PRAISE the Lord.

International week is over. To it, the England team and the fans the team deserves, I wish you an early death. Honestly, two weeks without football fullstop would be more exciting and feel less long.

Good news yesterday came in the announcement that ticket prices are being frozen for next season. It’s great news (as taking into account inflation it amounts to a price drop) and this line from the official statement caught my eye in particular:

What does this mean? I could be wrong, but it seems to hint that the club may be paving the way for kids and OAP tickets to be sold more widely than the narrow confines of the Family Enclosure, that seems to sell out almost instantly for every game. Red members will certainly be hoping so.

The price freeze is also time for more rejoicing: an ANR exclusive comes off. Let’s just hope that with the prize freeze the club still have the money to pay Harry Kewell and Nigel Reo-Coker’s wages.

On the field, it is Liverpool tomorrow and the good news is that Clichy, Eboue and Adebayor are all fit again. You don’t need me to tell you that Adebayor’s return is welcome. But the big question now is whether the boss plays Gilberto (assuming he is fit) in midfield or at the back. In the few games he played in defence, Arsene hardly appeared compelled to play him there.

Now with the injuries clearing up, he certainly does not have to. What he does will be interesting.

… I’m going to say nothing.

But while I’ve got you here, can anyone enlighten me as to how, by any measure, Brian Marwood qualifies as an ‘expert summariser’?

Just wondering.

Everton 1 Arsenal 0

IT’S a disappointing result but not one that tells us much we didn’t already know. Any side would struggle with their top three attackers out and their first choice wingers short on form and fitness.

Sure, the likes of Cesc, Rosicky and Hleb could and should contribute a few more. But look at United and for Ronaldo and Rooney you see Henry and Van Persie, for Saha’s eight you see Adebayor’s six and for Solskjaer’s six you see Gilberto’s eight. Giggs and Scholes have scored more than Rosicky and Hleb, but even they only have four and five respectively.

Of course, Cesc has not a single league goal. But then that’s just one less than Carrick. It’s similar at Chelsea - where without Lampard and Drogba, they would struggle massively. The point is that with Henry, RVP and Adebayor all out and Gilberto no longer in the midfield, we looked seriously blunted.

This, like the Villa game, was one that could have gone either way, which is why we beat Villa and lost to Everton.

We are injury (and in Adebayor’s case suspension) hit. Yet still, we started yesterday with six of what you would call our starting 11. The problem was that two of those were out of position, and so was Justin Hoyte. Quite feasibly, we could have started with Gallas and Toure at centre-back and Gilberto and Cesc in front of them, with Hoyte at right-back.

Ok, so left-back might have been a problem, but given our current lack of confidence, a bit of stability would hardly go amiss. I may be wrong but to me it seems to point towards Arsene plumping for a Gilberto-Gallas partnership next year.

Maybe he has decided that while Cesc and Gilberto both merit a place in the side, they are not a title winning midfield.

APOLOGIES for my absence of a few days. Sometimes you have very little urge to write and the plus about not doing this for a living is that when you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

My lethargy was probably contributed to somewhat by what was a fairly wretched game at Villa on Wednesday. For me the major plus to be taken was the lesson that if you score early (even if it’s scrappy), you can play crap and still win.

And make no mistake: we were fairly crap. Looking disjointed is not unsurprising when you have so many players missing, but the individual errors from so many players is different.

Anyway, I guess the important thing is that irrespective of how we played, we won the game - far better than playing well and getting nothing again.

Elsewhere, Myles Palmer has apologised for his abuse of Johan Djourou. The sad thing is that even in saying sorry for what was frankly some outrageous abuse, he has turned it into little more than another outing for his ego, which I guess is what I’m doing by talking about it, so I’ll stop now.

It’s Everton tomorrow and I think we’re to get anything from the match, we’re going to have to play better than we did on Wednesday night…

A goodplaya

WHETHER it takes him an easy five seconds or an agonising five weeks, Arsene Wenger has to conclude whether a 30 year old Thierry Henry burdened by a season of injuries should be kept or cashed in on.

I will say this very simply: Any Arsenal fan who hopes for the latter ahead of the former is perverse, destructive and, frankly, just plainly wrong.

It may just be that Arsene decides Henry can never again be what he once was. If so, it is no time to rejoice. Rather, it is a moment to lament and mourn the passing of a player who was undoubtedly moody, arrogant and precious and yet in many ways has been the player of his generation and the best any of us ever saw.

Look at it like this: Were Alan Shearer French or Italian, what would stop him from being remembered as nothing more than a glorified Fabrizio Ravanelli? Yet were Henry English, how would we idolise the leading scorer in both our World Cup and European Championship winning teams and our World Cup runners-up?

How would we remember a player who scored goals more perfect than even our most lucid dreams could portray? How would we suddenly forget a player who had achieved such consistent brilliance that a season that still included vital contributions and some outstanding goals was so readily dismissed as mediocrity?

There is, of course, the theory put forward by Myles Palmer on Arsenal News Review. With his typical humility, Myles says:

Sorry, bu does Myles forget Henry despairing at Adebayor time and time again at the start of his Arsenal career and never more so after one catastrophic miss at Pompey? To argue Reyes or Van Persie were ever a threat to Henry in the days when he glared at them just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

One was the untouchable best striker in the world, while the Spaniard and Dutchman were whipper snappers so far away from usurping Henry it didn’t ever merit comparison. Noticably, as Adebayor and RVP improved, so did Henry’s reaction to them. That is not to say the glares were ever right, but to suggest they were driven by some kind of threat is a line as easy as it is weak.

When we got rid of Patrick Vieira two years ago, it was a time for change and he was destined to be the high profile casualty.

Now, when the personnel revolution is all but over and what remains to be done is the fine tuning of what we have accumulated, is not the time to be getting rid of Thierry Henry.

It is the time to get him right.

Villa preview tomorrow and video of the day below.