Morning all, despite the fact we’ve got a league game against Portsmouth tomorrow all the focus is still on the Champions League and Manchester United.
It’s natural enough, I suppose, the Portsmouth game is as close to being a dead rubber as you can get. Nevertheless a win would 100% seal at least 4th place for us so there’s no excuse to just go through the motions.
The injury news, and there’s always injury news at the moment, is that Eduardo damaged his groin when Rio Ferdinand fell on top of him, the clumsy twat, so he’s going to miss the game and possibly the game against United. Gah. Sylvester is also out with the groin injury. Gael Clichy remains out and has no chance of being fit for Tuesday while Robin van Persie will have a late, late test for the United game but misses tomorrow’s trip to the south coast.
Obviously the manager will try and rotate as much as possible so we’ll probably see Djourou, Denilson, Rasmey, Eboue, Bendtner, Vela, Arshavin and even Fabianski come in as he tries to keep legs as fresh as possible for the Champions League. Portsmouth are more or less safe, you’d think. Mathematically they can still go down but it’s unlikely given the dross below them.
I suppose Portsmouth will be looking at us and thinking it’s not a bad time to be playing us. The manager can talk about focus on the next game all he likes but it’s going to be almost impossible for the players to get Tuesday out of their minds.
And what we have to do on Tuesday has been the subject of much discussion. Personally I think we need to play our best formation (442) with our best players in their best positions. That means Cesc as a central midfielder, that means Nasri on the left, that means no Diaby in the side, it means two strikers, and while I’d be really tempted to drop Adebayor I don’t think that’s going to happen. I hope van Persie is fit because he’s got goals in him and we know he’ll try his best.
The players have been talking too. Cesc says we can take heart from the league game earlier in the season:
Manchester United deserved to win, but now it is up to us to play well at the Emirates and beat them. We showed that in the league, by beating them, that we can do it for sure.
On Tuesday, we will show we are good enough to win in the Champions League
We’ve had some good clean sheets at home already and beat United earlier in the season, which will give us some belief. We will give it everything. We’ll have to be on top of our game.
And that, to me, is the thing. We are going to play as well as we possibly can. Every single on that pitch is going to have to give everything they’ve got. Any strollers, slackers or too-big-for-their-boots strikers and we’ll get beaten. It’s that simple.
Damn, I’m already getting wound up about this game and it’s not until Tuesday. Hard not to though, eh?
Right, some other stuff this morning. The Mirror reports we’re back in for Roque Santa Claus as we look to offload Emmanuel Adebayor this summer. With the biggest game of the season just a few days away I don’t necessarily want to say too much about Adebayor except that if, on Tuesday, we get a repeat of the performance he gave at Old Trafford then I shall fly to London and slap his face. With a machete.
In case you missed it yesterday an exclusive Arseblog interview with Theo Walcott. Is Theo’s full name Theodore? That’d be cool.
Cesc maintains his innocence over the Hullgate stuff. I know Tom covered this when I was away but the charge of coming on the pitch is just ludicrous. If you’re going to charge Cesc then charge all the Hull staff who were on the pitch too. It’s stupider than someone who is found slumped in a doorway with loads of cocaine on them.
And that’s about that, now time for the Arsecast. On this week’s show I’m joined by Goodplaya to talk about Champions League, United, Cesc, Adebayor and more. There’s also stuff from Sylvester, Amaury Bischoff PI and Adebayor himself.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (21mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page.
And there you have it. Have yourselves a good Friday and let’s see if we can manage to concentrate a bit more on Portsmouth tomorrow.
