Arsenal Poised To Sign Sebastien Squillaci Today

The weekend is over and the harsh reality of work looms again this morning. It's on mornings like this that I am glad that I had an Arsenal game at the weekend to brighten things up, and of course a few drinks as well. The game in question was of course a relatively easy 6-0 win over Blackpool which saw Walcott shine with a hat trick.

The big news today is that Sebastien Squillaci is due at the club for a medical later as we have apparently agreed a deal with Sevilla for him. The story comes from Sevilla themselves, so I suppose that it has to be right and as long as all goes well in the medical we'll have a new centre back before the day is over.

He has had a few injuries in his career but he looks a decent enough player to me and he could certainly fit into our squad. I'm sure we'll hear it on the club site at some stage today just to confirm that he has signed.

Of course, the media are building Walcott up to be the next big thing in English football after his hat trick on Saturday, but thankfully Carroll's hat trick for Newcastle has taken some pressure off him.

Walcott has been built up a few times before and if this isn't the coming of the saviour of English football the media will be quick to knock him too. He needs to be given a chance to progress and cement his place in the Arsenal team before he can even be considered as the man to rescue England from their World Cup disaster.

Arsenal travel to Blackburn next Saturday for a very tough game where the opposition will try to intimidate us and kick lumps out of us and I wouldn't be surprised if Walcott was on the bench for that game despite Saturday's performance. When we went to Liverpool last week he was a sub and he only came on for Eboue when we went behind.

That game next Saturday sees us live on Sky yet again as they continue their policy of showing Arsenal live away from home against teams with a reputation for kicking lumps out of us.

In our two games so far, our opponents have received a red card and it will be interesting to see how the referee will deal with Blackburn's tactics on the day. You can almost be guaranteed that no matter how many fouls Blackburn commit that Song will be the first player booked if he is playing and that it will be for his first foul. 

It will also be interesting to see how the critics deal with Blackburn's tactics after their condemnation of the Dutch tactics in the World Cup final. Will it be seen as putting it up to us and up us as we don't like it, or will it be seen for what it is as foul tactics that cannot be allowed or tolerated?

I would imagine that the usual idiots that we see on the TV will be delighted to see a few crunching challenges on Arsenal players and they will tell us that Blackburn have to use the tactics that are using as they cannot compete with us on footballing terms.

The boss is going to have a few problems before that game next Saturday as he will have Cesc, RVP, Koscielny, and probably Squillaci all looking for a place in the team and a few players are going to be disappointed.

It will be interesting to see exactly how strong our bench is for that game and even what players don't even make it to the bench. We may have seven players out injured but we still have plenty of very good players available. If we can get a win at Blackburn in Saturday's early game we will go to the top of the table for a short while at least.

There were rumours circulating yesterday that Schwarzer had a medical at Arsenal and that he failed it which meant that the proposed transfer is off. However, his club claimed to have turned down a second offer from us that was identical to the first one which we made in May and he can't have had a medical if they turned down our offer.

Fulham cannot be forced to sell, although it is curious that the player is listed as being out with a back injury at the moment. The smart money would seem to suggest that he's being left out while all the speculation continues. However, it would be just like Arsenal to sign an injured player.

Our reserves won their mini-tournament in Ireland yesterday by beating a Shamrock Rovers 11 3-1 after already having beaten "Manure's" reserves 2-1 on Thursday night. The Arsenal goals all came in the opening 21 minutes and they were scored by Lansbury, JET, and Randall.

I would have liked to have been there myself and I know quite a few people who were, but unfortunately I had prior arrangements. A few members of the local supporters club I'm in made the trip to see the reserves train on Friday and you can see the pictures on our web site.

My predictions for the weekend's games didn't exactly go too well as with one to go I have got none exactly right and only got the outcome of four games right and five of them wrong. Thankfully I got the outcome of the "Manure" game right as Fulham managed to get themselves a point at home to them despite some very generous refereeing in "Manure's" favour.

With that draw, Arsenal kept their second place in the league on goal difference from five other clubs with Chelsea the only club ahead of us after their second consecutive 6-0 win. 

I'm not doing too well in the fantasy football stakes either but I'm still confident that I can improve on my current 400th place in my own league. However, the league itself is currently ranked 15th overall and that's something that pleases me greatly. There's still tonight's game to go before the gameweek is finished and I'll try to give a rundown of how things are progressing tomorrow.

Finally for today, I've set up my own "Cesc Is God" facebook page and my blog will be there to read every day as well as pictures I upload of Cesc, Arsenal, and anything else that fans of Arsenal should be interested in. Feel free to comment on it or even make suggestions as to how I can improve it.

Here's a look at how Chamakh got on in Saturday's game.

See You Tomorrow.