CSKA Moscow Preview 1 November, 2006

Tonight it’s the re-match of the 1-0 loss over in Russia, hopefully we can sort them out this time but as we saw the other week they aren’t easy to beat. I mentioned in the week Adebayor might recover from his injury for this game but sadly Emmanuel will not be fit. Gael Clichy is back in the squad and we are still waiting to find out whether Hoyte will be fit or not, Eboue wont and we’ll need to put someone at right back. Lauren, Diaby, Baptista and Ljungberg are all still injured too. If Hoyte makes it back he’ll come in as right back with Djourou, Toure and Gallas completing the back four, I’m still not expecting Senderos or Clichy to start yet but they are there if needed. If Hoyte is deemed unfit for tonight then I see Djourou starting at right back with Clichy taking the left and Gallas going central. There are a lot of options there that Wenger can go for but personally I see this as the best option. The midfield and Attack I expect the same as what we’ve seen recently, it’s just a case of 4-5-1 or 4-4-2.

The reason we lost over there was because we were over confident. Tonight we need to respect our opponents more and be less arrogant. This is what Arsene had to say to The Sun:

“I was very positive going to Moscow, but as a team, we were too confident of taking the points. We were warned by Porto that CSKA were a difficult side to beat. But we only came into the game after we had gone a goal down. Before that, we were not giving 100 percent in every tackle, we were not fighting for the ball enough. It was an arrogant way of not being urgent. It was as though we were thinking, ‘Don’t worry, we will do it’. We were just not sharp enough to create something against a team who defended with eight players around their box.”

He’s right, and I’m sure many of us fans including me underestimated Moscow too. I haven’t really learnt my lesson though and I’m not really nervous about going to the game tonight, I suppose I should be, but I’m not. That’ll probably change if we start playing poorly tonight but I think we have enough quality to do it. Even though we are quite a few players down due to injuries I think we should be aiming for all three points tonight. I don’t care if it’s scrappy and we don’t really deserve it, Chelsea got a last minute equalizer last night against Barca, I’d take an ugly last minute goal tonight too. Makes no difference to me.

Some big news today is a 6 year deal for Johan Djourou. We have recently heard about the long-term deals of Cesc and Kolo and now it’s Johan. The 19 year old signed up the deal in the summer but has only just told us, it’s weird to think he’s so young, here’s another player I expect to see great things from in the future.

Also we were knocked for 6 by a strong Reading reserves side. I think they wanted a bit of revenge for out 4-0 thrashing of their main team. Oh well, s’only the reserves. Talking of the reserves, Jeremie Aliadiere who I said recently wants to stay at Arsenal might be leaving in January. He’s only just said that he loves the club and wants to stay and I said maybe he does but he’ll probably look for a new challenge soon. Well now he’s saying he still loves the club but wants to play regular first team football but he doesn’t think he can cut it at Arsenal. It’s a shame really, we all thought this guy would be massive for us; he’s just been so unlucky with injuries.

Right people…I’ve got to go to college. Enjoy the game tonight; I hope Thierry grabs a goal. A match report tomorrow or something. Bye