preview until the transfer window closes at the end of the month but it's not going to be ultra positive if either of Almunia or Fabianski are the first choice keeper. We also have to bring in another centre back and we need to do it very, very soon. The consequences of not addressing those issues in our team/squad could be catastrophic for our season.

There's a full list of international friendly games on Wednesday night and Arsenal are set to see at least half of our first team squad make trips to different destinations. Thankfully most of them are in Europe but with Mexico playing Spain in Mexico on Wednesday and both Cesc and Vela chosen in their countries squads I think we can almost certainly count both of those players out of Sunday's game.

The only chance they have of playing is because the game is on Sunday and they will have an extra day to recover from their long flight. Every time Vela played in a midweek fixture in Mexico last season  he missed the game the following weekend. By the time Mexico kick off on Wednesday night it will be the small hours of the morning in England with the time difference and it will be incredibly hot too. Besides that the chances are the game will be played at altitude too and when you take all of that into account you realise that the chances of either of them starting on Sunday are minimal.

I'd like to know how Spain can be allowed to schedule a friendly in Mexico less than three days before the season starts as they won the World Cup final less than five weeks before that date. Is there no thought for the good of the players and their need for a break in the summer. When will the good of the clubs be considered by FIFA/UEFA? The clubs pay the wages of the players and some countries don't even compensate the clubs when players are injured on international duty.

There were some very interesting quotes from Chamakh on FourFourTwo.com yesterday about the events last summer that led to him staying at Bordeaux. He said that the fee Bordeaux wanted wasn't too high because he only had one year left on his contract but that Arsenal weren't prepared to pay it. His coach told him not to join any of the "smaller" clubs that came sniffing around such as Sunderland, West Ham, Blackburn and the Spuds and they agreed he should see out his contract and sign for Arsenal this summer. As a new player if you want to endear yourself to Arsenal fans it's always a good idea to have a dig at the Spuds.

At this stage I suppose I should mention the news that Cesc made his much awaited statement yesterday and he told us what we knew already that he was going nowhere. You can read the statement here and in it he apologises for not speaking sooner but says that he didn't say anything because he didn't know what he was going to do.

He admitted to having his head turned by Barcelona's interest in him and said that more or less any player world would want to play for Barcelona. Of course he had far more reasons than most to want to play for Barcelona but he accepted that Arsenal rejected the two formal offers Barcelona made for him and they have decided not to sell him. 

He said he fully understands Arsenal's decision not to sell him, he owes a lot to the club, manager and the fans and he will respect their decision and concentrate on the new season ahead with Arsenal. He assured the fans that he will be 100% focused on playing for Arsenal and he said he is looking forward to the start of the season and putting all the speculation behind him.

I'm sure our decision not to sell him to Barcelona must have been hard for Cesc to take but I said a long time ago that I thought that we had told him he could go if Barcelona matched our valuation despite the fact that we didn't want to sell him. Barcelona's offers were well short of our valuation and when you see the price Aston Villa want for Milner you know that Cesc is worth at least twice that amount. I'm sure we will be treated to another summer of all the same speculation as soon as the season ends in May but from now until then I'm looking forward to seeing him play for Arsenal and we'll deal with that when it happens.

The boss was happy that the Cesc saga has been put to bed and that Arsenal managed to hold on to their prize asset. He said it was good for football and not just Arsenal that we had managed to resist Barcelona's approaches and that it takes three parties to make a transfer but we were never in a position where we wanted Cesc to go. 

I could spend the next hour writing about what was said, who said it and what the reactions to it were but to be honest I'm just delighted that Cesc is staying and they can get on with the real job of playing football. The whole story became so annoying towards the end that it's a relief that it's over. Let the real football begin as soon as possible.

There was a rumour circulating on Twitter last night that we had tabled a bid of £23 million for Liverpool goalkeeper Reina. He's a good keeper but anybody who thinks Arsene Wenger would spend that much money on a goalkeeper needs their bumps felt. The story apparently comes from the Sun so I don't think I need to say any more than that.

Finally for today there's the small matter of my Fantasy league and the fact that it now has over 300 teams in it which means that there will be trophies for the first three teams. If you want to sign up the link is here and the code to join my league is 33954-12064 after you have set up a team. 

I'm running the league this season with a little help from 11Gunners and I'd like to thank them for their help in promoting my blog and the fantasy league too.

If you do sign up please take the time to join Captain Arsenal's league too as he has been a great help to me in promoting my blog on Twitter. The code to join his league is 13028-5211 and he would be delighted to welcome you to his league.

I'm also running a results prediction league on "I know the score" which is a part of the Fantasy Premier league site. Here's the link to sign up and make your predictions and the code to join my league is  FBE3B-ZGP if anybody would like to try their hand at it.

Here's a little bit of what RVP can do.

Here's a look at Szczesny's recent attempt at the crossbar challenge.

See You Tomorrow.