By Tony Attwood
I was hoping to write a little piece summing up the whole of the team selection for the Cologne away game, but it is proving a trifle difficult to find all the news.
It seems that Calum Chambers is in the squad for tonight’s match and Mr Wenger has said we will match youth and experience in the side. Which is not wholly unexpected. Jordi Osei-Tutu, Ben Sheaf and Josh Dasilva are also said to be in Germany with the club, but it is reported Giroud apparently missed the last training session. I believe (but could be mistaken) that Iwobi got on the plane.
Sorry about this lack of clarity, but if you’ve picked up what the team is, maybe we could make this a reversal of the normal process, and you can write in and tell me what’s going on. (The weather in Cyprus is rather lovely, in case you were wondering). There is no payment on offer for this service, but you could have the pleasure of lots of people laughing at you, if you get any of the details wrong.
Meanwhile I can reveal that Benzema really is going to sign for Arsenal. I read that on the internet.
Actually there is another funny variant going on at the moment in terms of picking who Arsenal is going to sign and then making a headline out of it. It runs like this: “Napoli forward Lorenzo Insigne continued his impressive start to the season with a stunning goal in his side’s 3-0 win against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Tuesday night, and Arsenal fans believe he could be the perfect Alexis Sanchez replacement.”
Football rumours based on “Arsenal fans believe”! I wonder if we could go any further with this… Arsenal fans ask their pets who Mr Wenger will sign. Or maybe something even more odd… for example, I have a windmill in my garden and I could use the speed of the rotation of the blades to predict the next man to sign for the club. “The player will be something of a slow mover, with a propensity to turn in different directions at the same time…”
But I can tell you for sure that Giovanni van Bronckhorst is going to be the next Arsenal manager. I read that on the internet too. Oh yes and Julian Draxler is coming to Arsenal on loan. Or he is going to Liverpool – sorry there is some confusion here because he seems to be going to two places at once.
Elsewhere you will be interested to know that Trabzonspor have a midfielder called Yusuf Yazici who could be signed as a replacement for Mesut Ozil. And the reason this is so likely is that both Ozil and Yazici have the same agent.
Oh yes and Alexis is leaving Arsenal in January. That’s in the news today, too. He is going to PSG.
The Mirror tells me that Arsenal are ‘plotting cut-price deal for Joao Mario’ as Inter Milan put midfielder up for sale. Now forgive me if I have got this wrong but I thought the whole point about plots was that one tended to keep them secret, otherwise “plot” doesn’t seem quite the right word. Anyway he is 24 years old. I thought you would like to know that.
Meanwhile “Barcelona eye Ozil”, apparently. I have often wondered what this “eye” business actually means. Presumably “looks at”. So Barcelona look at Ozil. Well yes, of course they do. They look at all players in the top leagues around Europe. It would be rather remiss of any club not to be looking at players. “Oh yes we bought him, but we didn’t go and look at him, we never do that,” said Wata Burke, head of recruitment at Barcelona. “We just go out and buy players based on the recommendations of the Daily Star in England. They tell us who we are buying and we go and buy that.
“One of the great benefits is that with the dispute going on in Qatar and the blockade and all that, we are not too sure about whether our funding will continue. And then of course there is this whole independence thing – if we leave Spain we won’t have a league to play in, so that will be a little bit of a problem.
“So yes it is all a bit distracting now, and ‘eyeing up’ players is about the best we can manage. Thank you for your interest.”
Wenger on Sanchez & Ozil:
“Do we let anyone go in January? We’ll have to think about that to see where we stand with them at the end of December.”
According to UEFA, the officials for tonight’s game are from Russia:
Referee
_Vladislav Bezborodov (RUS)
Assistant referees
_Valeri Danchenko (RUS)
_Maksim Gavrilin (RUS)
Fourth official
_Aleksei Lunev (RUS)
Additional assistant referees
_Kirill Levnikov (RUS)
_Igor Fedotov (RUS)
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It looks like the temperature should be about 10C at game time. There is a reasonable chance of showers before and during the game.
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No lineup information out yet (obviously).
And UEFA.com is still using that Daniel Thacker for Arsenal commentary.
COYG!
Our referee for tonight has refereed 12 games so far this season, handing out 47 yellows and 1 red. An average of 4 cards per game.
He has done 3 games not in the Russian League, handing out 11 cards. Which is almost 4 cards per game again.
The most cards issued per game is 7 (5 outside of non-Russian League).
COYG!
Since tonight’s Europa League Cup match between FC Klon and Arsenal @RheinEnegieStadion in Germany will be refereed by a regular Europa League match referee but who has a track record of harsh booking in EL Cup games which suggests he could be a hard line referee that brandishes the yellow and the red card to the faces of players during matches. I think the Gunners should be careful when applying tacklings on the opponent players. So that this referee will not go overboard and starts showing the cards to their faces during the match.
At any rate and notwithstanding whether Mr Vladislav Bezborodov, the match referee will brandish cards recklessly or not in tonight’s FC Klon vs Arsenal EL Cup match , I believe with the starts and bench Le Prof will make for this game will win the match and with some ease too. For, I for see an 0-3 away win on the cards for the Gunners to claim at the blast of the final whistle ending the match.