I fully expect Chelsea to revert back to type tonight, they have been conceding goals and Mourinho will not want to concede goals tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chelsea lay out the same trap that they have done for many years now. Stop us from playing, invite us onto them and hit us on the break or from a set piece. It has been groundhog day against Mourinho but hopefully we have to show that we are now much smarter than that. I would much rather see a boring chess match between two heavyweight teams canceling each other out than another game of Arsenal having all the ball and lose.

If we are ever going to beat a Jose Mourinho team then it is tonight. We cannot have any excuses this evening. The fixture list has got the better of us a few times this season but given that our players have had nine days since the Manchester City defeat, they should be suitably rested and recovered for this one.

After we were knocked out against Bayern Munich last season we became far more aggressive in our work off the ball, probably partly down to some home truths but also due to a fixture list that had changed from playing every few days to once a week. While the festive period will give us plenty to deal with over the next few weeks we start fresh and with most of our players available.

Tonight I don’t want us to match Chelsea physically but to do more than them. We have to want to win this game more than Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea. If we can do that then we can win this game. A game that could be very important for the mind set and the mentality of the players. An Arsenal victory would see us top at Christmas but I don’t necessarily see that as a factor for us, it will be the beating of a rival at the start of a busy run of fixtures that would do us the world of good.

I fully expect Chelsea to revert back to type tonight, they have been conceding goals and Mourinho will not want to concede goals tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chelsea lay out the same trap that they have done for many years now. Stop us from playing, invite us onto them and hit us on the break or from a set piece. It has been groundhog day against Mourinho but hopefully we have to show that we are now much smarter than that. I would much rather see a boring chess match between two heavyweight teams canceling each other out than another game of Arsenal having all the ball and lose.

Going by the bib game it looks like Sagna, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Arteta, Ramsey, Giroud and Walcott. Given that I am guessing that the rest of the team will look like..

Mean Lean’s Predicted Line Up:

I would have preferred to have seen Laurent Koscielny back in the team, apparently he had been training but failed a test on his knee. That said, I am not as worried about Vermaelen as some people are. Arsenal as a collective played much in the way we did against Manchester City the last time Thomas Vermaelen had a run in the team. Since then the team approach has been different so we have not had the chance to see Vermaelen have a run in that set up. Leaving our defenders isolated is no longer the norm so I see no reason why Vermaelen cannot play well alongside Per Mertesacker.

I had written more but the CPU on my PC overheated and shut itself off and deleted the last three paragraphs, that were unsaved. I don’t have the time to rewrite that again so I will leave this in a rather strange place.

Three points please Gunners.