Teary Henry Could Return As Fly Emirates Visits Etihad Stadium : The City Preview

So Wenger says Teary Henry could make a return to Arsenal, apparently he’s impressed so well in training and continues to do better than all the strikers with only world class forward Chamakh doing better than him. I don’t have the exact quotes but I’d surely love to see the legend turned statue pull on an Arsenal jersey again & run.

This weekend presents another stern test of Arsenal’s push for the Premier League crown in our visit of league leaders Manchester City on Sunday.
Unlike the recent League Cup clash in which Shitty came out (most fortunately) victorious, this fixture will see Mancini having to deal with a full strength Arsenal, safe for Andre Santos who’s out till March much to le Professeur’s disappointment (at himself I presume).

TEAM NEWS

The filthy billionaires will be without injured Kolarov and Gäel the Cliché thanks to his red card at the Bridge on Monday while I hear Yaya Toure will also miss out having reached the accumulated number of yellow cards for a one match suspension. Whatever team we get to face, Sergio Aguero is the man our back line must keep in check as well as Mario Balotelli should Mancini decide to start the one of a kind fella Mario is ahead of Edin Dzeko.

Arsenal

That said, Johan Djourou and Per Mertesacker; Per especially, have their work cut for them along with Koscielny and the Vermaenator who’ll play at left back.

Possible Line-up: Szczesny; Djourou, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Vermaelen; Arteta, Song, Ramsey; Gervinho, Walcott; van Persie (c).

I’m pretty sure AOC, Syrup and most especially Dench would love to be a part of this fixture, even if it’s to be on the bench all through. Benayoun, Rosicky, Almunia and Arshavin :’( look the sure bets to be though.

In other matters, Jack Wilshere’s return now is for mid-February after a scan on his injury showed good progress has been made towards his recovery. Kieran Gibbs meanwhile should be available for selection for the trip to Villa Park.

Champions League Draw

And finally, we got AC Milan in the Champions League round of 16… we’ve done it on ‘em before, we’ll do it again.

For now, I’m going for a 2-3 final score in Arsenal’s favour. What’s your take? Have a pleasant weekend!!

Illuminatish

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BREAKING: Andre Santos Out For 3 Months!

Just when we thought we had seen the last of the injuries to our full backs, news just in suggests that Brazilian left back Andre Santos will be out for 3 months.

Following investigations, Santos has been advised to have surgery to repair ligament damage in his right ankle.

He travels to Brazil later this week for surgery.

It’s so annoying to know that he picked up this injury in the useless game against Olympiakos, a game he should not have played in.

We can only wish him speedy recovery whilst expecting that TV5 and hopefully Gibbs will cover for him adequately.

Keep it goonerish wherever you read this. Leave us with your comments and thoughts.

Cheers!

TEAM NEWS : Arteta & Mertesacker To Start Tomorrow As Gibbs Returns

Le Boss gave an interview to Arsenal.com this morning and revealed team news ahead of Swansea’s visit to the Emirates and we can say most if not all are good news.

Vermaelen & Wilshere
He said Vermaelen’s surgery was a success and that he should be back within a month. The injury this time is on his left ankle and has nothing to do with his achilles tendon.
Wilshere on the other hand is expected to be out for much longer as he’ll be in a cast in about a month and on the pitch in two. Aren’t you glad we got Mertesacker & Arteta now? I am

New Signings
Of all the new signings that were brought in during the last few days of the summer window, only the duo of Arteta & Mertesacker are in line to start and make their club debuts and what better place to make that than at the Emirates. Arteta would fit in nicely I’m sure and so too the giant German (ignore all press report that blamed him for Germany conceding two goals against poland, the same german team conceded two goals against Austria in his absence)

Returning Players & Suspension
There’s further good news as perennial absentee Gibbs is back in the squad and is fit to start meaning a place on the bench for Andre Santos. Le Boss said the brazilian is not match fit as the last game he played was at the Copa America. No problem, he’ll play soon enough.
Theo Walcott has given us extra boost as the slight injury that kept him out of the England-Wales game is not serious and should start.

Tomas Rosickyis carrying a knock and would be assessed before tomorrow and Korean captain Park Chu Young should make the bench but don’t count on seeing him start.
Emmanuel Frimpong, fresh off deciding to play for Ghana over England is back after completing his one match ban and goes straight into the starting XI but there’s no place yet for Gervinho & Song who serve the last games of their suspension.

There you have it, almost everyone is back bar TV5 & JW who are long term absentees. Its time to get our season back on track and what better way to do that than against Swansea. Surely we can beat them and I mean no disrespect to the opposition. Punkenstein would bring you the match preview early tomorrow, don’t miss it. Cheers

Escobar

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DEADLINE EXCLUSIVE : Arsenal Sign FIVE Players in Three Days. Get To Know Them

Transfer deadline days generally see a number of deals struck but yesterday’s was particularly edge of seat stuff with the club finally springing to life and completing four signings before the 11 o’clock deadline; the last beating that time by mere minutes.

With a squad of names linked to the club over the last 48 hours of the transfer window, below is a quick load down of the quartet that arrived on deadline day; as well as a ‘steal’ a day before, with their squad number against their name where available.

CHU YOUNG PARK (9) – On the very brink of becoming a Lille player, Chu Young Park signed from Ligue 1 side AS Monaco for £2.6m on Tuesday much to the Lille management’s anger… pretty much dashing any chance of a certain Hazard coming our way.

Anyway, the 26 year old South Korea captain has played at two World Cups (2006 and 2010) and featured in 91 matches for the Principality club over three seasons, scoring 25 goals along the way. He is known to be a dead ball specialist and his crucial free kick in the 2-2 draw against Nigeria at the last World Cup qualified his country from the group stage.

PER MERTESACKER (4) – The imposing 26 year old arrives for £8.8m from Bundesliga club Werder Bremen where he made 142 appearances in five seasons, scoring a dozen goals and contesting a Europa League final in 2007.

The 6ft 6in German international comes highly rated with a record of just one yellow card and one red card in his last four seasons at the Bundesliga and has appeared at two successive World Cup semi-finals with the German national team where he has 75 caps so far.

ANDRÉ CLARINDO DOS SANTOS (11) – A bit of a surprise arrival as he only came up on the rumour mill monitoring Arsenal’s transfer movement on Tuesday evening, Santos’ arrival is a very welcome one in light of how weak our left back position is at the moment with Armand Traore now (thankfully) gone and Kieran Gibbs still unproven.

For a fee in the region of £6m, the former Fernabahce left back has 22 caps for the Selacao of Brazil to his name and 10 goals in 52 league appearances for Fernabahce. He has won two Brazilian Cups, a Turkish league title, the 2009 Confederations Cup and also played all four of Brazil’s matches at the last Copa America.

YOSSI BENAYOUN – The 31 year old Israeli’s arrival on a season long loan from Chelsea stirs mixed reactions among Gooners based on him making just a handful of appearances in his time so far at west London coupled with the half year injury lay off soon after arriving there from a successful spell at Liverpool where he scored 18 goals in 92 appearances.
Hopefully he is over his injury troubles and can impart his intelligent play across the attacking midfield end of the pitch, perhaps wake the dulling football spirit of Andrey Arshavin while at it.

MIKEL ARTETA – At 29, he may be five years older than he-who-has-finally-returned-home and may also not have a single cap with the Spanish national team but he is no doubt a quality signing from Everton at a fee believed to be £10m.

He will certainly fill in as the creative feet in midfield and hopefully, Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott will no more be short of the much needed assists from the middle of the park with the Spaniard now around.

Arteta has played in the Premier League since 2005 and made 174 appearances with the Toffees, scoring 28 goals during his spell at Goodison Park. He, by the way, was a Barcelona trainee but I don’t reckon we’ll be having such episode with him.

All that said, it was a busy day on the outgoing section of the transfer window for Arsenal with out of favour striker Nicklas Bendtner off to Sunderland on loan for the season after being reportedly rejected by Stoke City.

Armand Traore has also left the Emirates though is still around in London after sealing a three year deal with newly promoted Queens Park Rangers. Henri Lansbury also remains in the capital after going on loan to Championship side West Ham United.

New signing Joel Campbell will be at Ligue 1 side Lorient on loan for the season and Gilles Sunu will be at the French club with him though the U-21 French international joins Lorient on a three year deal.

Not the marquee signings everyone craved but very good signings in the most important areas.It certainly will be a refreshed atmosphere in the dressing room when first team players return from national team duties and Gooners certainly are glad of the steps taken to correct a dearth in depth brought to skeletal bare in that gruesome defeat at Old Trafford.

Thank you Sir Alex for bucking le Professeur back to life (at least I hope it has) and I hope never to have to be a position to do so again.

Follow us on Twitter @goonermemoirsand stay the cause, there’s a whole season ahead of us still.

Andre Santos: 9 Things You Should Know About Our New Boy.

Arsenal are set to sign Brazilian international left-back Andre Santos from Fenerbahce for a fee of around £6.2m.

Santos is on route to London as we speak and will sign a 4 year contract after completing his medical, provided nothing unusual happens that is.

- Born Andre Clarindo dos Santos, on March 18, 1983, he was placed in the Figueirense academy at an early age.

- Santos was promoted to the A team on July 10, 2003.

- He spent 1 season on loan to Flamengo in 2005 and managed 22 games.

- The next season, he went on another loan spell. This time to Athletico Miniero; he played 28 games and scored 17 times.

- He signed permanently for Corinthians in 2008. He won the Série B, Copa do Brasil and Campeonato Paulista before leaving for Fenerbahçhe.

- He signed for the Turkish giants in 2009 for €9m.

- He made his international debut as a substitute in a match against Egypt on June 15, 2009.

- Santos played for Brazil as they won the Fifa Confederations Cup in 2009, but he did not make the 23-man squad for the 2010 World Cup Finals.

- He did return to play in the 2011 Copa America, but missed a penalty as Brazil lost to Paraguay on penalties in the quarter-finals.

What do you make of our new signing?