All the talk in the Arsenal blogs before the Man City match was about whether Alexis Sanchez would be back in the squad for the match, but he was not even named on the bench, and it would appear he is still some way off full fitness.
But the Gunners, despite all our injuries, still managed to win through against Man City, and Wenger revealed after the game that we can’t expect to see Alexis back at any point over the busy festive period. “I think he will be back January 10. Christmas period – you can’t count him.” Wenger said after the game.
Wenger revealed that he had a setback a couple of days ago when looking nearly ready for the bench. “He had had a slight one yet but he planned to be on the bench tonight but he is so keen he got a little bit of a pain and we didn’t take a gamble.”
So our magic man is finally going to get his enforced rest at last, and if we can keep winning with our backup players then this could work in Arsenal’s favour for the rest of the campaign. We have got the hard game out of the way, and with Southampton, Bournemouth and Newcastle to come, without Sanchez, there is no reason why we can’t keep the momentum going.
Walcott, Giroud and Campbell are doing fine at the moment, and once Alexis returns we can atart rotating to give everyone a well-earned rest, and you never know, we may have a new arrival in January…..