Morning all from a bitterly cold Dublin. I just looked out the window and saw a brass monkey frantically searching for something in my back garden. That’s how cold it is.
Good news ahead of the Chelsea game is that Nasri, Adebayor and Sagna are all back from injury and you have to think all three of them will start. It certainly does increase our chances and the more threat we are from an attacking point of view the more likely we are to get something from the game, in my opinion.
Arsene Wenger is feeling reasonably confident, saying we play better against the big teams:
This season we have played better against the top four. We cannot deny that because we lost against the teams who are not maybe favourites to play in the top four. Why? Maybe because they play a different type of football.
It seems an odd thing to say given that we’ve only played Manchester United. You can’t really draw any conclusions from one game and, let’s be honest, Man City and Villa may not be traditional ‘big’ teams but they are being tipped as contenders for top 4 places. Look how we did against them. But there’s no doubt we raised our game against United after a poor spell and we face Chelsea under much the same circumstances. Another win would be great but again it comes down to how we do after that. If we beat Chelsea then lose to Wigan then we’re no better off, really.
Maybe under the new leadership of Cesc that won’t happen and the manager says he sees him as 26 year old player, not the 21 year old he is. When you step back and consider that Cesc has played over 200 times for the club at his age it’s remarkable, so in experience terms he’s way ahead of the other players of a similar age. He provided the pass for Bendtner the other night, he provided the pass for Nasri’s second against United, so while his form hasn’t been as good as usual this season there are signs he’s getting his mojo back and we need him to have a big game against Chelsea.
Not just him of course, the whole team has got to do their stuff, but when Cesc ticks so do we. William Gallas will return to Stamford Bridge with the manager claiming he’s come out of the events of the last 10 days with a lot of credit. I think that might be a bit of ego massaging to be honest but Gallas might be more inclined to put his beef with Arsenal to one side when he faces Chelsea, a club he obviously has real issues with. Will it inspire him to a good performance? We’ll see.
Overall though if we are to have any chance of staying in this title race (and I’ve got my very large optimist hat on right at this moment) we’ve got to take three points tomorrow. Arsene says:
You cannot say when you are 10 points behind that we are favourites to win the title but you can say as well the only way we will get back into it is to believe we can. We know that direct confrontations with top teams become vital when you are in our position. But first of all we have to go there with extreme desire, express our strong points and not hide.
Even with a full strength squad this would be an incredibly difficult task. Chelsea have lost two league games at home in about 5 years. There was one to us when we won 2-1, then they went on an incredible run and it was only this season when Liverpool beat them that it was broken. So let’s be under no illusions that winning tomorrow is going to be anything but an incredible achievement. I don’t buy in to this theory that this is a good time to play Chelsea. They might have drawn two games recently but how is that a crisis of any kind? Especially when you compare it to our recent form.
To be honest I’d be happy enough with a point tomorrow. I think it’s more important to not lose the game than win it, if that makes sense. Of course I’ll take all three points gleefully but I think we need to keep our expectations at a reasonable level.
Right, I’m off out into the cold, with my cold, enjoy your Saturday folks. More tomorrow.
