Saturday sees Phil Brown and his team of orange players, or should that be orange Phil Brown and his team of players, visit the Emirates. Last season’s league encounter at home saw us lose to a team that did set out to play football, granted we were pretty poor that day but at least they came to play football rather than sit behind the ball. Tomorrow could be different; Hull have not had a flying start to the league campaign as they did last season and are somewhat struggling, boardroom uncertainty is also something the club could do without. I would hope it is an open game, so we can at least play some football.
The first piece of injury news is that Cesc is missing. He had a scan on his hamstring yesterday and it is thankfully only a short term injury, 8-10 days is the estimate. I suspect he might miss Villa as well but the extra day might play to our advantage. Denilson is back from his back injury so I would suspect to see him, Diaby and one other in the middle of the park. I would like that one other to be Aaron Ramsey but I don’t think Arsène feels the same. Gael Clichy is 3 weeks away from a return, but Traore is still out so I would expect Silvestre to continue at left back.
We drew Porto in the Champions League draw, a difficult tie but it could have been much tougher. Arsène rates the game as 50/50, but does admit that we have a small advantage playing at home in the second leg. The away leg takes place on the 17th February and the home tie is on the 9th March. Very spread out this season and not all ties take place in the same week, maximising TV revenue I suspect.
One final bit of good news from the club is that Jay Emmanuel-Thomas has signed a new long term contract with the club, he looks a very good prospect from the little I have seen of him so far.
Here’s to an Arsenal win tomorrow, I will be in the upper tier for the game as I am taking my Dad along. I hope he brings us some good luck!
