Straight-up Sagna ready to return

BACARY SAGNA is set to relieve Arsenal’s defensive injury crisis and return to the first-team in the next few weeks.

The French right-back, who broke his leg in the 2-1 defeat at rivals Tottenham last October, is keeping two screws in his leg to speed up his return to the first-team.

Sagna has also revealed that the return of Thierry Henry to the Arsenal squad will inspire the team to win a trophy this season, although he conceded he will never recover from Arsenal’s failure to beat Birmingham City in last season’s Carling Cup final.

Arsenal have been without full-backs Kieran Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson as well as Sagna, while Johan Djourou is now suspended after his red card in the recent loss at Fulham. So Sagna’s return, scheduled for the end of this month, is a timely one for Arsenal.

“I have started running and I will start training with a ball in the next few days,” said Sagna. “I have two screws in my leg but if I remove them, it’s another two months out. So I can get used to having them inside me. I was told that it would take me three or four months to come back and I am on track.

“I immediately knew the injury was serious,” he continued. “I heard the crack, and I thought it was the ligament. Then I looked down at my leg, because I had the feeling that my bone was sticking out of my sock, as happened to Djibril Cisse. Luckily, that was not the case, but a scan revealed the fracture two hours later. When I got home with plaster on my leg, my little boy almost died of laughter. He’s only two and a half, but he made me laugh. He wanted to take care of me, and that felt good. For six weeks, I could not even put my foot on the ground. I was dependent on everyone. It was painful as I was totally useless.”

But Sagna has taken the time out to set targets for the rest of this campaign. They include getting back into the France set-up in time for the February 20 friendly match against Germany, and finally winning a trophy for the first time in his career.

“These should be the best years of my career,” he told French newspaper L’Equipe. “I’d like to win something. I really miss having trophies. Maybe I’m a black cat for my teams. It’s frustrating. I had the chance to win the French Cup with Auxerre in 2005, but we lost the final. And when you’re so close to winning something, like the Carling Cup with Arsenal last season, and you just miss out.... as long as I live, I’ll never digest that game. I just can’t. It was inconceivable to lose that game. It was shocking, everyone was expecting us to do it and we crapped ourselves. You can lose but not playing like that. I thought about it for a very, very long time. It was the time we started to unravel. We were so disappointed, the fans were so disappointed, and we just lost confidence in ourselves.”

After losing that match, Arsenal went on to win only two of their last 13 games of the season, failing out of the title race and dumped out of the Champions League by Barcelona, and the FA Cup by Manchester United. Their last trophy was the 2005 FA Cup and the barren spell will run to at least six years now.

Sagna, though, is convinced that former captain Henry, set to sign on a two-month loan deal from New York Red Bulls, will help get Arsenal back on the trophy trail again.

“Thierry will be ready,” said Sagna. “He will give everything and this will make a difference to our team and our opponents. He is always looking for perfection. He knows what it takes to win things. When he speaks everyone will listen. His comeback, it’s the story of 2012!”