Moving swiftly on: Sunderland versus Arsenal « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Phil Gregory

After a night to forget in the midweek, a trip away to Sunderland isn’t the ideal bounce back fixture most would ask for, but such is the way the schedule has fallen. The defeat virtually ended our hopes of going through to the next round, and with the Premier League out of reach, the FA Cup stands as our final piece of silverware to aim for this year. With both Manchester sides out of the Cup already it’s a great opportunity for us, but first Sunderland must be overcome.

Vermaelen’s long-awaited return to the centre of defence was offset by an injury to Koscielny, however the news isn’t too bad, with the Frenchman expected to be out for only a week. Bad news came in the form of Mertesacker being ruled out for the long term, which doesn’t leave us much wiggle room in terms of further injuries, but a core of Vermaelen, Koscielny and Djourou should be enough to see us through to the end of the season, should Mertesacker’s injury be that serious.

The good news was the return of Gibbs, who probably had the best game out of the defenders who completed the ninety minutes in the San Siro.  His continued fitness will be crucial: with Mertesacker out we can’t be moving Vermaelen back to left back to cover injuries too often. Hopefully Gibbs can stay in one piece for the month or so that Andre Santos will be on the sidelines for, it could well be a big chance for the young England international with Euro 2012 looming.

Apart from that, Carl Jenkinson is back in full training should Sagna require a breather at any point during the run-in, which is nice.

Szcznesy

Sagna Djourou Vermaelen Gibbs

Song Arteta

Rosicky

Walcott Van Persie Chamberlain

With the defeat to Milan still ringing in our ears, this FA Cup tie is no place to be making changes and blooding youngsters this time. I expect to see our strongest possible line-up. The defence is the same as the one which started against Milan, with Djourou coming in for the injured Koscielny. Rosicky keeps his place in the side but moves to central midfield, with Chamberlain coming in on the right.

Gervinho is back from the ACN but Chamberlain hasn’t done much to deserve to lose his place, so the Ivorian can offer a great option of the bench.

Having played Sunderland very recently we know what we’re in for: the pitch will be utterly awful, like it was in the midweek but we’re limited in what we can do in that respect. Sunderland will offer less of a threat on the break than Milan, so we’ll get away with two out and out attackers on the flanks. I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with a few search balls forward down the flanks to take advantage of the pace of our wide men, but given our lack of height in attack, a general long ball approach to try and minimise the effect of Sunderland’s crummy pitch would be counter-productive – we’d lose most of the headers, and just end up giving the ball away and inviting pressure.

With morale likely having taken a beating in midweek, a result here is crucial. We just about nicked the points in our last encounter: there was a lot of luck in their goal given Mertesacker’s injury in the build up, but Ramsey’s equaliser owed something to the woodwork too. Clearly then, it was going to be a tight game even before our regular centreback partnership got injured, but things have certainly gotten tougher since we last played Sunderland. A win is surely required to raise spirits going into the derby versus Spurs the following week, but I’d definitely take a draw now, confident we could win the replay on the Emirates’ pitch. If we win it, it’ll be by the narrowest of margins given the shoddy surface will take the edge off our football, but in all honesty I expect a somewhat deflating 1-1 draw from the game.