Derby weekend. Excited? Yes. Prepared? Probably. DirecTV going in Saturday so I can record Sunday? Yep. Worried a bit about tater totts? Hmm… not sure how to answer that one. They are certainly much more healthy, a little bit more deep. Quality though? Well… shite, not sure how to answer that one either. I have a hard time acknowledging that they sit ahead of us in the table but it certainly is early in the season. And we certainly haven’t made things easy on ourselves by going out with a thin lineup and injured starters. We should be able to string together a quality squad for Sunday BUT we are one more injury away on our backline to find ourselves in quite the predicament. The loss of Lukas is huge in my book. He had a great pre-season, was fully fit and adds that certain power shot we miss at times on the pitch. I really hope this doesn’t stifle his momentum and, truthfully, I hope that Wenger doesn’t decide he no longer has a place in this team going forward after Lukas gets healthy.
Mr. Tony Adams recently quipped that what we need is that stopper. We don’t need goals, we don’t need attacking options. We have those, we need guys to put a big ass brick right in the middle of the counterattack. I agree with our retired leader on this one. But it’s also pointing out the obvious and maybe he could spend some of that energy going out there and offering to help land this player. Maybe? Possibly? His efforts certainly couldn’t F things up any more than they already are (which I hate ending a sentence with)…
Fact remains, we are thin, yet again but hopefully nursing back to full health. Our recent qualification for Champions League Group stages is great, but boy did we get a whopper of a group there. And so, we have to have depth and quality to make runs in either league. I think it sad that our two additions have now come on the wake of free transfers. We are not that club. We shouldn’t be that club. If this is the vision for the future then we are in seriously more trouble than previously thought. All things aside, let’s check out how the lineup will shake down:

The Shez in keeper
Jenks-Sagna-BFG-Gibbs along the back.
Ramsey (if healthy)-Wilshere (if healthy)-Rosicky
Theo-Giroud-Santi

Right. Mark this date. I put Santi up top. Not because I wanted to but we don’t have many options at this point. We are seriously thin. I am afraid that with such a short off-season for some of our players that come December they will be exhausted and run down… let’s up that is not the case. As for the starters, Sanogo isn’t the type of winger I see starting at this point. He will be great (if healthy) to add starting depth to Giroud’s spot when we play those 2-3 games in a week. We just “signed” (ha!) Flamini so he will certainly be on the bench. I would be curious to see Monreal take Jenks spot and have both Gibbs and the Spaniard on the pitch at the same time given that they offer different styles of play. I tend to get worried that with Jenks and Gibbs both going forward too much we really get killed on the counter. Make no mistake, Sp*rs have the quality to expose that weakness right now too. Goodness I hate admitting that. Oi we could really use a man sized defensive mid-fielder at this point… Please buy some muscle Wenger. PLEASE!!!
Bacary has been fantastic covering the middle and I really appreciate how well he and the BFG have come to such a good understanding of each other. Has to be a bit confusing going from RB to CB and then back to RB for CL games (funny that Kols is now like a super sub for our CL games).
Anywhos, we have a doubly tough road ahead of us this Sunday that was not made easier by our current management. Sad that we tout money and power and then pull up with this crap. Really quite sad, frustrating and yet here we stand waiting. Mom always said actions speak louder than words. Too bad she’s right. Reward the faith Wenger.