Robin Van Persie is in very good goalscoring form right now but it will be different for him to play as a lone striker, a role that surely does not get the best out of him

Nice Christmas was it? added a few pounds on since the day before? That could well be said of me but anyway, enough about that. Today is a very important day of football, Arsenal take on Aston Villa at Villa Park and I cannot remember such an important game against them in all my life.

After the Liverpool game I felt low, we did not get the victory that we needed to close the gap, we lost our captain and star man and to cap it all of Adebayor gets sent off. Aston Villa are the Premier League form side according to the stats, how are we going to beat them in their back yard?

Well I shall tell you how, we are going there with many people writing us off. Many pundits, other clubs supporters and even our own fans having zero faith in our young players and I am hoping that this can work in our favour.

The likes of Song and Denilson know that they cannot leave it to Cesc to deliver a goal scoring pass, the midfield cannot rely on Adebayor’s work rate they have to step up to the plate. Aston Villa are a side in good form, they have been lucky in recent weeks against Everton and West Ham but lets be truthful here. Aston Villa are just Aston Villa. They are a well drilled side with two match winners. An Arsenal side missing Cesc, Adebayor, Rosicky, Walcott and Eduardo Da Silva are still more talented than the Aston Villa side that we will be facing.

The one thing that Aston Villa will have is confidence and that goes a long way.

We will miss the presence of Emmanuel Adebayor for sure but what he could well force is some more balance to this Arsenal side.

Wenger has the choice to either bring in Bendtner to replace the Togo front man or he can play 5 in midfield and give Diaby the free role that seems to bring the best out of him. I would expect Arsene to bring in Eboue to help Sagna deal with the creativity and pace of Ashley Young. Denilson is likely to partner Song in the middle and hopefully injury prone Nasri can continue on the left.

Robin Van Persie is in very good goalscoring form right now but it will be different for him to play as a lone striker, a role that surely does not get the best out of him. Abou Diaby and Samir Nasri will be vital to this system.

On Christmas eve I wrote a MyVision article titled A total new midfield, what a difference 12 months make and it couldn’t be any more true when you thinking back to this exact fixture last season. I think I can say that the first 45 minutes was the best football I have seen in all my years as an Arsenal supporter. Ironically enough, Cesc Fabregas was missing through injury. We played Hleb off the front man (Adebayor) as we could do with Diaby and RVP. Rosicky, Hleb, Diarra and Flamini were all breathtaking. The one touch football was played at pace, precision and confidence.

We have not quite got back to that level as yet but I still think we have shown signs especially a 20 minute period against Boro a couple of weeks ago.

Mean Lean’s predicted line up

Aston Villa won the game at the Emirates by winning the midfield battle, both sides played 3 central players but Villa were the hungrier of the two teams, Arsenal will have to be the team to dominate that area this time round and with Villa playing at home they will be encouraged to take the game to us and try and get on the ball instead of just stopping us playing.

It will be interesting to see how the back four deal with the pace of Agbonlahor without Kolo Toure.

Mean Lean’s match prediction

Aston Villa 0 Arsenal 2 (Eboue, Diaby)

Villa the form side, they beat us at home and are full on confidence. Arsenal have lost Cesc, inconsistent. Straight forward right? Not on your nelly. Football isn’t like that, and I have wondered why when we are doing well and we face a side in crisis do they always pull it together against us, well this time it could well be the other way around for once.

I could be right and I may be proved wrong, but sometimes I have a gut feeling about a result and I think I have got more gut feelings correct than not. This is another gut feeling, I am putting my neck on the line here but I think we will witness an Arsenal victory this afternoon. COME ON YOU REDS!!

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