Flamini wants title for Eduardo

Gunners hope to honour stricken team-mate

By Chris Burton   Last updated: 25th February 2008

Mathieu Flamini Arsenal

Flamini: Support for Eduardo

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Mathieu Flamini has revealed that Arsenal are determined to win the Premier League title in honour of injured team-mate Eduardo.

The striker suffered an horrific broken leg in Saturday's 2-2 with Birmingham and it remains unclear just how long he will now be sidelined for.

He will definitely miss the remainder of the current campaign, and French midfielder Flamini insists that the incident has made the Gunners squad even more focused on claiming their first league crown in four years.

Terrible

"We have lost Eduardo," he said.

"It is a terrible injury because he has a broken leg. It was difficult. I have no words to describe what I saw.

"It was maybe the worst injury I have seen. We will have to stay very close to him because it's going to be difficult. It will be difficult to get over. He is a friend and a team-mate. It upsets you.

"Would I like to win the title for Eduardo? Yes, of course. We wanted to win it before, but now we want to win it also for him. Eduardo is not going to be with us for a long time so, of course, we want to win it for him."

The injury was a result of a mistimed challenge by Birmingham centre-back Martin Taylor, who received a red card for the tackle.

The defender has since insisted that there was no malicious intent on his part and Arsenal striker Nicklas Bendtner, who spent last season on loan with Blues, believes that his former team-mate did not intentionally go out to hurt the Croatian international.

Calm

"We obviously have to think about Edu who is terribly hurt. We wish him all the best," Bendtner said.

"I know Martin Taylor and he is not a player who goes in to hurt people - never. He is really calm. I've been told he is very upset and I know he would be like that.

"But in football things like this happen. Even though he is not one who does bad tackles, this was a bad tackle and he deserved to be sent off. The referee had no choice.

"I could see from the players' reaction that it didn't look very good. I could see everyone running on to the pitch, I thought something was wrong. It made us all really sad."