Arsenal’s tough decision

Tuesday, 29/11/2011

by Richard Leighton, Shoot's Arsenal blogger

There’s no two ways about it, Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Fulham at the weekend was a classic post Champions League hangover performance that resulted in two points dropped.

It was a massively frustrating 90 minutes in which we never really found our tempo and while there were good performances it was obvious some of our boys weren’t at the races.

We’ve been riding the crest of a wave recently with five consecutive league victories and I don’t think many fans thought this would be the game that would see us slip up.

But it was a timely reminder that while the progress has been good, our start was disastrous and even with this unbeaten run behind us we are still languishing in seventh place.

We’re a third of a way into the season now and the table is no longer lying. There are fewer ‘false positions’ and horrifyingly, people are talking about Tottenham being title contenders. An idea I find positively nauseating but the possibility they could finish above us is a very real one.

Players will certainly be rested for the League Cup tie against Manchester City and I absolutely think this is the right thing to do. Arsène Wenger has been doing his infamous ‘players in the red zone’ bit and we showed last year that going for it in all four trophies is basically madness.

So we should see players like Yossi Benayoun, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Abou Diaby (if fit), Emmanuel Frimpong, Francis Coquelin, Ju Young Park and Marouane Chamakh.

On paper it’s a potent combination of inexperience, youthful exuberance and abysmal form, which probably means against City’s vast squad, it’ll be the away side that progress. But as I said, we can’t go chasing every competition.

Wigan Athletic away next weekend has got to be the one we look at as a must-win game and if that means getting taught a bit of a lesson tonight then so be it.

That I’m even talking this way about squad rotation in November may have some conclude that our squad isn’t strong enough in terms of numbers and quality and while I don’t wholeheartedly buy into this, it is true there are some players that we cannot afford to be without at the moment.

So I hope we make a good fist of it against Man City, that the crowd don’t get on the players backs, and that Samir Nasri receives the reception he so richly (pun intended) deserves.

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