Date: February 2007

Blackburn – Arsenal (FA Cup)

Feb 28, 2007 by

I haven’t yet caught a replay of the Carling Cup final and probably wont either but reading so many forums and views I’ve come to the conclusion that we played brilliantly yet again only to be destroyed mentally by JT’s injury and the eventual Diaby injury.The future is bright though….

Back to business..barely time enough to even breathe. Another away game in the damn North West. However we’ve pretty much dominated Blackburn overall and I dont believe we will do badly in this one either. Picked the injury/rested list off arsenal-mania.com:

Rosicky, Toure, Fabregas, Henry, Hoyte, Djourou, Flamini, RVP, Diaby, Adebayor Eboue –> 11 players… 11 damn players

Most teams wouldn’t stand a chance if 11 players are down at the same stage.You listening….Jose??? Anyway I feel strangely confident in this one though. The return of McCarthy isn’t good news…the guy is tricky. David Bentley gets another chance against us.

AW has already said that Hleb,Freddie,Gallas n probably Gilberto will all play. Nice experience to fall back on. I just hope they deliver and not mess this up. Denilson gets another chance in the middle to prove his credentials and Ali n The Beast up front can score goals ..its a matter of will they score them??

If Gallas isnt match fit and is rusty we’ll be in trouble and will lose but he’s such a big match player that I guess we can count on him to deliver when we need him. The Senderos bashers are having great fun everywhere but there are loads of places where he’s being backed wholly and I’m not giving up on him either. Clichy’s injury is good in a way as he’ll be fresh for PSV if he heals by then. Will Traore be able to play well enough to prevent DB from whipping in those crosses?

Overall I think we’ll win this…fairly comfortably ..2-0 I think. The longer the game goes on the more problems we have as we have a pretty bad looking bench as of now.

Bench= Poom,Djourou,Theo,Clichy,Randall??? .. I’m struggling to fill the bench. We need to kill this early. Man City at home are next so we should be able to make it to the semis IF .. IF we win this one.

Blackburn 0 – Arsenal 2

Arsenal 06/07 Home Shirt: Announcement

Feb 27, 2007 by

As posted on Arsenal.com:

As you may know, there has been a problem with the “Fly Emirates” logo on the 2006/07 home shirt, caused by a fault in the manufacture of certain batches of the logos.

There have been two issues. The first, “delamination”, is when the logo actually starts to peel off from the shirt. The second concerns the cracking of the logo.

Although we have been aware of the delamination issue since early August, this was restricted to a single manufacturing batch and as soon as we were aware of the issue we stopped selling the affected shirts. More recently we have become aware of the cracking issue which we are advised only occurs on certain shirts after one or more washings. It was when we became aware of this that we withdrew all home shirts from sale last Friday.

Although we are assured only a limited number of batches of shirts are affected, we suggest that all of our fans who have bought a 2006/07 home shirt check it for these problems.

Any fan who has identified a logo delamination or cracking problem with a shirt purchased from one of our retail operations should contact the following email address, homeshirts@arsenal.co.uk, giving their name, address, telephone number, size of shirt (e.g. boys small size) and date of purchase. We have arranged with Nike that new stock will be available in early May and we will exchange faulty shirts (following inspection) for new shirts at the earliest opportunity.

Fans who purchased shirts from other retailers should contact the relevant retailer directly.

Nike regrets that the problems with the Fly Emirates logo were not identified before the shirts were released for sale and is working closely with Arsenal to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Not sure how they’ll handle issues with shirts bought through bulk orders like ours. If you have been effected, send an email to mikek AT arsenalamerica DOT com, and I’ll compile a list to give to Arsenal if need be.