*Injury panic klaxon*

Olivier Giroud is set to miss the rest of 2014 after it was revealed he’s fractured a bone in his ankle.

The Frenchman did the damage in the dying minutes of Saturday’s draw with Everton as he blocked a clearance by Sylvain Distin. It looked innocuous at the time, but scans have since underlined the extent of the problem and it’s emerged the damage is even worse than first feared.

Arsene Wenger said, “I still don’t understand how he did it. He overstretched his ankle. It was on the ball, not a contact (with another player). The problem is, I think, his tibia.”

Giroud has featured 102 times since signing for the Gunners in the summer of 2012 and while he’s not everybody’s cup of tea you can’t deny how important a part of the squad he’s been in that time. Second only to Per Mertesacker in terms of appearances last year, he was also the club’s top scorer with 22 goals in all competitions.

Quite how Arsene Wenger decides to deal with the latest injury setback remains to be seen.

It’d be a stupendous risk to try and traverse 20 plus games, across three competitions, without reinforcements, however, with Theo Walcott set to return next month, Alexis Sanchez due to come good *in your own time fella*, Yaya Sanogo and Joel Campbell youthful options and Lukas Podolski still on the books there is room to be ‘creative’ as the boss might say.

Arseblog News thinks it would be creative to sign Lionel Messi … but we’re not holding our breath. Given we need a centre-back and a defensive midfielder we’ve five days to sign a new spine of the team.

And there was us thinking stuff was all under control this summer. That’ll teach us for getting smug. Come on Arsene and Ivan, get the chequebook out, get a quality forward like Malcolm Christie in.

It’s easy.