Steaua Bucharest Preview 2 October, 2007

We concentrate on Europe again tonight and we travel to Romania to play Steaua Bucharest. We will be expected to win this one but we have a lot of players who are a doubt. Van Persie, Hleb, Adebayor, Flamini and Diaby all picked up knocks against West Ham, some worse than others; Hleb is the least likely to play out of all of them but Wenger says he’s made a great improvement.

Arsene also says that Van Persie only has a slight problem and is more likely to play than Adebayor but at least one of them will start, if not both. I’m not quite sure how he can judge that but I’ll take his word. All those other players will decided on today but there was no details of their problems so I presume they’ll be alright.

If the manager decides not to risk some players then we could be seeing Bendtner in this one, or maybe Diarra will get a game after his impressive display against Newcastle, I would like to see Lassie get a maybe a half or at least a decent portion of a game like this but it’s not up to me thankfully.

So here’s today’s random guess at the team, this is what I would do if it were up to me anyway:

Diaby on the wing because I don’t know who else we actually have that can go there. Hoyte? Van Persie? I don’t know. I’d like to see Gilberto start this one, there’s no point in risking Flamini if he’s not fully fit. There are whispers this week of Gilberto leaving in January but I don’t want him to, he’s a very valuable player. Although he is getting old he’s still got it in him.

We’ve got the same ref that sent Lehmann off in the final against Barca (in 2006? That article says it was 2005 but I swear it was 2006. Meh).

Should be a good one tonight. It’s on ITV4 and I think it’s on Setanta too, don’t listen to me though. See ya.