On Monday it was announced that Arsenal would be playing a pre-season friendly against Conference South outfit, Boreham Wood.

The official website said that ‘a number of senior players’ were expected to feature, and the non-league side are hopeful that Aaron Ramsey, Mikel Arteta, Mathieu Flamini, Kieran Gibbs, Wojciech Szczesny, Thomas Rosicky, Nacho Monreal, Carl Jenkinson and Yaya Sanogo could all figure.

The importance of the game to the club’s often traditional pre-season opponents was summed up by their chairman, Danny Hunter, who said, “Our relationship with Arsenal remains strong and the values and standards they set are a benchmark and still mean something.

“By bringing such a talented squad to us and agreeing to open our new West stand is great for our community programme and transforms the landscape of a club our size for the whole of next season. To put things into perspective, the gate receipts will enable us to re-invest further in our pitch, invest more in our infra-structure and invest in our academy transport system as that was showing a shortfall.

“As always running a football club at our level, is a balancing act and Arsenal`s actions, would in reality providing we get a sell-out equate to us getting to the FA Cup First Round proper next season and being the club chosen by the FA as the main TV game.

“That is honestly how big it could be and as such I am hugely grateful to Arsene Wenger, club secretary David Miles and everyone at Arsenal.”

Following the game on the 19th of July, the Gunners will travel to New York, arriving in the US on July 23rd and some players will be involved in fan events in the build-up to the friendly against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday 26th.

There’s also going to be an Arseblog event on Friday 25th at which we’ll have copies of the new book available and more (we’re thinking a night of interpretative dance but don’t hold us to that).

Full details on that to follow. Keep an eye on arseblog.com in the coming days.