Arsene claims that due to injuries he has to leave a big squad at home. Let's hope that with Twente Twente hindsight he doesn't come to regret the situation that has led to this happening. No doubt there is little he can do about Diaby's fragile state of repair, but it certainly would appear that his decision not to recruit an experienced midfielder could stretch the team to its limits.
The only available midfielder with first team experience is now Denilson, and he has only had some 21 games. It means Ramsey may makes his debut. True there will be plenty of firepower, but a weakened midfield, and with both Toure and Senderos unavailable it may inspire Twente more than Arsenal's youth.
You don't have to be a tactical genius, and McClaren certainly isn't, to realize that flooding the midfield and hoping for a lucky breakaway could embarrass the Gunners. Arsenal's youth have done very well in pre season friendlies, but this is no friendly and Twente have nothing to lose
FC Twente are not a Sevilla, who beat a similar sort of Arsenal formation last year. However Wenger has left himself with little choice, with a match in the Premiership only 3 days away he can ill afford to play players who are not match fit. There is a lot of quality in the squad, but it has to be hoped that a lack of experience, and overall balance, doesn't come back to haunt Arsene.
Arsenal squad Manuel ALMUNIA, Lukasz FABIANSKI, Bacary SAGNA, William GALLAS, Gael CLICHY, Justin HOYTE,
Johan DJOUROU, Aaron RAMSEY, Jack WILSHERE, Kieran GIBBS, DENILSON, Theo WALCOTT,
Emmanuel EBOUE, Mark RANDALL, Emmanuel ADEBAYOR, Robin VAN PERSIE, Nicklas BENDTNER, Carlos VELA
Then time to play my favorite 3-5-1-1 with 3 no. CB ...
and floods the mdifield in anticipation fo McClown's tactics to outmuscle our youngsters in midfield with tall and muscular Dutch players.
yeah that will be the team more than likely. It's probably the best he could put out at the moment which is slightly worrying for a CL game. If we fail to qualify wenger's descision not to sign a DM will look plain idiotic. There's no reason we shouldnt qualify but it can happen. Look at Rangers, they underestimated their opponant and paid the heavy price. It doesnt bare thinking about
And we are not in November yet. I truly believe Wenger's hands are tied financially as I don't believe he is that callous to dent Arsenal's chances of qualifying for CL next round.
Really this match is all about the result. I'm sure even if we win but don't play brilliantly everyone's going to be all doom and gloom but really 1-0 would be a perfectly good result.
Hi Mellor lets be a bit more positive about the game. Lets face it Wenger has never let us down. I see Mr lawrenson has started his campaign gainst us on the BBC website, lets hope we prove him wrong. He predicts we will slip to fourth and Liverpool will finish third. How can we forget last year when he predicted that we will finish outside the top four and Totttenham will be in the top four. I still believe that Lawrenson and his mates are a bunch of Prima Donna who has passed their sell by date.
Right I know this may sound far fetched, but I actually had a dream today about us winning todays game 1-0. My original prediction was 2-0, i changed this 2 minutes before kick off, now I feel robbed, maybe a sympathy point is in order
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I have those dreams, you probably dreamt 2-0 but wasnt paying attention