I’ve been a lazy blogging swine-dog. The international week is always a good reason to send the quill off for an MOT but I’ve let things slip more than I should and, well, here we are on the eve of the north London derby.

Brother Goat even emailed me to kick-start this entry with the frankly astounding news that he saw Nigel Flamini in Sainsbury’s. Apparently, Nige’s other half is quite attractive and Nige wears flip-flops. Other than these top snippets – the cutting edge of blogging, as I’m sure you’ll concur – the spotting of Mr F in the tinned vegetable aisle brought nothing else to light.

Lord knows, he may even play right-back tomorrow, though that’s now the most congested slot on the pitch at Arsenal. Sagna, Diarra, Eboue and Hoyte all play there, as we know, though the way it’s going at the moment, it’s Sagna’s slot to lose.

I do feel a bit sorry for Hoyte, who Wenger has said he wants to keep (and the player himself is also keen to remain). He played something in the region of 35 games last term but I can’t see him getting so many games this time round.

We may also see new boy Lassana Diarra, says the boss. Something of a mysterious signing if you ask me, though he is a France regular. But I guess with Senderos suspended and Gallas injured, Gilberto will drop back and there’ll be a place available in the midfield. It could be Diarra, but then again it could be Diaby, Denilson or Nigel Flip-flop-flamini. We really do have rather a lot of central midfielders.

The main thing is to get the international week out the system as early as possible. The Totterers may well be under pressure – from inside the club in particular – but they’ll be well up for this and we must also be, from the first minute.

There are plenty of pre-match stats here but the main thing is we’re unbeaten in eleven league games and we’ve also lost just one of the last eleven derby games away from home. Let’s make that twelve and twelve.

And finally: if you’re looking for a film to catch this weekend, then I can recommend In The Hands Of The Gods. There’s a BBC review of it here and a random pic of the main characters with balls on their heads below. Is this a plug? Of course – I was invited along to see it. But trust me, if it was rubbish I’d say, and it’s not.