Sunderland Preview and Nike Arsenal Football Competition 3 October, 2008

So it’s back to the Premiership again tomorrow and after a terrible performance last weekend we will be looking to prove a point. Gael Clichy has said the team still have something to repay the fans with and will be putting in a top performance.

We need to play like we did against Porto, we’ve shown we can do it and we just need to re-create that week-in-week-out. They have no excuse not to.

Sunderland are a strong team now, Roy Keane has taken them away from the ‘relegated every year‘, ‘setting records for least points in the league‘ team and actually turned them into a decent side. However, they’re all fucking cunts though, trust Roy Keane to manage to build a team full of the cuntiest players in the game.

So we need to beat them. We cant have those Spurs rejects and El-Hadji Dioufs and Ferdinands in the least bit satisfied. We need to destroy them, embarrass them.

It’s not going to be easy though, not only has Keane created a team full of wankers, like himself as a player, but he has also got them all working with the same effort and determination that he showed at Man United. Clichy mentioned in that link above that we didn’t concentrate right until the last minute against Hull, well it’s going to be vital that they learn to do so against Sunderland.

In terms of team news well it’s pretty much the same. Song could return but Diaby, Bischoff, Eduardo and Rosicky are all still out. Wenger has put a return date of after the international break for Diaby, he says we should have Eduardo back before Christmas and Rosicky shouldn’t be too far behind him.

When we played Bolton away recently Wenger chose to leave out two of the more fragile and vulnerable players: van Persie and Walcott which I think might have been partly down to them being targeted for a kicking. I wonder if something similar will be done again tomorrow but otherwise I’m expecting the same starting 11 as against Porto:

Almunia
Sagna – Toure – Gallas (c) – Clichy
Walcott – Fabregas – Denilson – Nasri
Adebayor – van Persie

Sunderland have a few players out, Tainio and Kenwyne Jones are the notable ones but other than that they’re full strength.

We need to be wary of their attack, our defense must be on top of their game. An attack partnership of Cisse and Diouf will fight for every ball and will be difficult to track. Also with Malbranque’s drive going forward they’re going to be strong up front. We need Gallas to have a good game and not make any sloppy mistakes or bad marking like he has shown recently, especially from set pieces.

It should be a decent match, and if we play like we did against Porto it should be a decent win. Being a Saturday 3:00pm kick off it’s not on TV over here. I don’t know my new town well enough to know a pub that will able to pick it up on the dodgy channels so it’s going to have to be Sky Sports News then Match of the Day for me.

Right now just quickly before I go there’s a competition for you. SoccerPro.com have given me a brand new Nike Arsenal Football to give away from their vast collection of footballs.

I’ve been given two Nike balls by SoccerPro.com, one for me and one for you for me to give away which is the official Arsenal ball for the season in Nike’s new style of ball. It’s quite a nice ball actually, I actually thought about keeping it for myself and giving you the other Nike ball but that would be mean. It’s a size 5 ball, not one of the mini ones, so good for a bit of a kick about or whatever you want to do with it…

All you have to do is answer this question and send your answer to me by email:

Who is the all time record goal scorer for Arsenal?

a) Theirry Henry
b) Igor Stepanov
c) David Seaman

Shouldn’t be too difficult but there’s always one…right so if you think you know it then send your answer to: football[at]the-cannon.com. Just replace the [at] with the @ sign. I’ll give you until Tuesday night to enter and I’ll announce the winner on Wednesday and hopefully get it send to you before the weekend.

Right, good luck with that and thanks for reading. Speak to you soon.

C’MON YOU GUNNERS!