Sunderland

Position: 8th, 5-2-5 (17 points, +1 goal differential)

Recent Form: DWLDL

Home Form: 4-1-1

Last Meeting: Arsenal 0-Sunderland 0 (2/21/09)

Back in action at the Stadium of Light tomorrow, for what I expect to be a very tricky match.

Finishing up our "what did we miss out on?" series today:

FELIPE MELO Arsenal were probably linked with Felipe Melo this summer more than any other player. The biggest difference between Arsenal's 2007-2008 season and our 2008-2009 season, which saw the club take a large step backwards, was the absence of Mathieu Flamini.

If you haven't seen it already, Eboue scored a goal for Ivory Coast in an international friendly against Germany yesterday.

The goal was brilliant showing he may very well be the perfect striker: the strength of Drogba, the creativity of Henry, and the finishing of Owen. He's the complete package, folks.

It's not strictly Arsenal-related, I know, but by now I'm sure you've all seen the controversial goal which put France into the 2010 World Cup.

If you haven't: there was a cross into the box which fizzed past the far post, and looked like it was headed over the touchline for a goal kick. But off one hop, it hit the arm of Thierry Henry, and deflected back into play in a perfect spot for him to center it directly into the path of the oncoming William Gallas, who headed home the winning goal.

Okay, I know, 3 posts in one day is a bit excessive. But one was part of a planned thing, the other was new injury news, and there are several things here that I thought you find interesting.

First, and most importantly, Kieran Gibbs did not break his foot, only suffered brusing, and is expected to be back and ready for action against Chelsea on the 29th.

Part II of our "What did we miss out on?" series continues today:

EDIN DZEKO Arsenal were heavily linked with the 23 year-old Bosnian striker early in the transfer window. He was coming off of a wonderful season in the Bundesliga, in which he led Wolfsburg to a surprise championship and led the league in goals, with a phenomenal 26 strikes in 29 appearances.

Well, it never ends. Apparently Aaron Ramsey has also picked up a knock on international duty, meaning we now have fully thirteen players injured.

If you're curious, we have 29 players listed in our first-team. Which means we are only a few injuries away from having literally more than half our team injured.

As you know, we complain about injuries, even though a lot of other clubs (Liverpool, Chelsea) have plenty of injury problems of their own. But we now have fully eleven players injured, and crying doesn't help, so why not have a little fun with it?

Our 11 players could be configured into a lineup:

Fabianski

Traore-Djourou-Clichy

Denilson

Walcott-Wilshere-Diaby-Vela

Bendtner-van Persie

An unconventional formation, sure.

Well, I just finished gnashing my teeth, rending my clothes, and dropping down to my knees, head thrust upward, yelling "Why, God? Why?!" I think now I can almost think rationally about this.

The big news is that the injury is not quite as bad as it had been first thought. Originally, everyone was reporting 2-3 months, some of the more sensationalist English papers were saying out for the season.

Most of you have probably already seen this, but Robin van Persie tore an ankle ligament today, an injury which will keep him up for around 2 months..

What, you may ask, super-important match was he playing in to take on such an injury? Was it the World Cup? Nope. The European championships?

Did you ever do that thing where you meet a girl (or guy, if you're one of my female or nontraditional male readers), strike up a conversation, realize she's kind of into you, but then for whatever reason, you decide not to make your move? And then, a couple months or years later, you meet a guy who either is dating her or dated her for a while?

This happened a couple of days ago, but, you know...(shrugs). 15 Arsenal players have been called up for duty over the international break. The entire list can be found here.

Of the 15, only 5 Diaby, Gallas, and Sagna for France, Arshavin for Russia, and Song for Cameroon are playing in meaningful senior international matches, as all of their nations are trying to qualify for the World Cup.

On the heels of third-place Manchester United's loss to Chelsea yesterday, Darren Fletcher made the claim that he had only been called for a foul on Ashley Cole because of comments Arsene Wenger had made in the media two months ago (comments which did not even mention Darren Fletcher's name). We here at the Arsenal Offside found these comments curious, and it seemed like a bizarre and misguided attempt to deflect attention from third-place Manchester United's shortcomings in the match and to try to drag Arsenal into the discussion.

The Offside's Main Page decided to compile a list of the "100 Best Players of the Decade." I thought it might be of some interest to you, especially since Arsenal is out of action for a couple of weeks. It was voted on by all of the Offside's bloggers, as well as readers. I will say that I thought the criteria was a little vague it was simply to name the 20 best players who played in the decade.