Arsenal Fans To Keep Their Fingers Crossed for Returning Players

With the conclusion of the latest round of international breaks last night, we can rest safely in the knowledge that it's five months before we have to go through torture like that again. I'm sure there will be some friendly international matches during that time but they will be midweek games with no two week disruption to the weekend schedule of the club game.

We will, of course, be waiting anxiously today for any news of Arsenal players who have picked up injuries while they were with their countries. At the moment the signs are encouraging as only Bakari  Sagna is a definite casualty and he actually picked up his injury in our last game against Chelsea. Glancing briefly through last night's scores, it would seem that the Arsenal players all achieved fairly good results.

The best result for Jack Wilshere, from our perspective, was to spend the night on the bench and that was just what he did as internationally acclaimed superstars such as Glenn Johnson, Gareth Barry, Shaun Wright Phillips, Julian Lescott, Peter Crouch and Kevin Davies proved that England's future is indeed bright, by drawing 0-0 at home to Montenegro.

France beat Luxemburg, The Czech Republic beat Lichtenstein and Russia beat Macedonia and hopefully that will bring all of their Arsenal players back in good form and ready to continue their winning ways with their club.

Of course the majority of our internationals stayed at the club as they continued their rehabilitation from various injuries that have robbed us of their services with the exception of Carlos Vela who is serving a six month ban from the Mexican national for organising a bit of a naughty party when he was last on international duty.

Added to that there's also the players that are deemed not good enough to represent their countries and I suppose they're the ones whose inclusion in the Arsenal squad we should possibly question.

Manuel Almunia is Spanish and they have some good resources in the goalkeeping department but even if their top ten goalkeepers all got lost in the woods on some weird goalkeepers bonding trip, I still don't think Almunia would get anywhere near their national squad.

If that's the case how exactly is he the the first choice goalkeeper for a team with genuine title aspirations and who also are one of the favourites to win the Champions league. I know it's ground I've gone over many times before but I still can't quite believe that a club with our financial clout can still have a substandard goalkeeper as our first choice.

Our main goalkeeping target in the summer was Fulham's Mark Schwarzer and to be honest he may be a slight improvement on Almunia but that's all at the very most. His form so far this season has probably been on a par with Almunia as both of them have been mediocre and have done very little to stake a claim as the rightful Arsenal first choice.

I long for the days when I didn't worry every time the ball was played into the Arsenal box and I can only hope that the boss can eventually lose his blinkers and go out and spend the money that will buy the keeper that all the fans want.

As it stands Almunia was injured for our last two games and Lukasz  Fabianski did very well when he filled in for him. The big question now is, will Fabianski keep his place or will Almunia return to the team. Personally, I would think that Fabianski deserves to stay in the team as he hardly put a foot or hand wrong in those two games against Partizan and Chelsea but it's a question only the manager can answer.

Even if Fabianski does keep his place it will take a lot more top notch performances for him to earn the trust of the fans as he has had so many howlers in the past. He didn't earn the nickname "Flappy" for no reason and it won't be easy for him to lose it.

The early news from the club with regard to our huge injury list is that Cesc Fabregas will be available to play this weekend as he has recovered from his hamstring injury and he was in fact only a couple of days away from playing against Chelsea in our last game.

It is also rumoured that both Nicklas Bendtner and Theo Walcott will be available to play in that game and they will both be welcome returns to the squad if that is the case. I hope that these returning players are genuine light at the end of the injury tunnel but I still won't be counting my chickens or any other such thing. That's it for today but I'll be back tomorrow with more news ahead of the resumption of real football.

See You Tomorrow.