The North Bank – “It’s got va-va-voom” (An Arsenal blog)

Today sees us take on Chavski at the Emirates in a game that is a must win for the team. The game was already a must win before the results of yesterday, but considering that ManUre, Man Shitty and Spuds all won it has made today’s game even more important. Anything less than three points will leave us five points adrift of ManUre having played one game more.

The team also needs to reverse its horrid run of poor results against ManUre and Chavski. Today would be a good time to start that. Can they beat Chavski? Well, honestly I am not so sure, I no longer feel the same confidence going into the big games that I used to. A run of something like 11 goals conceded and one scored against Chavski in the last four games against them does not bode well.

The team should line up as Fabianski, Sagna, Squillaci, Koscielny, Clichy, Fabregas, Song, Diaby, Nasri, Arshavin and Chamakh.

However, given how horrid that Arshavin was against ManUre I wouldn’t be surprised to see either RvP or Walcott start in his place. Though no matter how many times you hear Arsene talk about Walcott and his future, it is hard to see him as anything more than an impact substitution for the time being. Fingers crossed that we’ll see the good Diaby, instead of the usual Diaby tonight.

To be honest, I would rather see Szczesny start in goal as I think that he would be better at dealing with balls into the box and be a bit more vocal. Hopefully Fabianski won’t revert to his previously flap-happy reincarnation.

It’s strange, but I feel an unusual pessimism ahead of today’s game and I think that that is directly influenced by the (misplaced) confidence that I had ahead of our wretched showing at Old Trafford a few weeks ago. I’d rather go into this game feeling pessimistic than going in optimistic and seeing the same ineffective rubbish that we have become accustomed to in the big games. Time for The Arsenal to come bearing the gift of three points. Time to deliver. How many times have I said that and we then fail to do so?

One thing we REALLY need today is for the fans in the stadium to give some strong vocal support to the team. The team will need to feel that the fans are behind them. We have heard talk of the team and its fear of losing rather than trying to win. It’s time to get over that mental hurdle and the best way to do that is by beating the Chavs today and the fans in the stadium can at least try and play their part in that.

Apologies for the brevity of today’s post. I got stuck in the tax office for bloody ages filing my tax returns for the past two years, only to discover that I am entitled to a massive ¥80 reimbursement. That’s less than £1. Perhaps that has influenced my negativity ahead of the game!

Anyway, here’s to a rare big performance against one of the big teams. The game kicks off at 05:00 JST and coverage will begin at 04:54 on J-Sports Plus.

Take it easy.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 27th, 2010 at 20:15 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.