After the Hull disaster the only way for things to go is upward. Similarly I want to prove to myself that I didn’t jinx the damn game with my prediction . Back to the serious stuff then. Here’s the Porto squad that has travelled. Of that list I can recognize only a couple of players. That could be down to the practically zero non Arsenal football that I’ve watched for the last 2 years or so.

Benítez, Bruno Alves, Candeias, Fernando, Guarin, Helton, Hulk, Lino, Lisandro, Lucho, Mariano, Nuno, Pedro Emanuel, Raul Meireles, Rodríguez, Rolando, Sapunaru, Stepanov and Tomás Costa

I can recognize Lisandro Lopez, Lucho Gonzalez and Bruno Alves. Not the rest. If I remember right wasn’t it Lucho Gonzalez who hit a wonder strike in a 1-1 game to beat Lehmann once? Can’t remember the game. Quaresma is no longer there though, thankfully in a way for most Arsenal fans wanted him here plus he is tricky on either wing. Most Portuguese teams are usually fairly hard to beat and very skilful in football and diving. Hopefully this time we’ll have the upper hand.

Now for us. As is the recent trend I haven’t watched the last who knows how many games. None of the stupid streams worked either. So even commenting after the game here after watching gamecast is a bit stupid and I can’t really know who was at fault in the game. Anyway.

How much is Le Boss gonna tinker with the squad? My guess is not too much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought Djourou in to add a bit of height to the defense given his recent comments. If Nasri is fit then he will come in and Theo will drop to the bench. That will give Cesc a bit of a breathing outlet as well on the left side for the link play – pass – move game when needed. Coz right now due to the absence of Hleb’s off the ball running we cannot play anything other than the counter attack or set up our runners. There were apparently too many crosses into the box as well, Arsene counted 45?, all of which got dealt with. So that tells you two things – Our crossing is crap, we are crap in the air or the opposing defense were quite brilliant on the day. I’ll leave you to decide that as ..again I didn’t watch the game. It was obviously quite obvious though that the attack bombed that day, if we’d scored more we’d have won. Dark dark day. No more pointless “unbeaten at home” records though to fall back upon. It’ll be much better if we started controlling play a little bit more.

Here’s the team I’d like to see though:
Almunia
Sagna Toure Djourou Gallas
Eboue Cesc Denilson Nasri
Adebayor Vela

Bench: RVP, Bendtner, Ramsey, Wilshere, Fabianski, Clichy, Song

Probably won’t happen with the defense. Theo/Eboue will make way for Nasri and maybe Bendtner for RVP. That’s about it. Let’s see.

I think there will be a reaction and we should win it reasonably comfortably. I said that though even against Hull

Arsenal 2 – Porto 0

First preview of the season. Good to be writing again . We take on a Hull City who, like Wigan a few seasons back under Paul Jewell, have made a great start to the season relatively speaking. As usual the pundits said their cliched phrases about how the three promoted teams were “favorites for the drop” without watching a game and have so far landed with egg on their face. Anyway on to a tactical discussion for a change.

I looked at Hull City’s squad. I can’t see too many players I recognize there. But Hull have scored in every game they’ve played so far so that means they have a good chance to survive the drop if they keep that up. Coz if you don’t score you’re dead. Our defense hasn’t conceded much all season, which is great. Can we keep that up against a strike force of Geovanni, King, Folan and Windass?? Should be able to, but then Hull’s strikers have been scoring as I said so it’s a little challenging against inform strikers. Wigan’s put 5 past them so it’s not a great defense like Wigan had when they finished top half with De Zeeuw and Henchoz at the heart and Chimbonda and some good LB. So if they keep leaking too much it’ll start to get tough fast. George Boateng will have played a lot against us and the old pro Stelios too has just signed. So they have players who know what it is to win against Arsenal. Sadly thats all I know about Hull City. So lets go to the Gunners.

We’re in a rich rich vein of form right now. Everyone’s scoring for fun and no one’s conceding much at all. If Clichy is fit it will be a big boost, if not Sagna will play LB and Djourou will play RB again. No, Gallas will not be moved left nor will Gibbs be thrown in to the mix regardless of his performance against the Blades. The midfield will pick itself if Nasri’s still not fit. I haven’t seen any games so far but thankfully both Eboue and Theo have been brilliant for us so far going by the reviews so if Nasri is fit, it’s a nice little problem for Arsene to have. Ade has probably been unlucky again going by text commentary and Gamecast and RVP is still not fully on form. NB is scoring goals each time he starts and Vela’s just scored a hatrick so I don’t see why we cannot get a couple of goals from somewhere.

It’ll be great if we can kill this game in the first half itself and take off starters for Porto on Tuesday. Since the counter is well and truly back as people say, (Man I’m fed up not being able to watch a single game) it could well happen. Here’s hoping for a nice comfortable win at the grove.

Arsenal 2 – Hull City 0