If Diaby is fit enough he might start ahead of one of Song or Denilson, as the Cesc/Song/Denilson central midfield formation doesn’t seem to work very well

Thanks to our second half resurgence at the weekend and Villa and Everton’s rather entertaining draw on Saturday, we now have an eight point cushion below us in the league. Handy because, while we should really be looking above us, it means we can afford to lose two and draw one of our remaining six league games and still keep fourth place. Not that we should be aiming to run it as close as possible and hope for some dodgy lasagne to afflict the team below us, but if we’re to be involved in the latter stages of the Champions League, we can concentrate on that and be fairly comfortable about our league position. However, for any of that to be relevant we need to get past a tough Villarreal side. They lost 2-0 at home to Malaga at the weekend and dropped a place in the league table. We can’t afford for this to be a ‘game of two halves’ like the away leg and the trip to Wigan, we need to play well for the whole game, keep it tight, defend as a team and see us through to the semi finals of the Champions League for only the second time in our history. Which, given how badly this season has gone at times, would be a major achievement for this squad.

Obviously a goalless draw would get the job done but, ignoring our run of four consecutive goalless draws in January and February, Wenger’s teams have never really been set up to aim for a nil nil from kick off. Chelsea probably fancied a 0-0 last night and they were 2-0 down after twenty minutes. The last time I remember us trying for that in Europe was against Valencia in the quarter final in 2001. We took an advantage from the first leg, defended brilliantly, worked incredibly hard, and Carew got a late goal and we were out of the competition. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself against another Spanish team almost eight years later to the day. Wenger has already said we’ll play in a ‘positive manner’, which is probably for the best. The back five that could start tonight played together for the first time thirty five minutes into the Wigan game. As it stands they’re yet to concede a goal, but you wouldn’t put it past Villarreal nicking one at some point so we’ll probably need to score at least once. The last time we made it to the semi finals of this competition was with a makeshift defence, missing two key players. Let’s see if we can do it again.

Team News

With the most important goal being not to concede, we’ll stick with the five man midfield, with Adebayor the best at leading the attack as a lone striker. If Diaby is fit enough he might start ahead of one of Song or Denilson, as the Cesc/Song/Denilson central midfield formation doesn’t seem to work very well. With Diaby in there, he can be the one to play in an advanced position almost behind Adebayor, which he has done to good effect before, Cesc can dictate the play from deeper in midfield which is what he does best, and Song or Denilson can be the covering player.

Djourou, Clichy, Almunia and Gallas are all out injured and, with the way Gibbs played against Wigan, we might change the defence about a bit. He’s clearly a talented lad, but he should have been sent off in the first half with a foul that he had to make because of the misjudged pass back to Fabianski that he had to make. The pressure of this game might be a bit much for him, if he does play you just know Villarreal will send every attack down our left to try and take advantage of his lack of experience. With Walcott starting on Saturday and van Persie sitting on the bench, we might see the following setup tonight to get the most experience out on the pitch for what is undoubtedly the most important night of the season so far.

Subs: Szczesny, Eboue, Gibbs, Ramsey, Walcott Vela, Bendtner.

Villarreal

Good news for us, Marcos Senna is definitely ruled out of this match after limping off towards the end of Villarreal’s defeat at the weekend. He is a very important player for them, capable of controlling the midfield and they will feel his loss. Wingers Cani and Fernandez missed their last league match through injury as well, but they could be back tonight. We might see Bob start if one or both aren’t available, and he’s sure to get a brilliant ovation. Hopefully it’ll work out in a similar way to Vieira’s return in 2006. Huge cheer before kick off, rendition of his song, then kick his team out the competition without a hint of sentimentality.