So all the talk this morning is about Capi Golightly having a crafty blem coming out of a nightclub the other night.

Arsene Wenger is less than impressed, saying:

I don't like that. I will check that with him. He has a responsibility as captain of Arsenal Football Club. That cannot be accepted. It is a public job with a public responsibility and therefore it is exactly the same for everybody.

I would disagree with the statement in that it's not the same for everybody. It's different for the captain simply because he's the captain. He is the one who is supposed to lead and set the example. Now, I know some people will say 'Tony Adams, alcoholic, crashed his car, went to jail', and they'd be right. He certainly did crash his car and go to jail.

However, I'd qualify that by saying that Adams was perhaps a victim of the era in which he played and captained the side. There was a drinking culture throughout English football at that time and he fell foul of that. Also, he absolutely never, ever let us down on the pitch. He was a real captain, someone who would give 100% every single time, every single game. Nobody's saying he was perfect or that he performed at a high level each week but he always gave you everything during a game.

I'm not sure that even the most staunch Gallas supporters could say that of the Frenchman. He hardly got caught up in the smoking culture, did he? The Tuesday Night Benson & Hedges club. With the Irish lads smoking twenty Major. The article about this on Arsenal.com makes pains to point out that the cigarette was unlit. Well there's only one reason you have an unlit cigarette in your mouth and that's to light it. Of course smoking isn't great for players and in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal.

However, it becomes just another black mark against a man who has really failed to live up to the standards of an Arsenal captain on the pitch. You also wonder are the performances Gallas himself described as 'tired' down to the fact he's chuffing the smokes and finds himself wheezy and breathless at corners?! The manager goes on to say:

He wants to do well, he wants his team to win and he has made a mistake - who didn't? Even great captains, we all make mistakes.

Even great captains can make mistakes so it should be no surprise that crap ones like Gallas make them too. I don't know really how the manager can continue to back him as captain. If a news story emerged tomorrow which showed Darth Gallas going around with a stormtrooper laser gun wiping out baby Jedis in their cots he'd probably back him then too.

That's about as much as I'm going to say. I like Gunnerblog's take on it too.

Ahead of tomorrow's game against West Ham there's a small chance that Bacary Sagna will be fit. I suspect he'll probably keep him on the bench though with the Sp*rs game coming up on Wednesday.

The boss says he'd love to have kept Matthew Upson and says that telling young players they'd be better off elsewhere is the toughest part of management.

Robert Pires says Emmanuel Adebayor is 'literally' in love with Arsenal. For some reason that just generated an image of a giant Adebayor trying to penetrate the Grove. Bleurgh.

Denilson talks about the team and taking his chance after most of our midfielders left in the summer. He does it in more depth in The Sun with some stuff about his background and childhood.

REDaction want you to make some noise.

And that's really about it. Have a good Saturday. It's a bank holiday weekend here so that just means one extra hangover. Joy!

Till tomorrow.

We spoke during the week about how an injury to either Cesc or Denilson would leave us very stretched in central midfield and sadly that's the situation we're faced with as the former has a hamstring strain that will rule him out for the next two weeks or so.

Not only that, going into tonight's game against FC Twente we're missing also missing Kolo Toure and Philippe Senderos as well as the other names we weren't expecting to play anyway. It looks as if Aaraon Ramsey, just 17 years of age, will start alongside Denilson in midfield tonight. I suspect we'll line up like this:

Almunia - Sagna - Djourou - Gallas - Clichy - Eboue - Ramsey - Denilson - Walcott - Adebayor - van Persie

The full squad is here and as you can see we are very light on options in defence should we pick up a knock there and when our next option for central midfield is 16 year old Jack Wilshere then it really does highlight just how light the squad is. Arsene Wenger says:

Basically, it is a choice of a young player or an even younger one. The trouble is, when you have to play Champions League qualifiers so early, you push players and they get injuries, which is what has happened.

All well and good but injuries happen and maybe it's just me but at Arsenal they seem to happen all the time. The best way to cope with injuries is to have a squad big enough and to have players who aren't injury prone. In central midfield we've spoken about how often Diaby is out injured yet we go out and buy Bischoff who hasn't played a game since 1876.

It's the absence of Cesc that's so worrying though. He is absolutely pivotal to us but perhaps we're expecting too much from him. As I mentioned he only returned to pre-season training on July 29th, that was after a long, tough season with us then a Euro 2008 campaign with Spain. Should we really be putting him in a position where he has to play so soon? Had we gone out and bought the central midfielder everyone knows we need then we could have eased him back in a bit slower.

Of course that's easy to say with hindsight but it's little more than common sense. So tonight is going to be interesting. I still think we're capable of beating Twente but I imagine the Dutch side will be looking at our team, seeing who's out and thinking that if they have any chance of winning the tie then they've got to go for it tonight. Obviously McClaren's usual conservative way of thinking might scupper that but if I were the coach I'd be looking for my team to go out and really give it a good try.

On the other hand it's a chance for Ramsey to impress. He came looking for first team football and now he's got it. Of him Arsene Wenger says:

Ramsey has a lot to learn. He has a fantastic engine, is good on the ball with a reasonable technique, although he has to improve that.

Denilson too will be rubbing his eyes wondering how, all of a sudden, he's become the senior player in central-midfield and it's a good chance for him to show the manager that he's good enough to be considered there on a regular basis, not just in an injury crisis. He's had a good pre-season and hopefully he can continue that form tonight. He must know, and Ramsey too, that it's a fantastic opportunity. It might not be ideal for us but I suppose this is where we really see what players are made of.

So while the injuries are worrying and there's plenty to discuss the bottom line is we can't do anything about it ahead of tonight's game. We'll have eleven players on the pitch and we need to get behind them and support them. The danger is that another injury in central midfield and we're looking at playing Ramsey and Wilshere in the opening game of the Premier League season - and when Arsene realises their combined age is 33 he'll sell them both and play two 14 year olds.

Whatever plans the manager has to buy somebody (and however long he wants to leave it to get the best value possible) are going to have be revised. The squad is now threadbare and it's time for the club to sort it out. We can't wait for Diaby to return, we can't seriously be counting on Bischoff to play any significant part this season and even the players themselves want the manager to sign an experienced midfielder. Once tonight is over and done with then some serious work has to go into addressing this problem, and it is a problem.

I don't think I can ever remember, certainly not in recent times anyway, such a collective sense of unease amongst Arsenal fans going into a new season. There's certainly hope and expectation but there's just the feeling we're living under a cloud a bit at the moment. The perfect solution to that is us winning games though, and hopefully we'll start tonight.

In other news Middlesboro have confirmed they've made a bid for Justin Hoyte and are awaiting a response from Arsenal. Given the current state of the squad and the fact that we only have two fit centre-halves and (sadly) Eboue is needed in midfield I'd be surprised to see it happen. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Fran Merida could spend this season on loan at Real Sociedad, where he spent some of the last campaign. I was surprised not to see him involved in pre-season at all and I wonder, with the emergence of Wilshere and the purchase of Ramsey, if the breakthrough will ever come for him at Arsenal.

Thoughts from the top of the blue quadrant - an article by Arseblog user Perry Groves. 

Right, well that's about it. The new season is just hours away. I'm nervous but excited. I'm nercited and excervous. Come on you reds.

It's a very quiet day today.

I could mention Hleb and his comments which are complimentary to Arsene Wenger but most disrespectful towards Arsenal but I'm not going to. I think it's been made very clear than Hleb is a dolphin loving cunt and frankly he doesn't merit any more time on this blog.

Meanwhile, according to The Sun, Emmanuel Adeabayor has told a team mate:

I’m not sure if I’m going to leave now

Well that certainly makes things awkward for him. When you consider previous quotes saying how we had to give in to his 'demands' or he'd leave it's a bit unfortunate to discover that not only is he a loudmouthed, greedy twat he's not a man of his word. I fully expected him to leave whether he'd found a new club or not. It would be the only decent thing to do.

'Give me my demands'.

'No'.

'Well then you leave me no choice'.

And off he would go with a battered holdall thrown over his shoulder and nobody would ever see him again. Or if they did see him again it would only be as he trudged away into the sunset with the really sad music from the Incredible Hulk TV series playing.

The boss confirmed yesterday that Eduardo would be back for the Emirates Cup but only as spectator. He's continuing his rehabilitation in Brazil, I think, and it's anybody's guess how long it'll take him to make his comeback. He also confirmed he was looking for a midfielder but then we knew that already.

There was some further bad news from the training camp last night when it emerged that Samir Nasri has been diagnosed with the bubonic plague. Apparently he picked it up from his pet rat 'Alex' that he brought with him through customs without the appropriate quarantine. There were also unconfirmed reports that Robin van Persie has the Ebola virus, Denilson suffered a massive dropsy while Emmanuel Eboue caught spina bifida from an elf in the forest.

We really are in a fucking crisis, let me tell you.

Right so, have yourselves a good Thursday. More, and an Arsecast (probably), tomorrow.