Injury Update; Almunia for England!

By: Martin | May 1st, 2009

Amazingly enough, there’s bad injury news coming out of the Arsenal camp today. In his brief Wednesday cameo, Eduardo apparently injured his groin when Rio Ferdinand fell on him, which means he’ll definitely miss tomorrow’s game against Portsmouth and possibly miss Tuesday’s game against United. There’s a big probability that we’ll need to score 3 or more goals on Tuesday to advance, so we could really use a clinical finisher like Eduardo in the lineup.

At any rate, here’s the most up-to-date injury rundown:

Gallas: Out for season
Rosicky: Out for season
Clichy: Out indefinitely (but definitely out for next two games)
Eduardo: Out tomorrow, question for Tuesday
van Persie: Out tomorrow, question for Tuesday
Silvestre: Out tomorrow, question for Tuesday

We’ll be rotating the squad tomorrow anyway, but if Eduardo and van Persie are both unfit for Tuesday, that leaves us with only 3 fit strikers (Adebayor, Bendtner, and Vela), and Adebayor and Bendtner don’t get on and play such similar styles that they don’t really complement each other very well. This is definitely worrying.

In other news, apparently England manager Fabio Capello has said that if Manuel Almunia applies for an English passport this summer when he becomes eligible, he will consider picking him for the English national team. What I read this to mean is that if he gets the passport, he will be treated on an equal footing with all the other English keepers for selection purposes.

I know there will be some outcry from the English fans/media that “he’s not English!” And they may be onto something. But the fact is that ship sailed a long time ago–like it or not, foreign players have been playing for national teams which are not their “real” home country for a long time. Hell, even Owen Hargreaves (Canada) and John Barnes (Jamaica) have played for England. Giuseppe Rossi plays for Italy despite being born and raised in the U.S., Eduardo (Croatia) and Deco (Portugal) both play for European nations despite being born and raised in Brazil. The list goes on and on. The fact is that these are the rules of the game now, and while some people don’t give him enough credit, Almunia would instantly become England’s best keeper. I don’t get why David James is starting in the first place, as I think Robert Green and Chris Kirkland are both better stoppers, and from what we’ve seen of Ben Foster he looks like he may be the real deal, but won’t get international experience so long as he’s backing up van der Sar. If he decides he wants to do it, there’s a decent chance Almunia could be backstopping England at the 2010 World Cup.

Obviously as an American, I don’t have much of a stake either way, but Almunia is a classy guy and a very good keeper, and has had the misfortune of being Spanish in the same generation as Iker Casillas and Pepe Reina and being somewhat of a late bloomer. He’s certainly good enough to play at the international level, and for his sake, I’d love to see him get that chance.

Portsmouth preview coming up later.