West Ham tomorrow and Arsene’s press conference today and there were a lot of sorry’s and promises that the Ipswich match will be put behind us.

Guess it’s that easy huh?

Early team news and Fabianski has failed a fitness test so Chesney will start in goal with Shea on the bench (as Almunia is injured and Mannone is on loan). Van Persie and Nasri will both be back in the squad which is good news.

Almunia is still injured and the situation with him is as it was last week due to the fact that Arsene has hardly seen him. This was due to the team travelling it should be stressed.

When asked (repeatedly) about signing a centre half, no matter how many times Wenger said he wouldn’t talk about it the journalist kept asking and asking and asking. Eventually, Wenger said that no-one knew about Vermaelen, Koscielny and Squillaci so “Let us surprise you if we do something.”

Keeping his cards close to his chest as always.

He was asked about the apparent unhappiness of Arshavin to which Wenger replied with praise that could almost be described as gushing. He spoke about how he works incredibly hard in training, is a fantastic player, and is one that Arsene is ‘desperate to keep.’ There is no truth in the rumours about him going to Italy. When asked if he’d had any offers AW did go slightly quiet and shake his head ever-so-slightly, so not quite as definitive in that answer as he was with regards to the bid from Juventus.

Speaking about the debacle at Ipswich Wenger said “We were completely average. We will NOT play like that against West Ham. We switched a bit off mentally in the cup games and I am confident we will switch on again against West Ham”

Let’s hope so huh? I don’t want to get in to it again, but you could be forgiven for saying ‘a bit? Really Arsene? Only a bit?’

Asked about Ryo Miyaichi Wenger had a bit of trouble understanding what the Japanese journalist was saying as he was pronouncing  Ryo as ‘Ryo’ “Oh, you mean Rio? We call him Rio” was Wenger’s response when he finally worked out what was going on. He then followed that with tons of praise about the players ability and, more importantly, his work ethic. Confirming that Ryo will go on loan to Feyenoord or Excelsior, a Rotterdam team,  he then said to the Japanese journalist:

“As soon as you play him in the national side he can get a work permit so do that as quickly as possible please”

As usual, the press conference then looped around and cut out, and was nowhere to be found so I’ve no idea what else was said.

After the mental toll of yesterday’s blog, that’s your lot for today.

[ad#Google Adsense-2]