Hey look, it’s Monday! Anything going on with the Arsenal?

No? Come on, there must be at least a transfer rumor today. Surely Chamakh has signed a pre-pre-verbal deal with Arsenal? Oh wait, look! Here’s a story about Carlton Cole denying some unnamed team the privilege of having their team doctors work on his injuries for the rest of the season. Cole doesn’t say that it was Arsenal who contacted him but everyone knows it was, right? It’s just common sense, Arsenal needed a striker, Carlton Cole is a striker (when he plays) and Arsene Wenger is so predictable in the transfer market, therefore Arsenal contacted Carlton Cole who, because he loves West Ham and because he didn’t want to play in the Champions League, turned us down. Carlton Cole turned down Arsenal because he’d much rather be blowing Bubbles at West Ham.

That makes sense, thank the gods that Goal.com got the scoop!

Speaking of stupid, there’s an unsubstantiated rumor that Arsenal have an agreement to bring Marouane Fellaini in this Summer off Everton. I’m not linking to it because it’s absolute garbage but I will say that I think Arsenal fans should get in on this “making up stupid transfer rumors” action. Feel free to put your most ridiculous and obviously made-up transfer ideas in the comments below.

The Champions League is set to restart and Arsenal get to play football on Wednesday. YAY! Man, I was starting to lose my mind there. I even had this nightmare that I was duped into believing that photos of Arsenal’s 2010/2011 kit had been leaked onto the internet. Thank goodness I didn’t fall for that!

Anyway, Arsenal play Porto do Hulk on Wednesday and ahead of the match both teams are talking about their physical play and how they are going to “smash” each other. On the dot com, Arsene is big upping Vasiriki Abou Diaby’s physical presence in the team, saying:

He offers height and a physical presence. It gives us the pair with Alex Song and even when Denilson plays, when Diaby is there we look strong in the challenges and strong in the air as well. When you add Nicklas Bendtner and him, suddenly when you set-up on set pieces, who do we have? We have four or five who really can jump for the headers and it makes a difference

I actually agree with Arsene here, Diaby has been absolutely massive this season. It’s a bit unfair that for most of his career he was compared to Patrick Vieira because he’s not really anything like Vieira — other than being tall, black, French, and bald. Well he used to be bald, he’s not even bald anymore, see what I mean? But seriously, there were a lot of expectations placed on him after those comparisons were made and he’s really struggled to live up to them given his history of injuries.

Don’t get me wrong, I put the string of injuries squarely on the shoulders of former Sunderland player Dan Smith, who broke Diaby’s foot at the end of a blowout 3-0 Arsenal win back in 2006. Diaby was just 19 years old when Dan Smith took him out of football for 9 months with a fractured and dislocated ankle, basically the same injury as the one Taylor inflicted on Eduardo.

It seems like a lifetime ago that happened, I mean, Bergkamp came on in that game! Wow… the point is that it has taken Diaby nearly 4 years to get back into a rhythm, get a string of games under his belt and start to show what he can really do. His stats are good; 7 goals and 4 assists so far this season. But it’s the little things that are really important: tackling, breaking up play, being tall. Let’s all hope he continues this run of good form, between him Cesc and Song Arsenal could have the best midfield in the League.

Meanwhile, Givanildo Vieira de Souza said something or his captain said something about stopping Arsenal. Whatever, Hulkster. Let’s play some football and see which is the better team.

If you’re in Portugal, and you’re a red level member, and you want to see some good football match tickets are still available. It’s a bit odd that there are tickets still available but then the economy is pretty bad and from what I hear Porto fans can be a bit, uhh, unfriendly. If you do go, watch your back.

The match is live here in the States on Fox Soccer Channel and I’m actually going to be at home for the game which means that I’ll probably do a liveblog or something. More on that tomorrow after Wenger gives his pre-match interview.

One thing that my American readers will notice is that Fox Soccer Channel is heavily advertising the March debut of their new HD channel, Fox Soccer Plus. I have it on good authority (basically it’s a rumor) that most people who have cable won’t be able to get the channel for a while.

But don’t despair!

The reason that the cable providers can’t easily add the channel is because they have limited bandwidth. Satellite providers don’t have this same limitation and so Fox Soccer Plus will probably be available to Dish and other satellite TV subscribers in the States.

For me this isn’t much of a change except for the better: I currently go to the pub to watch the games that are broadcast on Setanta and since they have multiple satellite networks, I’ll probably just get to keep doing that. The better part comes in because the games will now be in HD!

Anyway, that’s it for right now, see you later today with the Monday Fiver.