Archive for November 27th, 2010

A day for reunions and resuscitation at Villa Park

711 comments November 27th, 2010

Today’s game is massive.  As painful as the past week has been, victory at Villa Park would take us top of the Premier League.  Even if it only lasted a few hours, the boost that would give the both the fans and the team cannot be underestimated.  Lose, however, and it’ll be a third consecutive defeat and yet another dent to our diminishing pride.

For Arsene, there is probably a degree of personal rivalry at play too.  Today he comes up against his friend Gerard Houllier.  Whilst there is clearly a great bond between two kindred spirits who have carried out parallel careers, you cannot doubt the desire of either manager to get one over such a close contemporary.

Houllier and Wenger’s will not be the only reunion.  Robert Pires is available for Aston Villa, and whilst he is only likely to start on the bench, you can guarantee there’ll be a rousing reception for Le Bob from the Arsenal end if he does venture on to the pitch.  Pires is a proper Arsenal legend, who deserves the reverance he’ll certainly be granted.  His return to the Emirates

Arsenal will be without one familiar face in Cesc Fabregas, although Andrey Arshavin and Robin van Persie return to the squad after being rested in midweek.  Of the pair, Arshavin is likeliest to start, in a front three with Marouane Chamakh and possibly Tomas Rosicky.

Samir Nasri will make up Cesc’s playmaking role, supported by Jack Wilshere and Alex Song.  At the back, Laurent Koscielny could come in for Johan Djourou, whilst Sagna and Clichy will replace the injured Eboue and Kieran Gibbs.  Manuel Almunia is fit to return to the squad, but I don’t expect him to supplant Lukasz Fabianski.

With a bench featuring the likes of Van Persie, Bendtner, and Walcott we certainly have enough strength in depth to leave us bereft of excuses for failing to beat an injury hit Villa.  Even without Cesc.

That said, Villa won’t be a pushover.  Only a positively Arsenal-esque collapse prevented them from beating previously unbeaten United, and in Gabby Agbonlahor and Ashley Young they have two players capable of threatening in the fashion to which Arsenal seem most vulnerable: on the counter-attack.  We’ll need to be vigilant when piling forward not to leave these two untracked.

At the top of this piece I made a point of outlining just what is at stake today.  A draw is no disaster – United and Chelsea have both dropped points at this ground already.  Victory would be excellent, but defeat is unthinkable.  As I said last week, fans are tired of making excuses for this team.  It’s up to the players to make sure we don’t have to.


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