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Dennis Bergkamp was hoping to be back for the trip to Goodison
but he suffered a slight setback in his return from achilles injury in training yesterday. Kanu is expected to continue
alongside Thierry Henry, but Francis Jeffers will be itching to
get a chance for more than a few minutes at the end of the game,
following his 5 in 2 games for England U21s. Particularly against his old club.
Keown and Parlour are both still a couple of weeks or so from
coming back.
Bobby and Gio should be back soon, but not yet. Pires played a full reserve game last week, and van Bronckhorst has just completed his first week of full training for 8 months.
A lot of papers are focussing on Seaman after the England debacle. All I want to say about that is that at least he tried to stop the ball going in, unlike Paul Scholes on the far post.
One wonders what he thinks the point of having a player standing
on the goal-line is, if they duck out of the way of the ball.
In terms of keeprs, the interest for us will be on Richard Wright's showing. Were we right to get rid...?
Everton defender Tony Hibbert has recovered from a hamstring injury which forced him out of the England U21 squad last week. Gary Naysmith also came back early from international duty but is also ok to face the Gunners.
Alan Stubbs, Alessandro Pistone, and Steve Watson are all
contending for starting places after being out for a while,
although the last 2 of those are not expected to be fit enough.
Ferguson and Rodriog are out long-term, and Li Wei Fang is injured too.
Skipper David Weir is available. He was sent off in the last match but FA rules mean that he doesn't serve the suspension
till 2 weeks after the red card. This situation looks like changing as FIFA are in the process of implementing a new rule
sayign that suspensions happen immediately. |