Brace yourself guys – the international break has given me something to write about, don’t get used to it though, there are many more days left of this utter boredom with endless articles regurgitated in a bid to liven things up just a little bit.

First up, Amaury Bischoff. Wenger picked him up on a free from Werder Bremen i believe and with an injury prone past it looks a pretty puzzling decision, but he has impressed in the reserves and last night scored a lovely goal for Portugal under 21′s. Look at this finish;

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSvoZw-iqfg]

He is a playmaker type player that clearly has talent, he is behind a normal 21 year old in terms of development as he has been out with injury so much, but since his switch from Bremen he has remained injury free and maybe at the end of this season he will have had a few games and be offered a longer contract. He would add depth to the squad and create even more competition for places because at the moment, we really need it to get the best out of the players on the field. It will be interesting to see what happens to him over the next six months or so.

Good news on the Theo Walcott front, he hopes to be fit to play in the Champions League tie at the end of the month against Roma, it would be a massive boost to the team and he will offer something we have really missed, pace in the last third and on the counter attack which is vital in our Champions League campaign. We might need to win it to be in the competition next season. He said in his on-line webchat the other day.

“I am nearly there, and hopefully [will be back] by the end of this month. “I am seeing a specialist on February 24 so he will give me the heads [up]. Maybe it can be for that game I don’t know. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up but I hope to be back by the end of the month certainly.”

It will be great when he is back, he did point out that exactly the same thing could happen to his right shoulder though which is perhaps a slight concerning.

One man that probably will be is Gilberto Silva with his club Panathinaikos and he has been saying how sad he is at how this season is going for us and after spending most of his career at our club he must care, even if we did ship him out a season too early. He had this to say;

“It’s hard for a big club like Arsenal to be so long without a title and the team is also very young, They need time and this is the problem at Arsenal – when you are in a big club you don’t have much time to grow up and they don’t know how to cope under pressure. The pressure is there and the young players need a lot of support from the experienced players to get them through, but it’s hard for the experienced players to help them in the situation they have.”

I really do feel that we should have kept him for the benefit of Song and Denilson as they need someone like Gilberto to learn from and coach them in a way Wenger has said helped Van Persie become the player he has under the guidance of Dennis Bergkamp, he describes Van Persie as ‘ Bergkamp but with a few more goals’, im paraphrasing there but you catch my drift. They lack guidance at the moment and Gilberto would have been perfect for that.

Adebayor has been given the African Player of the Year award for his goals last season, behind Michael Essien and some other bloke who’s name i can’t say, Ade was happy all his work had been recognised and is proud of his work towards African football as a whole, for all his criticism on the pitch recently, he does do a lot for football back in Togo and Africa as a whole, he really does care about where he came from and for that he deserves credit. He took part in a BBC Radio 4 programme in the summer at the height of his transfer speculation, many listeners we I’m sure wanting news about a transfer… it was pre-recorded and everyone was a bit disappointed. Ade said on recieving his award,

“I’m very happy to have received this award, I’m highly honoured by what I have done in African football and now that the World Cup is coming close and is in Africa, we’ll work hard to win the championship.”

Well done to him, he does deserve it whatever his form has been like this season. I have a feeling he will regain that form of last season, hopefully when he returns from his injury.

Now, an un-Arsenal subject, player salary caps and the Cuntini and Shatter proposal for foreign player quota’s.

First to the news that top clubs have rejected salary caps, thats hardly surprising is it? I’m in favour of it in some respects, but in others im totally against it. To be concise, if there were different categories of players like for example ‘band A’, ‘band B’ and ‘band C’. With ban A earning a maximum of say 120K a week and so on and so forth. That is workable with a limit for each category. On the foreign quota all i can say without having my blog removed is that it contravines EU law and i would like to see them get their ugly heads around that.

Fabianski has also been saying that despite being ‘fustrated’ at his lack of games, he made the right decsion in joining. Great, another youngster who thinks he should be in the first eleven, along with Bendtner. God, are they not just satisfied with their millions a year?

Right, i really should have not have posted all these stories on one day, i’ll regret it tomorrow, or maybe even the day after when there is fook all to write about.

Til tomorrow,

Up the Gunners.