Now before I start I would like to point out that I haven’t gone completely mad in suggesting that Arsene should copy Chelsea in any way. But for the sake of our season I think the suggestion I am about to make could be beneficial.

On Tuesday night every Gooner was most defiantly in the same position as me, sitting hunched over, head in hands as Walcott lay on the turf in Basel, fearing the worst. As it turns out early indications suggest that it is only going to be a two-week lay off, but this isn’t the first time that this has happened. In 2008 Theo dislocated his shoulder whilst training with England leading up to a friendly match.

It always seems to be that Theo gets injured just when he is hitting a run of form, especially looking at the way he has started this season. He was looking like the player that every Gooner (and Arsene) had been waiting for.

At this point you’re probably wondering how I am going to bring Chelsea into this, well, there seems to be a reoccurring pattern every time England has a qualifier or friendly, a sudden injury to Frank (Balding) Lampard and John (my Dad’s a drug dealer and my Mother steals from Tesco) Terry. Strangely the injuries seem to last usually one to two weeks (or however long the international breaks are). An example of this the two recent European Championship qualifiers, where both Terry and Lampard where missing, but are expected to be available for Chelskie this weekend, how strange.

Another thing is, I’m not a Doctor and have never claimed to be, but common sense would suggest that a hernia operation would take a little longer to heal than a short international break?

Now please don’t think that I am suggesting that this is what Arsene should do, because in my eyes it is despicable that a former England captain should lie to miss an England game just so he wouldn’t risk being injured for club, but in Terry’s defence he is not known for lying (not).

I hope that fellow Gooners have noticed this lack of presence from Chelskie’s ‘Key Players’ when it comes to England games, and maybe Arsene should think about doing the same, if it means the difference between having a fully fit squad and not.

(Ed’s note – received a response to this piece from Philip Rolfe of www.thechels.net - and this seems the most appropriate place to run it…)

Just thought I'd make note of a couple of things in the absence of a comments page, and with all due respect, I'm not joining your forum.

a) Lampard had surgery, Terry was resting two leg injuries picked up against Stoke.

b) Lampard's surgery is described in detail in this link , explaining why it's a short-term recovery

c) If you're going to throw around accusations of the pair missing qualifiers, it may be worth doing some research so as to not look stupid. The last time Terry missed a qualifier was Oct 15th 2008, seven games ago. The last time Lampard failed to start a qualifier was away to Russia in October 2007, and the last time he failed to appear in one at all was September 2007 against the same opposition.

I hope that you'll agree that these points essentially render your argument obsolete. I can fully sympathise with losing players through injury on international duty, for we've been deprived of Michael Essien for much of the past two seasons thanks to injuries picked up playing for Ghana. These things happen.