Toure Out Until November, Almunia Made Captain

Morning all. Just a few hours till match day 3 of the Champions League. Just a couple of things to run through this morning before the match.

First of all we do have some bad news regarding Kolo Toure, who will be out until November. He injured his shoulder against Everton and had to come off, and now he's going to miss at least two weeks. While this isn't anywhere close to our toughest 2 weeks of the season, you never want one of your starting defenders out of the squad, unless it's William Gallas. Speaking of which, I was hoping while Gallas was injured that Djourou and Silvestre would get more time to work with Toure so we could see just how bad Gallas is, but this totally blows that whole plan.

"I hurt my shoulder badly, it was very painful but it is a job of a defender to take pain."

"And we won the game after going behind in our own stadium, and the injury is not too bad as we think I should be fine in ten to 15 days and ready to make a challenge."

Yes, it is your job to take pain. And to kill people. People such as Dimitar Berbatov. Get well soon though Toure.

So our back four for the match today will be Eboue, Song, Silvestre, and Clichy. Not the ideal back four but it is servicable. Fenerbache has a lot of skilled players and they aren't as much of a "score from corner kicks over William Gallas" team, so I think we'll be ok. We're top of the group right now on 4 points so a win would take us to seven points with two home games still to go, which you would expect us to win. A draw wouldn't be awful, especially with the amount of injuries we have at the moment, but I'd like to see us go out that and take the game. I think it's certainly a winnable one.

The captain for tonight's game will be Manuel Almunia. Good for him too. I like Almunia and think he takes way too much stick for nothing. He's played well for us last year and so far this year and if he is the captain while Gallas is out I have no problem with it. In fact I'd rather him be captain than Gallas all the time. Actually I'd rather anyone else be the captain. But that's neither here nor there. Almunia says he'll feel "nothing but pride" while wearing the armband for Arsenal. Don't really know what else he would feel but there you go.

Luis Aragones, the little shit who called our beloved Henry a couple of awful things very similar to what I just called him except with more racism involved, says he's not worried about facing Arsenal. He's a terrible person and I hope we run them into the ground. The only thing better would be if Thierry Henry was here to do it. Don't get me wrong, I was cheering for Spain in the Euro's but it was in spite of Aragones, not because of him. I can't stand the man.

Andy Gray writes an article about how bad Sp*rs are and it pretty much says what everyone else says, that they're moronic for letting their two best strikers leave and not replacing them. I just can't resist laughing at the cunts though.

That's about all I have. We're getting some good emails in for the next podcast in so keep them coming, ArseNole@arsenole.com. Anything funny, informative, inventive, or anything else that would be interesting to read on the podcast this Friday, get it in to me. The best emailer will receive a $10 gift certificate for soccerpro.com, and maybe a little something else from me. Also I still want to hear more feedback as to what you think of the podcast, so those comments are appreciated too. Enjoy the Fenerbache match, and cheers!