Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
Arsenal / Partizan
By Phil Gregory
Following on from Smair Nasri versus Fulham, Partizan come to the Emirates. After a tight game in Belgrade , which arguably marked the turning point in Fabianski’s Arsenal career, the final match of the group stage offers us an outside chance of first place in the group. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we came second.
We’re in the competition to win it, and you’re very lucky if you manage to avoid the strongest sides all the way to the final. That said, we’re all the likelier to win it if we get a favourable draw, but even that isn’t guaranteed as there are some strong sides who’ve come second. Certainly for the teams who’ve come first, we’ll be the team to avoid.
With only the Tuesday night games played at the time of writing, our likely options include Schalke, Barcelona, Bayern (middling in the Bundesliga) or Real. We avoided Inter thanks to Tottenham topping their group, though truth be told Rafa’s Inter don’t really intimidate anyone. Only Real and Barcelona would cause me concern in that list, though Jose’s side are still fairly unproven outside of La Liga and Barcelona’s success last year was aided by our lack of first eleven players. Certainly there’s potential for a tasty tie in there, though Schalke wouldn’t go amiss!
Today happened to serve as a bit of a refresher course in journalistic standards. Anyone who saw the Facebook page on Tuesday (Untold Arsenal on Facebook here) will know I updated it with news of Koscielny’s injury based on a story from Sky Sports which said he was out until the New Year. Such a story had appeared in the trashy sports press earlier this week, but I didn’t use it until I saw Sky Sports complete with Wenger quotes.
It did puzzle me that such news hadn’t been on the official website, but I presumed quotes were quotes. That obviously turned out to be a bit of a mistake (as relying on sports journalists’ integrity usually is) when the news from the press conference broke that Koscielny was set to start against Partizan.
Fabianksi
Sagna Squillaci Koscielny Clichy
Song Wilshere
Rosicky
Nasri Van Persie Arshavin
Fabianksi continues between the sticks, while the defence is as you’d expect given Koscielny’s recovery. Song and Wilshere play deeper shielding the defence, whilst Rosicky deputises for Cesc.
Nasri goes as near to the opposition’s goal as possible given his goalscoring record this season.
Arshavin is inside left as usual and I went for Van Persie to go centre forward. Wenger stated the Dutchman starting is a possibility, and he may well be tempted to give him a run out with the United game in mind. Certainly the question between him and Chamakh will be a big one for Wenger in the run-up to that tie.
Against a team with zero points and well a drift at the bottom of the group, we should have enough to get the win by a comfortable margin. I’m going for a standard 3-0 home win, though I’m interested in a clean sheet as much as the three points with United away on Monday in mind.
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