Huddersfield Preview: Almunia, Squillaci and Diaby in the squad 30 January, 2011

You have to love FA Cup weekend, unfortunately no big shocks yesterday – Southampton lost their lead against United and went out and Everton could only manage a draw at home to Chelsea. Well apart from my local team Watford went 1-0 down to Brighton… It’s now up to us to follow United and Chelsea into the fifth round by beating Huddersfield. You can’t go into these games too confident but the visitors are currently third in League One and it goes without saying that they’re a team we should be beating. They’ll come and give it a go though that’s for sure and it’s up to whatever team we put out to do the job.

Squillaci and Diaby are back in the squad having recovered from their injuries which was no surprise really, Rosicky could also make a return from a pretty bad case of flu but Sagna will be rested. Manuel Almunia has also found his way back into the Arsenal first team squad for the first time since September. The two Poles have cemented their place at the top of the goalkeeper packing order since Manuel’s last game, the 3-2 loss to West Brom and don’t look like being budged now. Arsene even referred to Szczesny as his no.1 in Friday’s press conference.

I think we all expected Almunia to have left by now, there’s not long left of the transfer window at all and unless something’s done right at the last minute he’ll be with us until the summer now. I think the change of heart is more down to us than Manuel and it’s because Fabianski’s shoulder injury was a bit worse that we expected. In recent games we’ve had James Shea sitting on the bench which is a bit scary especially when Szczesny seems to love collecting the ball right on the edge of the box at the moment almost giving me mini heart attack. I’m sure Shea is a decent enough ‘keeper but I don’t really trust him. So we’ve brought Manuel back in, or he’s recovered from injury whichever you choose to believe.

I think it’s a good thing, I mean it’s a bit harsh on Almunia not letting him know if he’s wanted or not but we can’t help the injuries we’ve got and it’s just the way football is. If he has got a problem with it then he should think back to the time when he took over Lehmann’s role as Arsenal first choice goalie, Jens was professional and saw out the season with Arsenal; he might not have enjoyed sitting on the bench but he did it and fair play to him. So at the moment he’s just got to do his job and do what the club want him to do and then he can be on his way in the Summer – at the end of the day he’s under contract with us so we can use him however we like. He’ll probably just spend the near future on the bench and then once Fabianski returns he’ll go back to being ‘injured’ or whatever but that’s just the way it is I’m afraid. I’d be surprised if he started today but stranger things have happened, I wish him all the best if he does and it would be good to see him put in a good performance but I don’t think it would change anything with regards to a first team place.

I reckon we’ll continue with Wojciech in goal with a slightly weakened XI that I guess might look something like this:

Szczesny
Eboue – Squillaci – Koscielny – Gibbs
Song
Denilson – Diaby
Bendtner – Chamakh – Arshavin

To be fair I literally have no idea what kind of team we’re going to put out, we’ll just have to wait a few hours and see. In fact that team I’ve chosen there could probably do with a Nasri, Cesc, Rosicky  or van Persie really, I didn’t even know who to put the ‘(c)’  next to their name! Hopefully it’s not too weakened and it would be nice to see a few more first teamers in there but I can understand leaving a few out with Everton in a couple of days time. I’m expecting Arshavin to start though and this could be a real chance to him to get a goal or at least put in a good performance, everyone including the player himself knows he’s going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment but Arsene insists he is not worried about him:

“If you look at the best passers in the Premier League, he’s still up there. Even the other night he has given two assists against Ipswich – one to Fabregas and the corner.

He is not as consistent technically as we are used to because it is a lack of confidence because he’s very harsh on himself. Sometimes we forget how good we are and more times than we are conscious of it. Andrey at the moment is in that position, so we have to remind him how good he is.”

So hopefully today is a good day for Andrey, the other night against Ipswich was a step in the right direction with those two assists. It was similar to the performances he was putting in at the start of the season where he seemed to be having an off time but kept coming up with the goals and assists which made him hard to drop. If he at least gets back to that level where he becomes important in our goals I’ll be happy; he can work on improving his all round form from there.

As for our visitors today I can’t really say I know a lot about Huddersfield apart from they have Benik Afobe who can’t play anyway today. I’m not quite sure why he can’t play but Watt could, maybe it could be that Wenger rates Afobe more but he claims it’s down to some weird ruling. It was quite nice to see Watt in action actually but I guess that could’ve backfired if he’d done really well. I can’t say I’m that bothered about not seeing another loanee this time.

I don’t really have a lot more to say about the game so I’ll wrap it up and let you get on your way to the ground/lounge/pub/whatever for today’s early kick off. If you’re in the London area today then I think the game still isn’t completely sold out so why not get yourself down and support the boys. Or not, it’s your life man. I’m off to the pub because Bournemouth is a bit of a commute and I don’t have ESPN at home, anyone else find it a bit weird having the FA Cup on ESPN? Yeah me too.

Right well I best be off, thanks for reading. COME ON YOU REDS!