Man City are a defensive team with no striker.
Bianchi could only do one thing : attack crosses. So he’s gone to Lazio. Samaras didn’t work out, Vassell can nick a goal against teams who are not as good as Arsenal.
It’s great news for Arsenal that the Benjani deal didn’t go through last night because Benjani is the kind of player who could pull on a sky blue shirt and score a goal in his first game .
Buying a proven finisher from within the Premier League was the best option for Sven at this point but they couldn’t make the deal in time.
Benjani missed two flights to Manchester and a third plane was delayed.
City have signed Swiss-based Ecuador international Felipe Caicedo for £5 milllion. He’s a six foot left winger who will not arrive in England until Sunday or Monday.
Sven’s boys have been stuttering without Micah Richards, who has had a knee injury. He is expected to come back for Saturday’s lunchtime game on Sky Sports 1.
Left winger Petrov supplies dangerous crosses but he will have to evade the tenacious Sagna, and that’s not easy. With Elano off-form, they’ve been relying on runs into the box by Gelson Fernandes. He looks pretty useful.
On Saturday morning I’ll be asking : is this a must-win game ? It looks that way but I reckon we talk too much about must-win games. Liverpool’s midweek match at West Ham might have been a must-win game if it had come before the Big Four became the Big Three. Liverpool lost when a late Mark Noble penalty beat Reina.
Adebayor and Eduardo will be important at Eastlands, especially Eduardo. He needs to be at his sharpest and most competitive.
While Adebayor is a belligerent gladiator, Eduardo is a goalmaker-poacher who operates by stealth. Ade reacts, Eduardo anticipates. Ade is on his heels a lot in the box, so he’ll never score from a rebound. Eduardo will score from a rebound.
Gilberto has a stiff back, so Arsene has only 14 fit players for the game. For managers there is a fine line between having too many players and too few, and AW has always preferred to have too few.
In that way, he is a gambler. He thinks : If I have too many players, I can’t give everybody a game, and that creates disharmony
In this Arsenal team, any talk of a “holding midfield player” is silly, very misguided. Flamini is an energy player, not a strategic player, and the team wins games by swarming forward and backwards in a compact shape. They win by passing quicker and sprinting quicker, by sustaining their pace for 94 minutes, by having more technique to their pass-and-move, more team spirit.
Almunia has a thumb injury. With Jens Lehmann back in goal, I’m expecting a 1-0 win.
If Flamini has told Arsene that he will sign a new five-year contract, that’s good enough for me.
Let’s hope the failed transfer hasn’t upset Benjani too much and he bangs in a couple for Portsmouth against Chelsea at Fratton Park.
We went to the Chelsea-Reading game on Wednesday night and that 1-0 win convinced me that the African Cup of Nations has actually helped Avram Grant by allowing different things to happen in his team.
Michael Ballack scored the only goal with a typically thumping Ballack header but the game was never over because Reading work so hard.
Shaun-Wright Phillips, playing inside right, is their flair man now, so Coppell had Stephen Hunt marking him man-for-man, and sometimes playing as deep as Alex and Carvalho.
Bottom line, Chelsea don’t concede goals. If they go on keeping clean sheets, they’ll finish second.
Grant rested Belletti against Reading but will bring him back at Portsmouth and the Blues will not be worried by the newly-signed Jermain Defoe, if he plays.
Anelka, poised and classy, is the only significant signing of a transfer window that’s been disappointing for news-junkies