Van Persie injury shocker + more pre-Chelsea stuff
Morning, something of a bombshell to start with today - it seems Robin van Persie's injury is much worse than first diagnosed. The club released a statement this morning, saying: Upon his return [from injury], the Arsenal medical team conducted a thorough review of his scans, his early injury management and the treatment he had received. Having scrutinised these in detail and assessed the response of his ankle, the Club’s medical team concluded that further inve

Friday guff + Arseblog meets Dara O'Briain - Arsecast 140
Morning all, still not a lot happening despite the hugeness of the game on Sunday. Lots to come in the next few days though and we'll get a better idea of how injured we are, or aren't, closer to the time. As it stands there's a big doubt over William Gallas whose eye is still so swollen he can't get his contact lenses in. Who knew Arshavin's head was so hard? It must be made of reinforced concrete. Fingers crossed Gallas recovers. I'm hopeful about Sunday but would be much less so at the thought of Sylvester, who appears to be the first replacement for either Gallas or Vermaelen, trying to pr

Thursday waffle + Chelsea ticket winner
Hello there, a little bit of calm before the storm kinda vibe going on today. A few bits and pieces around, little of it has to do with the titantic, end of days, armageddonesque warfare that is Sunday's game against Chelsea. Sorry, just trying to trump Sky Sports by engaging in hysteria and hype before they do. If you can imagine this blog's soundtrack today being some kind of epic orchestral piece with huge drums and occasional explosion sounds you'll get where I'm coming from. We'll start with Theo Walcott who says he's raring to go and do the stuff that he does and all that. He's over all his injuries and feels good, like a common James Brown,

Arsenal 2-0 Standard Liege : Victory, but at a cost
Let's start with the good news and the 2-0 win last night means we've qualified for the knock-out stages and won our group. With games coming thick and fast the manager will have the luxury of being able to rest players for the trip to Greece in a couple of weeks time. I suspect we'll see an almost Carling Cup selection for that one. We played like a team that wanted to wrap things up quickly. On reflection the chances we had in the first half should, perhaps have led to a bigger scoreline. Samir Nasri chose to pass when a shot was a better option, surprising as he's not afraid to have a go usually and tried his luck before and after. There was a bizarre sequence when the ball see

Standard Liege preview + Time for some small guys to make a bigger impact
As big teams across Europe face Champions League showdowns this week, we're in the rather comfortable position of just needing a point win from tonight's game to top the group. Of course after Saturday we'd consider that a rather disappointing result. A good spanking of the opposition is required to get ourselves back on track and ready for Chelsea on Sunday. The team news is that Kieran Gibbs returns and I expect he'll go straight into the team. Other than that it's a Lilliputian XI as our all our Gullivers remains out injured. We know about van Persie and Bendtner and Arsene announced yesterday that Abou Diaby had one of his patented little setbacks and will be