Arsene Wenger doesn’t have the option of an unchanged side against Aston Villa tonight. The City game saw Alex Song reach five yellow cards and Johann Djourou limp off with a groin strain. So now we have five injured defenders!
To make things worse it appears that Kieran Gibbs has had a setback and may be out for quite some time. Arsene Wenger is now talking publically about looking for loan options.
Tonight of course, Arsenal have to play with what we’ve got. That means Squillaci or Miquel getting a game. Hopefully Miquel. It’s a shame for Squillaci how things have turned out, but he hasn’t convinced so it’s better to invest pitch time in Miquel, even out of position.
So that means a back four of Koscielny, Mertesacker, Vermaelen and Miquel. Not ideal going forward, but it should be pretty secure. Villa haven’t been scoring too many goals this season.
Who is top understudy to Song, Frimpong or Coquelin? There isn’t a huge amount to choose between then really, but it’s Coquelin who’s been getting more of the chances this season.
Will any of the attacking players get a break tonight. Yossi Benayoun certainly deserves more games. But with changes in the defensive half, I suspect Arsene Wenger will be cautious and make no change. With Liverpool matching us on points now, we could do with some goals tonight so I hope that we can manage a similar intensity to Sunday.
I’m expecting:
______ Szczesny ______
Kos _ Merte _ Verm _ Miq
______ Coquelin _______
___ Arteta __ Ramsey __
Walcott _ RVP _ Gervinho
What do you think?
Longer-term, we obviously have a fullback problem to solve and the media have decided that the obvious solution is to take Wayne Bridge on loan from Man City. This story has been helped on with comments from Roberto Mancini to the effect that trotting round the training ground with the reserves each morning is no work for a grown man.
Trouble is, do we want Manchester City’s third choice leftback, especially given we’d have to pay the lion’s share of his reported £90,000 a week wages? Finding a suitable replacement isn’t easy though. As Arsene Wenger said, it isn’t like a supermarket where there’s loads sitting on the shelf waiting for you. But there’s surely got to be a better option than someone who’s played just one Carling Cup game and can’t even get on the bench most weeks.
The option that everyone apart from Andre Santos would like to see is Leighton Baines. Sadly I’m not sure it’s a runner. Everton are in dire financial straits but they’re not in ‘fire sale’ territory yet I think. Selling Baines would be a desperate move for them.
Third name doing the rounds is Taye Taiwo at AC Milan. He’s probably the right sort of player to be a good stop-gap, in terms of both skill and value. Nigeria didn’t qualify for the African Cup of Nations and Taiwo has only played seven times this season. He has played in the Champions League though which would reduce his value for us. But is he really available and would AC Milan want to help us out in any way now that they’re our next Champions League opponents?
Now that Arsene Wenger is speculating openly about the situation I expect we will see a whole host of other names over the next couple of weeks.
Man of the Match poll for the Villa game later – come on you Gunners!
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