By Boris Mellor
February 11 2005

Arsene Wenger gave his usual imformative interview to Arsenal Plus yesterday. Once again the Arsenal.Con commentator showed all the incisiveness of a young Garth Crooks. His first question was on the exciting issue of the International friendlies.

But Arsene had not seen the England game, which is fair enough as he watched France v Sweden, very wise. He also complained that the call up of players is unfair – some clubs do not send their players.

Injuries – Sol has no chance of making the Palace match, Justin Hoyte will be out due to injury in U21s, as will Van Persie. Aliadiere is back in training but will need a few more weeks and matches before he can return.

Arsene also believes that Edu might stay, he has not signed for anyone else, the issue is the amount of the contract.

He went on to say that he would be surprised if Valencia would be prepared to pay big sums of money to Edu, subsidising his Brazilian career, and if it is taken into consideration that Edu only plays half a season, £40,000 a week is equivalent to £80, 000 a week for any other player (sorry I made that last quote up).

Wenger claimed that the Reyes story is an invention (err sort of Arsene) and insisted that he would be at the club next season. However he said he didn’t see the Spanish Radio Broadcast. Which is fair enough as it is sound only.

CURSE OF THE ARSENAL MAGAZINE STRIKES AGAIN AND AGAIN

A week or so ago Arsenal Times pointed out that the February official magazine had Pennant, or Penniho as the team call him, stating that the last thing he had bought was Playstation Getaway Computer game.

Now the curse has hit Almunia – he was designated the magazine’s Man of the Month and described as Arsenal’s new number one. Unfortunately he had lost that title by February the 5^th.