A fresh Arshavin will return to the starting line up, other than that only Arsene knows who will play really. We have a full complement of central midfielders, wingers and strikers

Well that was a fun night on Wednesday. Into the semi finals of one cup competition, we now focus on the semi finals of another as we take on Chelsea for our first trip to the new Wembley Stadium. The team is really on a roll now, we’re unbeaten in eighteen league games (a run that started with a win against our semi final opponents), winning our last five and scoring sixteen goals in the process. We’re into the semi finals of the Champions League for only the second time ever, and now we’re only one game away from being back at Wembley at the end of May for a showdown with Manchester United or Everton. We’ve only lost one of the last twenty five games in all competitions, which we went on to win on penalties anyway. When we drew five league games in a row earlier in the year, or lost to Fulham, Hull, Stoke, Man City and Villa, I doubt any of us would have predicted an ending to the season like this.

On paper Chelsea are probably the favourites for this game. If you look at the two team line ups, with our defensive injuries their defence is much stronger than ours (even without the injuries it would be), and their central midfield possesses so much quality and experience. In their last ten league games they’ve managed seven clean sheets and have conceded fewer goals than anyone this season. I’m quite scared of Drogba vs Silvestre, although I think Gibbs will make a decent fist of handling Kalou. Luckily for us, football isn’t played on paper and this season we’ve been a side that, even when going through tough patches, has generally turned up in the big games despite our lack of experience. We’ve already beaten Chelsea this season, we’ve already beaten Manchester United this season, we’re on a brilliant run and we shouldn’t be afraid of anyone. Chelsea’s solid defence has conceded seven goals in the last 110 minutes of football played, we’ve conceded that amount over our last seventeen games in all competitions.

Since Wenger became manager, in thirty one meetings in all competitions between Arsenal and Chelsea, we’ve won fifteen, drawn ten and lost six. The victory at Ashburton Grove in 2007 was the first time we’d beaten them in ten attempts, we’ve only won twice out of the last twelve meetings. Our victory at Stamford Bridge this season was the first time in our last five meetings with Chelsea that we didn’t take the lead, but it was only the second that we won. Chelsea have knocked us out the last two times we’ve drawn them in cup competitions, before that we had knocked them out of the FA Cup four times in four years.

Team News

A fresh Arshavin will return to the starting line up, other than that only Arsene knows who will play really. We have a full complement of central midfielders, wingers and strikers to choose from. The defence is still pretty makeshift and it will probably be different to the one that started on Wednesday if Gibbs and Sagna don’t recover from their problems, which is a pretty scary thought. Djourou, Clichy and Almunia are definitely ruled out.

I think we’ll revert to a 4-4-2, with van Persie partnering Adebayor in attack, or maybe line up similar to midweek with van Persie dropping deep. Either Nasri or Theo will start opposite Arshavin, or we could play both and employ Arshavin behind the striker. Theo was substituted against Villarreal and Nasri wasn’t, but that might just be because Walcott had taken a couple of knocks during the game. Nasri generally gives better defensive cover to the full back but Theo is on fire at the moment. Tough call for Arsene to make. In the centre it will be Fabregas and Denilson. Song really stood out with a great performance against Villarreal, but Denilson was probably rested for a reason and Song might have to drop into defence. It’s Fabianski’s 24th birthday on Saturday.

Subs: Mannone, Diaby, Ramsey, Nasri, Vela, Eduardo, Bendtner.

Chelsea

Bosingwa could return from injury to start at right back, so they have their first choice team available. They played in the Champions League on Tuesday and they play in the league next Wednesday, meaning they have a day longer than us to recover either side of this fixture, so they’ll have no need to rotate and will play their strongest available team. Our team’s average age for this fixture will be twenty four, theirs will be twenty eight. Our youngest player is nineteen, theirs is twenty three. We have four players in the likely first team younger than that.