A great victory midweek and no doubt a big confidence booster for the kids and the entire team for that matter. What I worry about though is that we have to go to Boro now (north again???) where it will be cold and unfriendly. Still , atleast its not the Reebok so not everything is bad.
More injury worries , this time to Ade,Diaby,Sendy and Eboue still not fit. So if these 4 dont start on Saturday evening its left the squad looking extremely extremely thin and this will test us. This is what we have 100% left fit(normal first team EPL):
GK:Lehmann
Def:Hoyte,Toure,Clichy
Mid:Rosicky,Gilberto,Fabregas,Flamini,Walcott,Denilson
Forwards:Henry,Ali
So that means we have the following players out/injured/doubtful/not fully fit:
Eboue,Gallas,Senderos,Djourou,Diaby,Hleb,Ljungberg,RVP,Baptista,Adebayor
Thats 10 players unfit. 10 … 10 in February with the CL and the crazy end season in the league and with we still fighting on all 4 fronts. If you count we have 12 fit players and AW has to choose 11 from amongst them. If we pick up one more injury we’re in trouble..big trouble. Its ridiculous.. how are we picking up so many damn injuries?? Its also a great credit to AW and the squad that we’re still fighting in all four competitions.
Now that I’m done with my rant let’s analyze what could possibly happen on Saturday in another 5:15 kickoff. I’ve read AW moaning about this as well. Could someone tell me why? Is it because we play after everyone else or does it get colder or something?I dont know.
Boro are a decent but hugely unpredictable side and you never know which one will turn up. Hopefully they will be overconfident after their 5-1 thrashing and we could nick it. However since its Arsenal, Southgate will try and get them going. If Viduka is physically and mentally fit he’s a genuine goal scoring threat but because he doesnt have pace Sendy n Toure should be able to hold him off and Yakubu as well. Downing will whip in crosses all night and most of the play will go through him. That apart they really dont have too much to threaten us..if WE TURN UP. Boateng will be steady in midfield and Xavier and Woodgate dangerous at the set plays with his strength in the air. Really though we should win this .. on PAPER.
Finally out of the 12 fit players we have to choose from the following will be dead beat after playing 120 stupid minutes of a draining semifinal:
Hoyte,Toure,Walcott,Ali,Denilson
Players who will still be tired: Clichy,Fabregas,Rosicky because they played almost an hour after playing full games last weekend against Bogey Bolton. So that essentially means we are supposed to have 4 mentally & physically fit players:
Lehmann
Gilberto(because he’s played less because of that red card thankfully)
Flamini(who will give a lot of energy but is not the most important player..no disrespect meant)
Henry(Who just runs around for 89 minutes and scores a wonder goal right at the end)
So apart from Flamini if the other 3 apart from Flamini have good games we will win. If henry doesnt play well tomorrow we may drop points tomorrow…We may even lose. So here’s hoping the guys play out of their skin tomorrow and kill the game off within the first half hour else I can see a lot of tired legs and maybe more injuries.
Prediction:
Boro 1 Arsenal 1
p.s….Be delighted with a win though 
11 Responses to “Boro - Arsenal”
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February 2nd, 2007 at 10:23 am
I absolutely dread this fixture. I see us coming out of the gate careful, going a goal down, then the jet engines fire up as we try to even it up and then perhaps go ahead. But ‘Boro will really have packed the box in by then. It’s like watching the same movie over and over - Groundhog Day. I watched the Bolton FA Cup game again last night - the intensity and fire didn’t really kick in until Bolton’s goal at the start of the second half. In the end, we almost won it, but why do we have to keep doing this over and over?
I agree — Boro 1 Arsenal 1. Yuuuuck…..
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:54 am
Adebayor and Djourou are back. Eboue/Diaby/Baptista are still out.
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
from the sounds of Mr Southgate they intend on playing a game with us on Saturday, based on this information….
Arsenal will win 3-1
You dont play arsenal and win! thats obsurd! you punch arsenal and hope for a set piece to score from
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I think we will win this one.
I sincerely hope we REST Adebayor… he needs to be fit, we can’t afford a 2nd long-term injury to our 2nd best option at striker (with RVP out long-term)…
so Aliadiere should start.
Ali and Henry, the French connection up front will get it done offensively.
Just gotta be steady at the back… we should wear the Boro down with our superior talent.
2-0.
Henry scoring both, set up by Aliadiere on both.
Thats what I’d like to see!
3 points is ALL that matters, not how.
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:17 am
Justin Hoyte played in the reserves as well according to Myles Palmer. Unless theres another Hoyte …. When the hell did he play? And then he’s going to play Saturday as well???? .. someone enlighten me please…PLEASE….
http://www.arsenalnewsreview.co.uk/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=493&cntnt01origid=30&cntnt01returnid=42
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:40 am
That’s Gavin Hoyte, Justin’s brother. He is a defender too.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 am
Ahhhh thnx
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
ll take the point for the pure fact of the red card!!! But for me putting Flamini on the right was a mistake has it limits our outlet!! I believe this will give the team more confidence tho, knowing with 10 men they can turn teams over!!
1-1, we missed the chance to close the gap on Liverpool, 2nd place is also gone now…..
today i was ooo optimistic
goals are online including senderos incident http://arsenalgoalsclips.blogspot.com/
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
It was never a penalty. The red card was fair, and Sendy once again was slow to react and put himself in that situation. The contact started outside the box and Yakubu fell in the box. At the speed at which it happend it was a 50/50 decision.
Up till the penalty, Boro had no shot on target, and only managed 2 more after Sendy was off. Our 10-men dominated the rest of the game and that is the positive I got from this game. We still lack the consistency to win the league but at least when we make a mistake to go a goal behind, we fight back. Sometimes we draw, sometimes we win. But at least you can’t fault the team for not trying.
One thing I did notice tough, is that we scored yet another goal from a direct long ball. We played pass-pass-pass the whole game and scored on a long ball. What bugs me the most is the 1-2 play that Arsenal keeps playing with diagonal pass into the box followed by a return flick back to set up a shot. The ball is almost always in the air which means the shooter needs to take a touch before shooting and in such confined spaces it almost always end up being a wasted chance. Had we either tried a shot from outside the box or the hold up player just spin around for a quick shot on goal our chances of scoring is much better (similar to Viduka’s shot which Lehman saved while down 1-0).
If this is the way we play at Bolton we’ll like be out of the FA Cup. Fabregase needs a rest, he looked fatiqued giving the ball away so many times today.
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I agree with the above comments on playing direct football from the beginning. This is why we put ourselves in situations that we have to come back from a goal down…Up until they score, we are looking for the perfect goal..After their goal, we start taking shots from outside the box..None of our strikers look to turn when the ball is passed to them or try to face the goal and take on the defenders. I can’t believe the number of times we have gone down a goal.
Chelsea and ManU go for the throat right away and that is why they are ahead of us eventhough they squad is not as talented as ours.
I understand we didn’t have much options in terms of players today, but Flamini and Senderos should not make the 1st team squad when the injured players come back..I would much preferred Denilson on the right side versus Flamini. Flamini is a black hole and the other players realize that, you can see it in their body language. They don’t bother making the runs they would for Hleb.
On the positive side, Rosicky was the best player on the pitch…It is almost as if he needs to be surrounded with higher calibre talent to see the best of him. He is on a different level in terms of talent. If our strikers today were making the right runs into space, we would have been more effective.
February 3rd, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Rosicky was average. Apart from that one shot in the first half he did precisely zilch.