Sunderland Preview: Players in and out means a re-shuffle 20 November, 2009

So the internationals are finally over, thank God for that. This break has brought up quite a bit of news towards the end and it’s been mostly been bad. Robin van Persie will be out for six weeks and will receive a bizarre placenta treatment; Wenger admits he’s not the biggest fan of it but is open-minded. Kieran Gibbs had a suspected broken metatarsal with the U21s but it turned out nowhere near that bad and could be back for Tuesday.

France’s 2nd leg play off with Ireland also kicked up a lot of stories, most of which were about Thierry Henry’s infamous handball. He’s had the finger of all tabloids pointed at him and a lot of people aren’t very happy with Thierry at the moment. I’m not in the best place to comment, I didn’t watch the game but I have seen the incident now. Yes it was the wrong thing to do, and yes he has cheated but why is everyone acting so crazy about it? It’s just like the Eduardo vs. Celtic incident – it’s not like this kinda thing has never happened before. It’s like there’s some sort of witch-hunt against Arsenal players…

Anyway Thierry apologized and you can sympathize with him for doing it in the split-second-heat-of-the-moment, now can everyone just calm down about it?! He’s even said a replay would be fair and Wenger agrees. I fell kind of strange commenting on this essentially unrelated Arsenal story so lets just leave it at that.

In that game Gallas and Sagna played 120 minutes so Wenger has hinted they might not start tomorrow but with Clichy and Gibbs out too it’s leaving us quite light at the back. I don’t know what Arsene will do, I don’t know the state of our French players but he has got a decision to make.

Walcott, Denilson, Wilshere and Vela are all back though so at least we have some options up front. With van Persie out until January there will be some competition for places and with the season Theo’s had so far I think he will be looking to get some games.

It’s hard for me to choose a team line up with all the news as it is but here’s my guess after all the hints Wenger has dropped:

Almunia
Eboue – Vermaelen – Gallas – Traore
Song
Fabregas (c) – Denilson
Walcott – Eduardo – Rosicky

If Gallas doesn’t make it then I guess one of Silvestre or Senderos will get given their chance but I hope that new central partnership doesn’t get split up tomorrow. Denilson will come in for the injured Diaby I expect, and I see one of Nasri or Rosicky joining that front line.

It’s a slightly re-shuffled team but one that has to perform well at The Stadium of Light. Sunderland have taken points off Liverpool and Man United this season already and will be well up for another upset. They’re doing well under Steve Bruce, sitting comfortably in 8th and are not a team to get complacent about.

They are without goalkeeper Craig Gordon but they have Martin Fulop as back up and Kenwyne Jones & Michael Turner are suspended too.

It’s a 3:00pm kick off tomorrow so it looks like an internet stream job for me. I know they’re showing it inside the ground for those who have tickets to it, that should be good but for everyone else I’ll try find a link and put it up on my twitter.

Three points tomorrow would put the pressure on Chelsea but any more injuries and they could have an advantage in the game next weekend.

Thanks for reading.