Tonight sees the final game of the group stage of the Champions League. Having already qualified and assured top place in the group this is pretty much as nothing a game as you can get. The official squad who travelled to Greece is as follows:
Carlos Vela
Theo Walcott
Aaron Ramsey
Alex Song
Mikael Silvestre
Jack Wilshere
Lukasz Fabianski (GK)
Vito Mannone (GK)
Fran Merida
Kyle Bartley
Francis Coquelin
Thomas Cruise
Craig Eastmond
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas
Kerrea Gilbert
Luke Ayling
Mark Randall
Gilles Sunu
Walcott, Ramsey and Wilshere are there to provide some match fitness/game time. I am concerned that Song is in the squad, he is one player we can do without losing to injury. I hope he will be an unused substitute. Other than that it is a team of very young players (and one old one). Much has been made about how much affect a defeat will have on the team. No it wont! We are through, this is prime opportunity to rest the first team players prior to the trip to Liverpool at the weekend.
It really is no biggie if we get beat tonight. I won’t be too upset and nor will the players if they are truly honest. We make our season debut (?) on ITV tonight, given that the more important English team has already failed to qualify they picked ours as the better of two meaningless games, however it will be my first viewing of ITV HD (if my Sky box works as I think it should).
