Afternoon, the biggest story of the day seems to be Wayne Bridge pulling out of the England squad after refusing to play in the same side as John Terry, its understandable, I wouldn’t want to play in the same team as him either.

With Cashley injured (wouldn’t want to play in a side with him either) it means that Capello is down to the bare bones at left back – meaning if Kieran Gibbs foot hadn’t have been semi-vaporised by a very disgruntled Standard Liege player at the Emirates, he could well have been in the starting line-up next week at Wembley. He’s really missed out on a chance this season with Clichy’s back injury keeping him out for a long time, before he got injured I thought it possible he could just have snuck onto that plane to South Africa in the summer. His time will come though, I’m sure.

What about Wayne Bridge though? Turning down the chance of playing for your country because your ex captain slipped one to your ex missus? Bad decision in my book, guess I’m not in his shoes though.

Back onto proper Arsenal matters, it seems that the media department have been in overdrive (well, sort of), in the last 12 hours. Two players have spoke! What a revelation that is. Its a shame they are just trotting out the same old lines though. Silvestre, speaking to Sky said:

“I think we’re still in the race and that’s important, we are nearly in March and that’s when things are going to be decided. As long as we are in it, we will fight until the end.”

“We’re going to be ready to face Stoke and get the three points.”

To be frank, the guy is not really going to get much of a look in over the season’s run in and will be off in the summer, hes handled himself well though and despite being a ex-United player his professionalism has shone through.

One player likely to have an important part to play over the coming weeks is Bakary Sagna, who said pretty much the same sort of thing as Silvestre:

“It’s still open, since the beginning of the season we were maybe ten points behind the first for a few months and we are not very far now, so we have maybe 10 to 12 games to play and we want to play game after game and we want to win everything.

“So we’ll see and and the title will be decided at the end. We’ll keep going and we’ll keep playing as a team until now and we want to win something this season. It’s still open and we want to achieve.”

The fact that we have been battered three times this season, twice by Chelsea and once by United, just shows the tenacity of this team – whilst not Wenger’s best side they sure do not give up. We do have to take it one game at a time as the old cliche goes. Stoke away at the weekend is a true test, they have been in great form.

It seems that during the week the players have been having a bit of the laugh whilst celebrating 25 years of Arsenal’s work in the community. Just look at these shorts.

Gotta laugh at Eboue, he looks like an 80′s drug baron / pimp. The afro, the mustache. He’s a true joker is Eboue, hes not the best player we have ever have but hes probably one of the most popular off the pitch.

Thats about all the stuff around for today, for a laugh check out arshavin.eu, some brilliant answers to some stupid questions.

Earlier I was on the Carlos Vela News podcast – Vela Interactive. We chatted about Carlos’ injury hit season, his chances to feature for Mexico at the World Cup in the summer, plus how he can make that final step into the first team. If you want to download the ‘cast click here.

Its worth a listen so let me know what you think either here or over on Carlos Vela News itself.

Till tomorrow.