Nov 05
Match Preview: Arsenal v Fenerbahçe (UEFA Champions League)
Arsenal welcome Fenerbahçe to the Emirates Stadium later this evening in the Champions League Group G Fixture, which is live on Sky Sports Xtra.
The Gunners recently ran all over Fener in the reverse fixture and many thought that this could well be Arsenal’s year for Champions League sucess, but recent flops in their domestic league have since seen a lot of people retract that view.
A 4-4 draw against North London rivals Spurs – who are currently bottom of the Premier League – was the beginning of a bad week for Arsenal and that was followed up by an embarrassing 2-1 defeat to League newcomers Stoke City. Confidence must be at an all time low for the Arsenal players going into this match and a much improved performance is expected from the Emirates giants.
There was more bad news for Gunners boss Wenger too as Theo Walcott, Emmanuel Adebayor, William Gallas and Emmanuel Eboue all miss tonights game due to injuries while Bacary Sagna is set to start after brushing off an ankle injury.
However, despite the missing players Arsenal are pretty much through to the next stage of the tournament and Wenger believes that the sooner this is achieved the sooner he can start planning an assault on the top three teams in the Prem.
As for The Turks, well, they have had a miserable season so far both at home as well as in Europe and their new coach Luis Aragones who guided Spain to Euro 2008 victory has been receiving plenty of criticism recently. However there is some good news for the club as they have finally found their winning form and won two out of their three games in Turkish Super League recently.
Predicted Arsenal Line-Up:
Almunia
Sagna – Toure – Silvestre – Clichy
Denilson – Fabregas – Diaby – Nasri
Bendtner – van Persie
Match Prediction: Arsenal 3-0 Fenerbahçe
Catch all the post-match reaction and player ratings here on Gooner Talk seconds after the final whistle.
Leave your views and predictions of tonights game in the comments section below.
Eboue is injured btw.
Yep, sorry, Denilson likely to replace him.
Why does no1 pick JD??
Fabianski
Sagna JD Silvestre/Toure Clichy(c)
Wilshere Ramsey Diaby Nasri
Vela Nik
RvP made a fool of himself against Stoke. If he was a proper pro he would have tried to win the game for us instead of effectively ruining the chance of a comeback. Wilshere needs his chance and could end Carlos’ career.
I think if van Persie plays tonight it will be in a 4-5-1 with Bendtner playing up front by himself.
Of Course RVP will play tonight because he cant play this saturday against man u..
silvestre is rubish
song is rubbish tooo…
but Ramsey is class…
Right, that was quite honestly shit. They obviously have zero confidence and zero fucking focus. Absolute pants.
one word…awful. do they seriously not practice shooting in training?!?!?!? all they must do is pass and pass and pass, so annoying. im just glad i didn’t pay to go watch it. we have no cutting edge up front and next up is man utd….a point is all we can hope for
yeah, in all seriousness, Man Utd. are gonna chew us up and spit us out. They only creative player for any period was Van Persie for most of the first half (and he’s not playing Saturday mind you). Bendtner was terrible and in his recent fumbling mood, Nasri and Fabregas were just downright awful.
Defensive wise we were pretty solid though. Silvestre’s been most impressive, and Toure successfully pressed through the defense on several occasions. Clichy was solid and making a couple but not too many runs out on the wing for a few passes into the 12 yard box (it was frustrating to see Nasri attempt no crosses in same goes for Diaby). Pfft, i could go on but why bother… The players need to lose the attitude or the fear (seems to be a mixture of both) and really get with the fucking program. I’m sick of people moaning about the bad tackles and shit — there’s a much grander problem and thats their just… distracted. If you want to talk about tackles, talk about how no Gunner seemed to press down any of the Fenerbache players when they had the ball. Only Djourou, Denilson, Toure, and say RVP from an offensive point of view were putting any bit of pressure on. What the hell were the rest of them doing apart from losing possession eh?…
my goodness, you are all wankers the way you trash ‘your’ team
Darren… it’s all within good reason mate. Arsenal have had an absolute shocker of a season thus far. And the flaws in the side are so blatent that, quite frankly, it’s making us Gooners sick to the stomach that Wenger just won’t amend them.
Trash the team? Yeah like i completely made no points of reference to where we were actually playing well… Darren you can’t be breast fed all your life. These players are on a phenomenal amount of money and if they don’t play well the fans have a right to critique. You hear some completely off the wall remarks about sacking Wenger and the likes which is just nonsense. The players are lacking confidence; and what with the fact that their so young this IMHO suggests they’re missing leadership in some key areas. And those who ARE leaders in these areas are being bad influences and damaging the focus and development of some of these players.
Gallas in my view is one. He rants and raves and cries off in a corner or kicks over an advertising sign (or actually as i seen the other week, was scolding himself as he walked off the pitch! < : o ) and he consistently shouts abuse and Toure and Almunia when HE may even be the one making the error in play. Adebayor is another player who’s so busy mooning off to some camera somewhere he’s consistently caught offside a ridiculous amount of times every single game — that to me after a couple of seasons of play is down to a lack on concentration — plain and simple. Even RVP’s losing the head now! That whole Sorenson affair was shocking and then look at him against Fenerbache, he was STILL wound up – he almost thumped Vela and a few others. And STILL he appeared to have not learned his lesson from Stoke. Like come on these are the realities of where the team is at this moment and time. You’re confusing trash with truth. And yes sometimes the truth hurts. But you hope that they wouldn’t maintain this standard and will pick their game up and develop some composure over the next few games. It might not necessarily be ideal (for a number of reasons) to talk about them winning trophies now (although i sincerely hope they will come out with a much-needed win at the weekend) but the main priority right now is for them to rebuild their confidence and Wenger to stop all this news conference bickering mayhem with Stoke and actually try help them gain some focus. Some of the stuff happening is just completely irrational and its just accentuating the frustration within the team and with the fans. Even if they lose against United but put up a great fight many fans (myself included) will be more than content!