Arsenal v Bolton – another attempt at a match preview « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony

What with our sites going up and down like things that go up and down a lot, we have published one preview of the game on the temporary site, but now lost that again.

Anyway I made a mistake on that preview by including Rosicky who is not in the squad, so not a bad idea to try and start again.

Here’s the squad list

Lukasz Fabianski; Vito Mannone Sebastien Squillaci; Thomas Vermaelen; Nico Yennaris; Ignasi Miquel Emmanuel Frimpong; Francis Coquelin Yossi Benayoun; Andrey Arshavin; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain Ryo; Ju Young Park

Jernade Meade; Oguzhan Ozyakup; Sanchez Watt; Chuks Aneke; Daniel Boateng

Putting this into some sort of team I guess we get this…

Lukasz Fabianski

Nico Yennaris; Sebastien Squillaci; Thomas Vermaelen; Ignasi Miquel

Emmanuel Frimpong;

Francis Coquelin; Yossi Benayoun;

Andrey Arshavin; Ju Young Park; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

That leaves out Ryo, who could replace Arshavin – I wonder if he (Arshavin)  might be on the bench to come on later, or if he is there to steady the ship up front, and keep the others from getting too excited.

That in turn gives us a bench of

Jernade Meade; Oguzhan Ozyakup; Sanchez Watt; Chuks Aneke; Daniel Boateng plus either Ryo or Ox or Arshavin.

What really strikes me about this squad is that leaving aside the fact that Frimpong and Arshavin made sub appearances against Stoke, it is a completely separate team.  And we are without Jenkinson, Diaby, Gibbs, Sagna and Wilshere.  So we do have two teams we can put out, without dipping into the world of totally unknown 17 year olds – the lesser known players on the bench are regulars in our reserves.

Sanchez Watt is interesting – he played for Leeds last year, and then looked ready to leave, for whatever reason (probably Sunu leaving for Lorient) decided not to, and has this season played six and scored five for the reserves, and has been getting very positive reviews indeed.  Maybe he is our next up and coming out and out striker.  Aneke is another promising player, who has played six and scored three this season with the reserves.

It will be interesting to see the crowd total tonight.   This game is not on the season tickets, and unlike Manchester United, Arsenal don’t operate a system whereby season ticket holders are forced to buy tickets for league cup games.  I believe that the tickets are, as usual, just £10 downstairs and £20 upstairs.

I say “believe” because I am not going tonight – the journey from the Midlands to London is one that I do with pleasure for all the games on my season ticket, but the demands of home life mean occasional matches have to go by the wayside.

But the topic of the crowd is interesting, because in the last round, in what was perhaps one of the more unattractive fixtures we have played at the Ems, we got something like 45,000, and the papers made lots of fun at what they called “by far the worst crowd ever” at the Ems.   Well, if we can get that crowd for our reserves against Shrewsbury, I really don’t think that is too bad.

Just as a reference point, here’s the team we put out in the last round…

Lukasz Fabianski Carl Jenkinson, Ignasi Miquel, Johan Djourou, Kieran Gibbs Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Francis Coquelin, Emmanuel Frimpong

Yossi Benayoun, Ju Young Park, Marouane Chamakh

The subs who were used were Oguzhan Ozyakup, Ryo and Chuks Aneke.