Bolton – Arsenal, a preview « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By The Last Man in the Untold building
With Tony being down under. With Phil being between class and the road to Bolton and so not able to do his usual preview of the game. With Billy the Dog already celebrating our victory in some pub and not able to write something down. Well nothing that we could publish anyway. With Dogface having done his refwatch article and given us the required wisdom to understand what the ref is up to. The only person left to tell you something about the game before it happened was me. They told me I couldn’t go home before I wrote a preview of the game. So here it is.
So a bit of new territory but Phil promised to write an after the game report for tomorrow so we are awaiting with hope and anticipation.
Okay where to start? Maybe with the line up. If I would be Wenger (and thank God I am not Wenger) I would start with
Szczesny the Pole,
Mertesacker the pole, Koscielny the former Unknown,
Coquelin the midfielder The Verminator
Song the he never will be good at all still for some (idiots)
Aaron the Welshman Arteta the Spanish Bask
Theo the fast one RVP the World class one The Ox, the ox one
Probably at this evening at 8.oo you will all laugh with this line up but until then you can try to do better.
I think Wenger will stick with Coquelin at right back because Sagna still will need a few days before he will be back to his usual high level. Maybe a late appearance from the bench could be done somewhere. But anyway we could have a real right back backup on the bench this time. The rest of the defence picks itself in fact. And Coquelin did a good job so far in his games so no reason to not trust him. And I think Coquelin is better equipped for joining the attack compared to Djourou who also is back fit it seems. Or would Wenger dare to go for Yennaris?
In midfield the hardest decision is between Aaron and Rosicky. Rosicky has come back from the dead this season. After his terrible and long injury he wasn’t the same player as before. But now he is showing glimpses of the old Rosicky again. To complete his come back the only thing missing are goals. It could be that Aaron gets a rest today and Rosicky starts. Well Tomas, why not launch one of those rockets you used to launch in the past and ending up in the top corner of the goal? I think a certain Thomas Eisfeld will love to see it.
Arteta and Song pick themselves with Arteta being fit again.
Up front I would start with the same players as we did on Sunday. Or maybe would Wenger try to play Henry from the start? Didn’t he score a super goal at Bolton the last time he went there? Or was it Blackburn? Oh, my memory but I still remember the ball ending in the top corner from just outside the penalty area. Park will be sitting on the bench I think in the absence of Chamakh.
So what should we do? Well there is really only one option and that is to win our game. A win could bring us within touching distance with Chelsea. A loss would make life more difficult. So losing is no option.
A game at Bolton is never easy so I will take any win how scrappy it might be. We must make sure that we convert the chances and let us not give the ref a chance to give some kind of imaginary penalty to the other team. As we saw yesterday there are no easy games in the EPL. Only a diverted shot could rescue Chelsea in the last seconds of the game from defeat. So the focus should be there from the first minute of the game. But if the players play like they did in the second half against Aston Villa we sure should be able to take the points back to London.
Of course if the players really want to do me and the other faint hearted people a big favour you could also decide to win this game with a large score line. I wouldn’t mind you know. I sure wouldn’t mind….