Adrian in, Andrei out? + Wilshere’s absence makes corporate hearts grow fonder

October 14, 2012

Just a quick round-up of the very limited Arsenal news on offer on this quietest of international break Sundays.

Good news for Theo Walcott – sort of – as it appears that he managed not to break any ribs in that ridiculous challenge with Aldo Simoncini on Friday night. Unfortunately he did suffer a ‘bruised lung’ according to the Sunday Mirror which in a way sounds kind of worse.  They don’t seem to think it will keep him out for much longer than a couple of weeks though which is the most positive thing you could say about it so he should be back in time for the Reading match at the end of the month.

Apparently Theo described the challenge as like ‘being hit by a bus’, an accusation that the San Marino coaching staff immediately denied, arguing it was impossible as their bus had been parked across the goal line for the full ninety minutes.

The Mirror also seems to think that Jack Wilshere is so desperate to fight his way back into contention for the first team that he and Emmanuel Frimpong have been skipping their scheduled rest days and asking for extra supervised training sessions. They reckon he’s pencilled in to make his comeback on the 30th in that Capital One Cup game with Reading but is aiming to come back even earlier. There’s been no word from the club on the rumoured behind-closed-doors friendly that they were supposed to be trying to arrange to improve his match fitness this week and without that I can’t see him making it into the first team squad before QPR at least.

Still, good news for Jack is that his absence from the playing field has not adversely affected his marketability. In fact it’s had the opposite effect as the Express reports that he’s now the fourth most marketable player in the world behind only Neymar, Messi and Ronaldo. Clearly absence makes the corporate heart grow fonder in football, something I was hoping to take advantage of after an extended thigh strain forced me out of all five-a-side duties for the past few months. Alas, the Jack effect doesn’t seem to extend to the amateur game and instead of being hailed as some sort of minor league Maradona I just seem to have been struck off the group email lists and largely forgotten about. Disappointing

Finally a couple of small transfer rumours doing the rounds to distract you momentarily from the dullness of your everyday lives. The Mirror seem to think we could make a bid for Atletico Madrid’s Adrian Lopez who, like Theo, is stalling on signing a new deal and has a £15 million buy out clause in his current contract.  Seems a bit of an odd one as he only moved to Atletico a year ago and although he scored 19 goals last season, 11 of those came in the Europa League and he only managed 7 in 35 league appearances with 2 assists. Not sure that would be £15 million worth of upgrade over Theo to be honest.

Meanwhile The Star reckon that Martin Jol is keen on taking Andrei Arshavin to Fulham in January with the club said to have money to spend after cashing in on Dembele and Dempsey over the summer. Fulham seems like a good fit for Arshavin and would offer an opportunity for him to revive his flagging career. He’s clearly surplus to requirements at Arsenal and if we could free up his and Chamakh’s salaries in January that would leave more than enough in the pot to pay for the top notch, fancy pants new striker that we’re all convinced Arsene wants to sign but probably has no intention of doing so.

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