Afternoon folks…
Today is the last day of the season, and we have just the one game left today – against Fulham away. There is a still a possibility of finishing 3rd in the Premiership – if Bolton beat or draw against Man City and we beat Fulham… although the possibility of us beating Fulham in our current form is quite slim!
Straight to team news today and there are quite a few “injuries” to certain players. I put “injuries” in inverted commas because both Nasri and Clichy are in the middle of contract disputes and Cesc is potentially leaving us and all three are absent today! Through in the out of form Abou Diaby and mistake prone Johan Djourou (although I do love the boy), the team could well be:
Szcznesy
Sagna – Koscielny – Vermaelen – Gibbs
Song – Wilshere
Walcott – Ramsey – Arshavin
Van Persie
With a bench of Lehmann, Eboue, Rosicky, Henderson, Squillaci, Bendtner and Chamakh
Arsene was keen to stress the importance of today’s game and of course, the Bolton vs Man City could go our way – and I have a feeling it may – but do we have enough in our locker to win the game?
“We will try to win the game, it’s as simple as that. A draw could be good enough if Man City lose at Bolton. I do not want to have any regrets now and so I just want to win the game.”
It was interesting to hear Arsene talk about the challenge for next season and he was also keen to stress that we will challenge – he did have a dig at Birmingham on his way – I think he has to realise that other teams have different goals, but this is what the manager said:
“I promise Arsenal fans that we will give our best to win trophies. Who can guarantee that they will deliver trophies? We will give our best to do it and that is our main target. And what is a trophy? Is to finish tenth and win the Carling Cup a trophy? No. What I want to achieve is to keep the consistency in our quality, in our table position and deliver what I call trophies – the Premier League and the Champions League. You can say you will give the maximum to do it but you cannot guarantee that. You can only do that if you are crazy.”
But, why is finishing fourth a trophy for us – and yes, it’s hard to win, but Man United seem to win it, Chelsea seem to win it – they don’t bottle it. Fourth for me, in the manner of which we could finish fourth this season shows a massive lack of mental strength.
Arsene’s job is to challenge for the title, simple as that – and I really want to see him give it a proper go next season – play our strongest team and make it happen…
For those of you who think we’ll still have Cesc Fabregas at the club next season, as captain of our club, shouldn’t he be at Craven Cottage today? No, sorry, he should be at the Spanish Grand Prix with a whole load of Barcelona players.
Nice.
Big game today. Let’s finish the season on a positive note!
