Cold turkey troubling you? You’re not alone

By Walter Broeckx

And so suddenly with the world cup over we find ourselves in more familiar and certainly more accustomed territory. Arsenal territory.  2 months and 2 days after winning the FA cup we can have a first look at real Arsenal players in real Arsenal shirts playing for Arsenal. Of course we have seen a lot of Arsenal players (too many?) playing in the world cup. But to be honest I was more worried each time I knew one of our boys was playing in case they got injured than about the final result. Apart from the final maybe when I wanted our German Gunners to beat the Manchester City Argentines.

By the way it seems that Arsenal is the PL team that has had most World cup winners in their ranks in England. We now have had 6 and we doubled our score last Sunday with our 3 German winners. Manchester United has 3 and that is the same as West Ham. Bow your head to the mighty Arsenal.

Apart from that I want now to forget all the world cup and move on to what is much more interesting for me: Arsenal. And certainly Arsenal playing.

Next Saturday we will have the first glimpse of the new away shirts as Arsenal will use them for their trip to Meadow Park where we will play local side Boreham Wood. Boreham Wood is of course rather familiar Gunner territory also as the Arsenal Ladies play their home matches there but I think the attendance next Saturday will be a bit higher than the Ladies usually see passing through the gates.

There will be no world cup players involved of course. They are still laying around on the beach, drinking, smoking, doing what young man do when they don’t have to think about football. Talking about what young man do (older too from time to time of course) but I have heard that Germany was the only team that allowed the girl friends and women of the players in the hotel after each match. As a reward for their efforts on the field they could do expend some energy off the field.

Looking at the way they could still run after 120 minutes in the final it sure seemed that they didn’t get any negative side effects on the field from the visit of their partners. But better to leave the world cup behind us for now.

Who can we expect in this match? Well those who didn’t go to the world cup and who are not injured. Theo Walcott will not be involved as he hasn’t resumed full training yet. Talk is that he should be doing this in August. So we might see him somewhere in September.

I think we will have Szczesny in goal to start and maybe Martinez somewhere playing in the second half. Or will we see Macey if he is still an Arsenal player as I don’t know how up to date the website is about the young Gunners for the moment.
We will have no central defenders to start with. We have two right backs and two left backs. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see a very experimental defence. My guess is that we might see Bellerin on the right, Jenkinson and Monreal in the centre and Gibbs on the left flank.

In midfield we have a few more options. Or players that can play in their natural position. Like Arteta, Ramsey, Flamini, Rosicky and if he is still fit Diaby. Maybe Wenger will use Flamini as a central defender at some stage? Worth to have a try I would say.

Up front of the players who played with the first team now and then we only have Sanogo.

So we have more or less 10 first team players available and many gaps to fill. So I expect to see a lot of youngsters out there. Like I said Bellerin will be there for sure I think. Maybe we will see Haydn of Miquel as they are central defenders and Wenger wants to play players who are used to their position. I think we could also expect players like Eisfeld, Ollson, Toral, Jebb, Zelalem, Afobe and Akpom to feature at some stage in the match. And who knows we might even see a bit of Crowley if Wenger wants to have a look at him.

I notice by listing those players that there are an awful lot of midfielders involved in that list. And looking at the players we have in our midfield for the moment and at their age I fear that for most of them it will be almost impossible to break in to the first team. Their only hope is the ageing players like Rosicky and Arteta slowing down a bit.

So it will be all very experimental and many players will have to play out of position but this is the start of the new season and that is the most important thing. It means real football is back in town. And that was about time as I surely missed my dear Arsenal these last two months.

I don’t know if Arsenal player will show the match live. If not I will be a bit angry as the seasons before Arsenal showed all the preparation matches live on the player unless they were televised. I haven’t heard anything of it yet so I fear this might not be shown live. And I think that is not the wisest decision that Arsenal has made then. Come on Arsenal, show us the match! Give me my drug as I am desperate in need of some Arsenal football for the moment.

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