Stoke Preview: Must turn terrible Britannia record around 26 February, 2010

I’ve been waiting all day for an update on our injury situation and it’s now 8 o’clock and it looks like all I’m going to get is a link to subscribe to Arsenal TV Online. Luckily there was an update yesterday and I take it that is still the case:

“Gallas (calf), Diaby (knee) and Arshavin (hamstring) are all out but Eduardo joins in training tomorrow [Friday] and we will decide after training.”

I was waiting to see whether Eduardo would be included or not but Arsene doesn’t usually give his team away. My guess is it’s bad news and they’ve chosen not to publish it all over Arsenal.com.

We are a weakened side for sure but we did alright against Sunderland. We didn’t play our best then but we still did enough. The main lesson to learn from our last game is that we need to kill our games off, we were lucky not to come away with a draw so we need to take our chances.

Stoke won’t let us play our free flowing football and will not allow us shots on goal. That’s why we must finish our opportunities tomorrow. Bendtner will be our only striker again so I hope he’s been working on his shooting this week. His height is always an advantage but Stoke are not a short team and it won’t be easy for him in the air tomorrow. Nick has a tremendous self belief and he needs to show that tomorrow, I’m hoping he can add to his goal last weekend.

I’m glad we have Song tomorrow but I really think we will miss Diaby; his strong and penetrative football would’ve been really useful at the Britannia. Denilson or Ramsey will fill in and I’m hoping it’s the latter. He has a lot more belief that the Brazilian and will bust a gut for this team. I just don’t see Denilson racing back 50 yards to help out the defence whereas I’ve come to expect that brilliant quality from Ramsey.

In defence I think Campbell is likely to return to the side. Silvestre did ok last week to be honest but I’d feel a lot more comfortable will Sol partnering Vermaelen. However I’ve heard people talking about replacing Clichy with Silvestre to give us a bit more height and I see their point. It’s an interesting tactic but I don’t see Wenger going for it. Arsene reckons Clichy has been improving and I don’t see him dropping him now. Last week Eboue stepped in for Sagna and did a very good job. I want him to start again tomorrow, he was our best player last weekend so I don’t see why he shouldn’t. I reckon we should play like this with Sagna coming back and Eboue replacing Walcott:

Almunia
Sagna – Campbell – Vermaelen – Clichy
Song
Fabregas (c) – Ramsey
Eboue – Bendtner – Nasri

Every time I write my XI before a game I totally forget Rosicky is fit. I wouldn’t bet against him getting a start somewhere in there. Maybe he will come in alongside Cesc or possibly flank the attack opposite Nasri but then again I’d still like to see Eboue and Ramsey. Luckily it’s not my job to make these decisions. I don’t think this is a game for Theo Walcott. I’d like him as an option from the bench and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him feature late on but I wouldn’t start him. Although he looked slightly improved last Saturday he didn’t quite cut it and tomorrow will be a physical test too. I think he will be a better option coming on against those tiring Stoke legs.

The home side played 120 minutes in midweek and although they will be on a high from knocking City out of the FA Cup they will suffer for it with fatigue. On the other hand we are completely fresh which gives us an advantage. We’re a fit team anyway but come the 70/80 minute mark tomorrow evening we really should be all over Stoke.

Our record there is quite frankly awful, two visits and two losses. That must stop tomorrow. It’s going to be a really hard game just like the others but I think this time we can do it. All they have is that fucking throw and if we can defend that then we can defend Stoke. “We only score from a throw-in” is the current favourite chant at the Britannia and they have a point. They should only cause us a threat from Delap’s long throw, we should be good enough to defend them in open play so I’m hoping if we can defend the throw then they wont cause us a threat.

A few weeks ago when we lost in the FA Cup we had Fabianski in goal of course. He failed to deal with the throw after just a minute gone and it set the story for the game. I know Almunia isn’t the best decision maker ever but I’m crossing every finger and praying that Manuel will deal with the threat tomorrow. We will have been working on this in training this week for sure, now lets get our heads screwed on, concentrate and put it into practice.

I’ve heard a couple of different tactics for defending Rory Delap this week. One is to stand a man on the line right in front of him and try put him off. I remember Henry doing it a few seasons back and the referee didn’t have any problems with it unless he started jumping. That might work but it’s really a case of trying it and seeing if it hinders his delivery. The other idea was if we kept three attackers up field Stoke wouldn’t be able to bombard the box as they love to do. They would have to keep defenders back to stop the break and they wouldn’t be able to cause that chaos in the box. It’s a risky tactic but it’s a bit different and I like it. However I can almost guarantee we wont try it.

I know I’m going on and on about this fucking throw in but there’s one more point I’d like to raise. When we played them in the cup a few weeks ago they had this ridiculous towel routine going on which made every throw in last literally 30 seconds in preparation. It doesn’t sound a lot on it’s own but Delap does about 5-10 of these and half and that adds up to about 2-6 minutes in stoppages. Add that to all the other incidents in the game and there should be a shit load of added time at the end of each half but the referees failed to acknowledge that last time around. It’s a bit of a petty thing to bring up but if they’re going to allow them to us that towel they need to account for it. However the other way of looking at it is if we are winning then we should be using that towel at every opportunity not just to slow the game down but also to fuck them off. Especially for short throws. I reckon Eboue should wipe his arse on it every time the ball goes out of play. ‘Excuse me ref, Towel please.’

I’ll shut up about Rory Delap now and hope that we can nullify his threat tomorrow. I’m going to the game and hoping we can make it 1 win out of 3 trips to the Britannia. Still a crap record but it’s a start. I’ll report on my trip to the beautiful city of Stoke either Sunday or Monday so speak to you then.

COME ON YOU GUNNERS,.