Saturday round-up, Van Persie

Avram Grant got a friendly welcome back from Utd yesterday, with the champions beating Pompey 4-1 at Fratton Park. Rooney hat-trick, good for the fantasy league I guess and plenty of penalty practise to boot. I must confess that I haven't yet seen the highlights - I woke at 8 this morning in a terrible hungover state and the morning MOTD had already begun. I did see the rest though including West Ham winning 5-3 against Burnley, the Hammers were 5-0 up and then decided to just chillax for the last 20 minutes and it could have been a shocking slip if David Nugent had buried his 2 great chances. 3 cheers for Jimmy Bullard who's goal celebration is rightfully taking a lot of plaudits today. If you aint seen it yet, check it out. The world and his dog can continue to laugh at Man City's misfortunes at the back, yesterday was their 7th draw in a row and I think the 3rd or 4th time they were leading in those games. 7 points from a possible 21 can be leveled out to 2 wins, 1 draw and 4 defeats which is very poor form. I know they haven't actually lost those games but it's the number of points that matter not the amount of defeats that you have. A rather unsavoury incident that Linekar and the boys didn't comment on (not at least in the Sunday morning version) was an Adebayor challenge on Paul McShane. The ball is well gone and Adebayor comes in late on him and there's some forward motion to stamp on the Hull player. Good job McShane didn't make a big deal of it because we all know Adebayor has previous in these sorts of things, you ungrateful fucking wanker. The late game between Villa and Spurs was a bit scrappy and we didn't see the open expansive game with some of the leagues most in form players that I was hoping for. It ended 1-1 and Villa should really be the happier with that because after they scored it was pretty much backs to the wall for them. Defoe had one rightfully chalked off, he had 2 or 3 really good chances, Cuellar cleared one brilliantly off the line, Krancjar had a few digs etc etc. A good result for Liverpool that.

As I awoke yesterday I had no idea what was about to hit me. I did my customary checks of Facebook, Twitter (follow me p_langrotta) and then the Arsenal website, and there it was - Van Persie ruled out for 4 to 5 months. Pow, right in the kisser. Apparently there has been some kind of misdiagnosis of his ankle injury, and he now needs to go under the knife to repair ligaments which is very bad news. Van Persie has said that this trip to Serbia had nothing to do with it and the fact that 2 weeks have passed since the injury occurred probably won't make much difference in the end. He's going to miss almost all of the Arsenal season (if it's 4 months then we're looking April, if it's 5 then May) now and even if he does come back for the latter stages, it'll take him a while to get back that sharpness and confidence he did so well to build up these last 3 months. He'll have just enough time conveniently, to be completely ready for the fucking World Cup, how handy for Holland. It's a massive blow for the Arsenal, who might have been able to cope without him for 6 weeks but not for 5 months. We have to hope now that Eduardo, Bendtner and Vela can not only step up to the plate but also stay free of injury. It's very possible now that the boss might dip into the market in January and buy Chamakh or someone, and I really think he has to. If we beat Man City on Wednesday in the Carling Cup then we'll have a 2 legged semi in January, the FA Cup coming in and by February the Champions League again. I'm desperately disappointed for the lad, he's had his problems with niggly muscular injuries before but it looked like he had finally overcome that until this happened. Like Eduardo a couple years ago the rest of the team have to try and use this now as a weapon to spur them on, raise their games and fight to win some silverware this season. There's no better way that to tonk Chelsea today and make a big statement about the title. Come on you boys. Take her easy.