Arsenal can beat Man City 4-3 today.
They can also lose 5-0.
So Eastlands is the most interesting Arsenal game for ages. There’s no way this will be a 1-1 draw. You can quote me on that.
I don’t know yet what’s in today’s papers. But please note this : William Gallas was stripped of the captaincy on Thursday. And he was told on Thursday that he wasn’t going to Manchester.
Man City are not a team that Arsenal should be terrified by. City have lost 7 of their 13 games. At home, they’ve lost three and won three. Jo is useless, Vassell did nothing at Hull except miss two sitters, Richard Dunne is on his last legs, Micah Richards is positionally suspect as a centreback, and Robinho’s just done a two 9-hour flights to Brazil and back to play a game against Portugal, which Brazil won 6-2.
However, Stephen Ireland is mobile and deadly, especially against a team like Arsenal, who have unloaded all their defensive midfield players, perhaps because Wenger thought his team’s passing was so good he didn’t need a ball-winner or an Invisible Wall.
Shaun Wright-Phillips is also in hot form. SWP will hurt Arsenal unless they push him into wider areas. Around the box, and in the box, Shaun is very explosive and dangerous.
While Mark Hughes’s Blackburn were equipped to bully Arsenal, his City team are mainly technical players who play touch football and try to create ensemble moves with a cutting edge. They can be good at the swift counter-attack.
Therefore Arsenal should go to Eastlands and play with guts, as if this is a cup tie, and do whatever has to be done to win the game and steady a sinking ship. They should show William Gallas that they are men. If they give up today, they could be giving up fourth place.
Gallas betrayed the dressing room. He said he broke up a fight at half-time in the Spurs game but he did not name the two players. The ” fight” was between Robin van Persie and Walcott. That tells me that Robin van Persie is an even bigger prat than I already know him to be.
Should Gallas play for Arsenal again? Would he want to?
Perhaps predictably, Roy Keane has said it’s OK for a captain to speak his mind occasionally. But Keane should not compare the dressing room of Manchester United to a French dressing room. Players are not so precious and fragile in an Anglo-Saxon dressing room. On a bad day, or night, United might go to Anfield and lose 4-2 but nobody will burst into tears and phone his parents in Switzerland.
As I say, Man City v Arsenal is a very interesting game which will tell us a lot. But it’s a tough one for Wenger, who has always known that managers have to roll with the punches, which sometimes land thick and fast. Whatever happens inside their squads, they have to pick a team and play the game. He is a man of steely determination who will still think he can beat City. He knows Arsenal can’t play without Fabregas but he still thinks they’ll win. We’ll see.
P.S. A football book that I reviewed on this website has been short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. The winner will be announced on Monday.