The Injury Lottery.

Here we go Gooners,

The international injury lottery starts tonight as Rosicky takes on Scotland, Arshavin takes on Ireland, Eboue takes on the force that is Burundi and Jack Wilshere will take a staring role in England U21's game against Romania before he joins the big boys in the full squad. Jack's double dipping is great for him but not great for Arsenal. Wilshere has appeared in every game so far this year and although he's nice and young it has to catch up with him at some point and it'll be Arsenal FC that suffers when he does. Sagna, Nasri, Diaby and Clichy will line up France and Chamakh faces Tanzania in tomorrows game and then all except Chamakh and Eboue have another game to look forward to in midweek so plenty of opportunity for someone to get injured, putting them out for the infamous 4-6 weeks that seems to be tagged to almost every injury we get.

All that being said this week will provide a nice break for some of our players like Fabregas, Bendnter, Vermealen, etc who will all be enjoying a weekend off to relax before returning next week to finish getting fit for the Birmingham game. I said yesterday how I was looking forward to the other side of this and I think this will be the strongest we have come out of an international break for a long time. I look forward to our spine returning.

I don't think that Van Persie will be back in time for Birmingham however Bendtner has declared himself fit and with a week for our medical staff to access him we should see him at least on the bench for the visit of Brum. Our mighty Dane will be really important over the next few weeks while RVP is getting fit. He will not however return in his best form, he hasn't played at all this year and it will take time for him to settle back into the game, hopefully not too much time though. That also goes for our other players returning. Players take time to get back to their best but our boys will need to do it quickly as after the international break we only have two games before we travel to Man City.

I am off now to cross my fingers and toes, pray to any Gods that'll listen and sacrifice a couple of goats to ensure all our players get through the week injury free

Until tomorrow,
Goonerfish