Still no definitive team news for tomorrow night but Thierry Henry feels the niggly injuries he’s picking up now are caused by playing when not fully fit at the start of the season. In hindsight it’d be easy to say we should have given him a longer rest after the World Cup but then it’s not easy to rest a player as good as he is.
The manager has a big decision to make for tomorrow. Does he risk a player who is clearly not 100% fit but who can provide the moment of magic that nobody else can or does he put his faith in Adebayor and Baptista and hope that a fully fit Henry will be more effective in the final stages of the season? I really think that if he’s not fully fit then he shouldn’t play. As much as we need his goals and that ability to do something something special he’s generally not very effective when playing through pain so a hungry Adebayor and a Baptista off the back of a goal against Reading is probably the best bet.
With PSV likely to play a defensive game they’ll feel the absence of two defenders. A lot of people are worried about tomorrow, myself included of course, because of Koeman’s record against us in the past. “He’s got Arsenal’s number”, they say. Well, that might be true to an extent but we have to beat him at some stage and there’s no reason why that can’t be tomorrow night. If you recall this time last year there wasn’t a huge amount of confidence when we travelled to Madrid. I can remember people before the game suggesting that if we came away with only a 2 or 3 goal defeat we’d be doing well. There’s no reason why this team can’t step it up again and kick on.
As much as scoring an early goal is vital we just have to be strong at the back. Kolo will come back in and I’m sure he’ll play alongside Gallas in the middle. Clichy is obvious at left back but right back isn’t obvious to me. Eboue limped out of the game against Blackburn and Djourou did well against Reading. If Eboue is fit though he’ll probably play because of his ability to get forward but he’ll need more help from Hleb than the Belarussian gave Djourou against Reading. The only other issue is who plays on the left. With Rosicky out it seems a straight choice between Diaby and Ljungberg – perhaps Freddie’s European experience and ability to get goals (I know, but think of Bolton!) will give him the edge.
Certainly we have to play better than we did in Holland or we’re going out. Unless PSV play even worse than that. I’m confident we can do it though.
Gilberto says he’s determined to make PSV fans pay for their racism when we won there some years ago. A hat-trick would be nice.
Staying on the Dutch theme slighty the Mirror is reporting that we’ve targetted Ajax’s Ryan Babel for a summer move which will see us offload Freddie Ljungberg. Apparently he was brought to the Grove as a guest of Robin van Persie in January and given the red carpet treatment. He looks a very decent player to me, I have to say. Could he fill that problem position on the left and allow Rosicky to move to the right where the manager sees him? We shall see.
Joe O’Ceauruill will continue his loan spell at Brighton while ITV are trying to sell their shares in Arsenal to the Qatar Royal family.
Finally, a big laugh at Ashley Cole who has managed, with his pathetic tome, to kill off the entire footballer’s biography genre. Nice of some hack to refer to Arseblog as ‘some Arsenal fans’ but there you go.
And that’s that.
