So the day began as I expected it to, I decided to watch goals on Sunday this morning and guess who was one of the guests? None other than Roger Johnson, another little cunt I cannot stand. He's just one of those players you immediately hate, he looks like a prick and in this case you should judge the book by it's cover.
Anyway having him on the show was always going to get my blood boiling and so it did as he bitched about Chamakh and what not, the crew showed clips of "wreckless tackles" on our part and nothing about Brum. Well they did show Johnson himself elbowing Chamakh in the head which was quickly laughed off by all and instead they decided to focus on what a great header it was. (Ahem pricks) I think I'll close the matter there before I go on one of those rants about players I cannot stand hehe.
Back to the point and as todays heading says, it is very much a crucial week ahead. We will get a good idea of the current injury situation. Wenger said before the Brum game that Cesc had a little chance of playing Tuesday night so I'm hoping that means he will definately be available for City. I think we can cope without him mid-week, after all Wilshere's three-game ban dosen't count in Europe. I'm also interested to find out the extent of Koscielny's back injury, Arsene didn't seem too worried about it so I'm assuming it's just a minor problem. Now it's unlikely Vermaelen and RVP will play any part in the week ahead but I'm still anxious to know more about their recovery progress. Tommy has been nursing an achilles injury which you have to be very careful with because they can be easily aggravated so it's understanable tha the medical staff would be slow in bringing him back. Likewise for RVP, this time they want to make sure he is 100% before letting him return to action and rightly so, the poor man seems to be made of glass. We can't hide from the fact that his injury record is worrying but at the same time we can't do nothing about it, certain players are just injury prone and have to live with it.
The difference this season though is that we have another top class striker to fill in for him, that of course being Marouane Chamakh who played a part in both goals yesterday. No disrespect to Bendtner but this guy brings something different to our game. He links up well, he already has an understanding of the way we play, he's strong on the ball and good in the air. The latter of his strenghts in my opinion we don't get out of him enough simply because we don't put a lot of good crosses into the box. Nasri, Diaby, Rosicky etc like to work the ball into the box while Sagna and Clichy's crosses are about as consistant as RVP's fitness. (Sorry Robin!) Against Chelsea, the rare balls that were put into him caused worry in the Chelsea defence, he beat Terry to every ball so you can understand my frustration at the fact that we don't use this tactic more often.
Thats enough of that, now back to point on the huge week ahead. I've already talked about the injuries, next is the importance of beating Shakhtar on Tuesday night. The group currently looks like this:
| Clubs | Pld | W | D | L | F | A | +/- | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Arsenal FC | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 1 | 8 | 6 |
| 2 |  FC Shakhtar Donetsk | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| 3 |  FK Partizan | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | -3 | 0 |
| 4 |  SC Braga | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 9 | -9 | 0 |
Sorry about the messy digits but you get the idea. A win would all but see us through, even if we were to get a draw which would be disappointing but I'd still fancy us to go through, however, a win would allow Wenger to rest some key players for the remaining games of the group, and when you have the luck of an Arsenal player, rest is key. I'm pretty confident of picking up the three points but the Ukranian side are not to be underestimated, they have pulled off a few giant killings over the years so take nothing for granted. Of course Eduardo will make an emotional and surprisingly quick return to the Emirates, it would be nice if he started, not so nice if he scored, for us anyway. I can't see anything other than a win for us, hopefully I'll be back with more on the game tomorrow.
My third and final reason as to why this is such a crucial week for us is of course because of the trip to Eastlands we face next weekend. I don't want to focus on it too much right now because we have an equally important game midweek but I cannot stress how important it is not to lose. Thankfully we cut the gap between ourselves and Chelsea to five points yesterday which was a more important result than people gave it credit for. Had Chelsea won yesteraday and if we lost next weekend with them picking up an inevitable three points at home to Wolves, we would be staring at a ten point gap. If we were to lose next weekend we will probably be eight points behind, not ideal but it could be a lot worse as I explained just there. Hopefully it dosen't come to that though, Blackpool showed today that by just playing your game in a positive fashion you can cause City plenty of problems. Thr tangerines were extremely unlucky not to take anything from the game, class eventually told in the end. If we go there, hopefully with Cesc in the side too, I think we can cause them major problems, they are still geling and defenders are coming and going out of their team like yo yos, theres no consistancy with Mancini's line-ups and I think that might well be their downfall next weekend. Anyway like I said I don't want to go into too much detail when we have a match before it so I'll stop there.
I think I've gotten through just about everything I've needed to for the day. Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a better preview for the Shakhtar game. If not you can keep up to date with my latest thought via my twitter account: http://twitter.com/ArsenesArmy
Thats about it for now, till next time, take care Gooners!
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