Arsenal v Bolton – another attempt at a match preview

By Tony

What with our sites going up and down like things that go up and down a lot, we have published one preview of the game on the temporary site, but now lost that again.

Anyway I made a mistake on that preview by including Rosicky who is not in the squad, so not a bad idea to try and start again.

Here’s the squad list

Lukasz Fabianski; Vito Mannone
Sebastien Squillaci; Thomas Vermaelen; Nico Yennaris; Ignasi Miquel
Emmanuel Frimpong; Francis Coquelin
Yossi Benayoun; Andrey Arshavin; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
Ryo; Ju Young Park
Jernade Meade; Oguzhan Ozyakup; Sanchez Watt; Chuks Aneke; Daniel Boateng

Putting this into some sort of team I guess we get this…

Lukasz Fabianski

Nico Yennaris; Sebastien Squillaci; Thomas Vermaelen; Ignasi Miquel

Emmanuel Frimpong;

Francis Coquelin; Yossi Benayoun;

Andrey Arshavin; Ju Young Park; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

That leaves out Ryo, who could replace Arshavin – I wonder if he (Arshavin)  might be on the bench to come on later, or if he is there to steady the ship up front, and keep the others from getting too excited.

That in turn gives us a bench of

Jernade Meade; Oguzhan Ozyakup; Sanchez Watt; Chuks Aneke; Daniel Boateng plus either Ryo or Ox or Arshavin.

What really strikes me about this squad is that leaving aside the fact that Frimpong and Arshavin made sub appearances against Stoke, it is a completely separate team.  And we are without Jenkinson, Diaby, Gibbs, Sagna and Wilshere.  So we do have two teams we can put out, without dipping into the world of totally unknown 17 year olds – the lesser known players on the bench are regulars in our reserves.

Sanchez Watt is interesting – he played for Leeds last year, and then looked ready to leave, for whatever reason (probably Sunu leaving for Lorient) decided not to, and has this season played six and scored five for the reserves, and has been getting very positive reviews indeed.  Maybe he is our next up and coming out and out striker.  Aneke is another promising player, who has played six and scored three this season with the reserves.

It will be interesting to see the crowd total tonight.   This game is not on the season tickets, and unlike Manchester United, Arsenal don’t operate a system whereby season ticket holders are forced to buy tickets for league cup games.  I believe that the tickets are, as usual, just £10 downstairs and £20 upstairs.

I say “believe” because I am not going tonight – the journey from the Midlands to London is one that I do with pleasure for all the games on my season ticket, but the demands of home life mean occasional matches have to go by the wayside.

But the topic of the crowd is interesting, because in the last round, in what was perhaps one of the more unattractive fixtures we have played at the Ems, we got something like 45,000, and the papers made lots of fun at what they called “by far the worst crowd ever” at the Ems.   Well, if we can get that crowd for our reserves against Shrewsbury, I really don’t think that is too bad.

Just as a reference point, here’s the team we put out in the last round…

Lukasz Fabianski
Carl Jenkinson, Ignasi Miquel, Johan Djourou, Kieran Gibbs
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Francis Coquelin, Emmanuel Frimpong
Yossi Benayoun, Ju Young Park, Marouane Chamakh

The subs who were used were Oguzhan Ozyakup, Ryo and Chuks Aneke.

16 Replies to “Arsenal v Bolton – another attempt at a match preview”

  1. Good lord at last i can comment on untold.
    @Tony: I was not in touch with the website since the past fifteen or so days.
    A few days ago i tried to but could not reach the website.
    Today i got to know that this site is under attack. Very sorry to know about this. I wish this mess gets sorted out soon. Good luck to you.

  2. My favourite site by far. Thank God you are back and hoping such is not repeated.
    Anyway, as regards last league cup’s attendance, the attendance in emirate might be ridiculed by some prejudiced angles that are only bent on taking a dig at arsenal but what they probably failed to mention is that the same number they ridiculed happens to be the highest for those round of games

  3. i would go with santos at left back.

    miquel to come in at half time for vermilen
    i would be suprised if vermilen played 90 mins
    arshaving will start
    i thought chamak would of been playing aswell
    he needs to play some back to back games.

  4. Tony, An interesting post.
    I too, will be keen to see the attendance figure. We may well be surprised how many attend.
    Sky’s choice of the Aldershot/Man Utd game is poor.
    With our Club’s financial stability and following, it’s about time an Arsenal TV site competed with Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United. Tonight’s game is just the sort of exposure that the Club should exploit via its own media.

  5. @Walter – did the ref review for the weekend match disappear with the rest of the site? Can’t wait to read it. 🙂

  6. Damn!! all my efforts!!! all of it gone in vein………..grrrrr……….curse you untold……grrr..

    😀 😀 😀

  7. If our young players can fend off that onslaught from Bolton’s first team towards the end, surely Untold can similarly fend off the repeated attacks coming it’s way as well. I’ll take it as a good omen, at least. Come on, Untold! 🙂

  8. Great to see the site back up and running, also, it was great to see the young team progress to the next round. What I like about our recent performances is the fight and determination shown by the players – a very necessary characteristic after our unsettling start this season.

  9. I am so happy to have Untold back up and running! I was a bit concerned, especially after Super Sunday just gone.

    I agree with those that say the Arsenal Vs Bolton should of been televised over the Man U game. Hopefully next year Arsenal will have agreements in place to show it on ESPN or something if SKY don’t.

    It was a great result especially as I think Bolton fielded quite a strong squad, which was quite unexpected. Arsharvin and Park both answered some of their critics today and I even think Arsharvin was MotM too. As for the newbies, I haven’t seen Yennaris play in a while and I was really impressed by what I saw today. Fabinaski also deserves a special mention and I was really happy with his performance in goal. There is still a competition for No.1 GK going on in my opinion.

  10. I think TV5 is OK. He said its a small cramp and nothing serious. And his coming off early was more of a precaution [Source : Twitter]. So fingers crossed.

  11. its look like untold has really touched somebody`s(or should i say a mob?) nerves…its like they are really trying to take the site down..dont let them win Tony/walter/dogface fight,fight and fight…afterall we are the Arsenal

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