Olivier Giroud has emerged as a doubt for Sunday’s clash with Manchester City.

The French striker suffered a gashed knee when Chico Flores stamped on him after an acrobatic attempt at goal, and Arsene Wenger has revealed that he hasn’t trained all week because of it.

“He has not been practising because of the cut on the knee he got at Swansea,” he said. “We’ll have a final test on Saturday to see if he is involved against Man City. It is a 50:50. We’ll see.”

The manager isn’t yet sure if Abou Diaby and Andre Santos will take part either, saying, “I want to see how they react to the under-21 game they played in midweek. But we have so many games coming up now, it is good they are back.”

Other than that Arsenal have a clean bill of health going into Sunday’s important game, with Theo Walcott likely to play as the central striker should Giroud miss out

Despite reports this week suggesting that Theo Walcott had signed a new contract with Arsenal, Arsene Wenger admitted today that nothing has been completed and that he remains cautious over the whole situation.

At his pre-game press conference he said, “As long as nothing is signed, you are cautious. I’m optimistic we’ll get to a happy conclusion.”

Although he did indicate some progress, “The discussions have progressed smoothly but slowly”, and also hinted that he’d deploy the England man more centrally, “He just wants to play. He is happy to play on the flank as well. I see him playing more up front.”

Which would make you think that signing a striker is not high on the agenda. Regarding the transfer market, there was some classic Wenger bingo. Pressed on whether or not new players would be arriving, the manager said, “In England you are always under pressure to buy. We are still working in the transfer market but we only want exceptional players.

“So far we have not found him. We have no problem in players wanting to join us. I’ll give you my phone for 24 hours! We can afford 90 per cent of them.”

Now, if you’ll excuse us Arseblog News is off to make a super, super quality cup of coffee and we might stick an exceptional shot of brandy in it too.

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Updates via @arsenal and @johncrossmirror

Arteta just confirmed that he won't be playing tonight.

sudden injured is nth new in arsenal 

AW shud bring Per n Giroud in justnow so we can cross.

theo is pretty useless against a good defender