Trip To The Lane

It is so early in the season, but the time for the trip to White Hart Lane has already arrived. Despite their bad start to the season, a match at the Lane would never go according to the form book.

There is a potential of a slip-up but I am hoping the eleven players lining up in the red and white shirt would be able to do their job and come back to the Emirates with all three points.

According to Arsene Wenger, Manuel Almunia will continue in goal despite Jens Lehmann turning out for Germany against Wales last week. The Frenchman stated this is due to an injury to the German's elbow.

So far Almunia has performed well and his temperament is perhaps better suited to this match compared to Lehmann who could easily been provoked by opposing players. The Sp*ds would send Robbie Keane to do the provocations and most of the time Lehmann would fall for it.

The centre of the defence also needed a bit of tweaking with the suspension of Phillipe Senderos and the injury to William Gallas. The best candidate to partner Kolo Toure would be Gilberto Silva, even though Wenger stated that he has Alex Song and Justin Hoyte on stand-by should the Brazillian is unable to play.

There seems to be no problem in the middle of the pitch and it is expected that Cesc Fabregas to orchestrate play from the middle of the pitch. I managed to catch the Czech Republic versus Republic of Ireland match and was impressed thoroughly with Tomas Rosicky's performance.

He always give his team-mates an outlet to pass and his skills certainly opened up the Irish defence most of the time. Rosicky also tracks back to help out the defence. He seems lightweight in appearance but then again he uses his brain rather than brawn to stop opponents from getting past him.

There was talks about Lassana Diarra making his Arsenal debut at the Lane but I prefer Abou Diaby for the defensive midfielder role. His height is certainly important in defence, especially with the aerial threat of Dimitar Berbatov.

With Robin Van Persie still showing he is the better striker for the Gunners at the moment, I really would like to see Eduardo starting the match this time around. He scored three goals during his international duty for Croatia and for me his pace, positional sense and fighting spirit just edge him ahead of Manu Adebayor.

Go Gooners!!!

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