Sorry I’m a bit late today, you can blame the torrential rain in Belfast and the fact that apparently motorists here have never seen rain before.

Crawl, crawl.

Anyways, no time for rambling, we’ve team news to be talking about ahead of tomorrow’s ‘big game’ (described as such by Jack Wilshere on Twitter – how great to see the players talking about West Ham at home as a ‘big game?).

In goal we will see Fabianski restored and after Woja Chesney’s superb mid-week display he knows he has zero room for error which is a great position for the club to be in. Previously, when we had dumb and dumber they could compete to see who could fuck up the most and still stay in the team. I believe Almunia won that competition as he retained his place the longest.

Cringe.

What is the story with his elbow anyway? Is it an injury which is likely to keep him out until January when we will flog him? I hope so.

At the back, with Gibbs injured again we will see Clichy return and Sagna will take his starting position back from Eboue. In the middle Squillaci will no doubt return and if we have to pick on form between Johann and Kos surely Kos will get the nod because even though Djourou had a better second half mid-week, he was woeful in part during the first half whereas Kos was immense for the full 90.

In the middle we will see Song return with Cesc and Denilson retain his starting place as Jack and Diaby are still injured. Wide it could be argued that Arshavin should be dropped, Nasri started on the left and Theo on the right but I suspect we will see Theo on the bench and the diminutive Russian retain his place.

Up front Chamakh will start again and be replaced by Nik with the match won and 20 minutes left on the clock.

Djourou has been talking about how it is the matches against teams like West Ham which determine your season and he is right. It is not against the ‘big boys’ where titles are won and lost, it is the points picked up against the ‘lesser’ teams which get you home. We have already had a collective stinker in the game against West Brom at home. We cannot afford another one if we are to maintain ambitions of a quad this year.

What? You don’t think we are going for every trophy at full pelt? Did you not see the Carling Cup performance? We already take the league and champions league seriously, if we are taking the Carling Cup seriously it stands to reason that we will do the same in the FA Cup and therefore will be competing on four fronts. What’s the point of competing if you don’t believe you can win?

Can we win the quad? It’s not very likely, but, then again, keep this team fit and with the depth of squad we have, all the young players blossoming and maturing at superb rates never say never is what I say.

I can’t see Wenger being happy with just winning the Carling Cup can you?

In other news Wenger has confirmed that there is a deal on the table for Chesney which is great news. All we have to do is hope he remembers who nurtured him and signs on. To lose a talent such as his just when he is about to come in to his own would be sickening.

“An offer has been made. We are negotiating with him and try to extend his contract. He wants to stay, I want him to stay, so basically [a] plus plus [a] plus should be [a] plus!”

He wants to stay, we want him to stay. It’s all now about the numbers and, I suspect, how much game time we are able to guarantee. Surely he will get all the cups this season at least?

There is an absolute ton of news on the Arsenal.com site which I don’t have the time to round up due to the whole traffic thing mentioned at the start of the blog so if you haven’t already you should head there to catch up.

That’s it from me. All that remains is to remind you that tomorrow sees the draw for the quarter-finals of the Carling Cup being made between 12 and 12.30 pm (GMT) and I’ll be covering it live on Twitter so make sure you follow me @LadyArse.

Here’s to a spanking performance and another three points. With West Ham being forced in to extra time during the week and having a relatively small side they should not have anything close to enough to beat us. We thought that about West Brom – let that serve as one final lesson – never underestimate your opponents and play to the best of you ability in every game. We have the ability, once we get the application right we will be unstoppable.

Let’s start with tomorrow.

some new entries this week