Arsenal vs. Everton: Injuries Have Hit Us Hard

Well, it's finally time for a return to real football. I don't mean international matches, because they're always a bore to watch, I mean back to watching The Arsenal play. Now, as expected, injuries have hit us during the internatinal break, but this time they have hit us aprticularly hard. You won't find a single blog or Arsenal blog or article on the internet that isn't talking about or at least mentioning the injury situation, but that's because it's important.

The good news is that Diaby is back. Also good news (depending on your perspective) is that Gallas is out, which gives the chance for Djourou to shine. No wait, he's been injured as well. Who do we play then? Sanga's injured also which leaves us with only one option, our new signing Silvestre. Of course who we play at right-back s a bit of a mystery because we let Justin Hoyte go over the summer. So looking at our options I'm thinking the back four will look something like this:

Toure-Song-Silvestre-Clichy

At least Clichy wasn't injured, so that will save us from reorganising the entire back four, but Toure with Toure undoubtedly being pushed out right (as he was the end of last season) that will bean that the Song-Silvestre partnership better click right away. Arsene Wenger said that Song could be great at CB one day and that Silvestre was a very intelligent purchase; it's time to prove it.

Otherwise we didn't suffer too badly. Van Persie and Fabregas should be alright to play, although Fabregas may be looking at surgery for his broken nose. Here's hoping it all turns out alright and he won't have a problem with it. But either way, his nose may be a bit purple Saturday.

So there is the possibility of the Fabregas-Diaby partnership having it's first run-out since the Real Madrid friendly in August. To be honest I couldn't tell much from one preseason game as to whether or not the partnership will work, but if Diaby goes through a significant improvement this year and stops giving the ball away every other time he gets the ball, as well as developing a good tackling ability, then we may have the next Patrick Viera. I have to admit my expectations of this being the case are quite low, but one can always hope...

Everton haven't been in the best of form this season but I still think it will be quite a challenge Sautrday. They always seem to do good against us at the Emirates and they are always capable of seriously threatening the big four. This time, unlike last December's match against them, we don't have the outstanding Eduardo to get us those simple goals, which means the team will probably be trying to pass the ball into the net tomorrow. So all in all, I don't think we'll lose, but I'm thinking that we will really struggle to win. This may well be a defining point in our season; if we prove we can beat teams like Everton without too much difficulty then we may yet have title credentials. But if we struggle for points tomorrow then it may be time to start worrying. My final prediction? 2-1 to Arsenal, but only barely. If we put all our hearts into this match, both the fans cheering and the players performing, then we can escape with three points. If not we'll be looking at a draw or worse tomorrow.

So that's all I've got. If you haven't read the tactical analysis article from last week yet I highly suggest it. It's an interesting view on how the current team plays verses how the invinvibles played. If only the invincibles were still around...we'd win tomorrow without much difficulty at all and might just be leading the league by a few points right now. But alas that's not our squad, and we've just got to support who we've got. Until next time,

Fab 4