I hope to see Adebayor playing alone in attack with our creative players around him. What a time to come back into the team, he has scored for his country then to come back to his club side with Cesc and Arshavin pulling the strings behind him

Usually I talk about the weekend match on the erm, weekend but that is what International breaks do for you, I am having withdrawal symptoms and thought I would do it on the Friday instead.

Every Arsenal fan was waiting on Arsene Wenger to give us news of the damage caused by International week and it turns out worse than we all hoped. We knew that Van Persie was out injured whilst playing for Holland yet again. Wasn’t his last injury picked up while playing for his country?

Abou Diaby who cannot get away with resembling a Cadbury flake by the way his body crumbles every few weeks, is also out due to a hip injury picked up at the French training ground.

You have to feel sorry for the lad who is yet to have a long injury free run since the horrible Dan Smith (I was about to call it a tackle) assault.

Eduardo who completed 90 minutes and scored again for Croatia was expected to come straight into the squad but it turns out that he picked up a groin strain during the last ten minutes of the game. That is a big blow especially given the fact that we are short on a striker due to Robin’s absence.

Samir Nasri has a virus but should still be included in the squad, I suspect that he will start him as long as the virus isn’t serious as he didn’t feature on Wednesday, Arsene usually likes to include fresh players especially with the amount of games we have coming up.

Theo Walcott is back in the squad after overcoming a knee injury, I guess Wenger only real choices are if to start Cesc Fabregas which I imagine he will and who to choose out of Bendtner and Theo. It also depends what type of system he wants to start the match with. Should he start with two strikers (4-4-2) then we could see Bendtner pushed up to play alongside Adebayor, or he could use Walcott in a 4-2-3-1. The rest of the team pretty much picks itself barring anymore injuries.

Mean Lean’s Predicted Line Up

The obvious talking points will be the return of our captain and tempo started Cesc Fabregas, it will be interesting to see how he combines with his team mates as there will be new partnerships being formed. Cesc Fabregas is yet to play with Andrey Arshavin. Emmanuel Adebayor should he start will also play with Arshavin for the first time. I hope to see Adebayor playing alone in attack with our creative players around him. What a time to come back into the team, he has scored for his country then to come back to his club side with Cesc and Arshavin pulling the strings behind him. I certainly back Adebayor to come back with at least a goal to his name.

Another interesting combination will be how much freedom Cesc Fabregas has in midfield, especially if we do play the 4-2-3-1 which has seen Diaby have to squeeze a little tighter on the brakes when he has been the one of the central midfielders. Cesc running past the attackers could leave us exposed in midfield. It is almost a shame that Cesc didn’t feature for Spain over this annoying period as he could have done with getting some match sharpness in but having said that all hell would have broke out had he of picked up another injury.

I do not expect Cesc to have a big impact on the game, I think he will be behind the pace for the first few games, but he needs those games to get up to speed so it is a little catch 22 but even if he is not playing well the likes of Walcott and Adebayor can expect quality distribution should they make the correct runs.

Mean Lean’s Match Prediction

It is always very difficult to make predictions after International duties, as we do not know what state the team is mentally and probably more importantly physically.

However Manchester City who I am yet to mention in this article are having many injury concerns of their own. Craig Bellamy is struggling to make the game which is good as he is a player who can hurt us on the break.

Citeh’s away record is pretty poor so far this season and I expect that to continue on Saturday.

Arsenal 3 (Adebayor 2, Walcott) Manchester City 1

Other News

Manuel Almunia has been talking up his team and rightly so.

“People should be optimistic about our form,” he said in the Evening Standard.

“We realise how strong we can be and the players are mentally better, more aggressive and everything is improving now as players coming back.

“With eight games left in the league, we are trying to do great things. In the rest of the competitions, we have the same possibilities as the others.

“We will try to bring the supporters good moments because they deserve it.”

Well Almunia I am certainly optimistic about our form, it is quite annoying that we have had to take a break and put a halt to our winning momentum, hopefully we will click straight into gear against Manchester City.

As expected the newspapers are going hell for leather with the Laporta comments about Cesc. Random amounts of around £45 million have been banded about.

Before I go, I just would like to say my article about all of our team leaving in the summer was me being sarcastic. Maybe I was being a little too subtle.

Right guys and girls, enjoy your Friday.

Back tomorrow.

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