AZ Preview; Clichy Injured; RvP Speaks

By: Martin | November 3rd, 2009

Well, just as my preview for the first match against AZ announced a monthlong injury to Theo Walcott, I’m afraid I’ve got more bad injury news to report here.

Gael Clichy reportedly has a stress fracture in his back, and will be out for about a month. Two weeks of that month will be the international break, but he will, at the very least, miss league fixtures against Wolves and Chelsea and Champions League matches against AZ and Standard. And frankly, when you hear the words “fracture” and “spine” in the same sentence, I think you have to prepare for a pretty long layoff—I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if we don’t see him in first-team action again until late December or January. This is particularly true because this is Clichy’s second spinal stress fracture in less than a year, as he missed much of last spring due to the same injury. Clichy’s just 24, so for him to have developed what appears to be a chronic/recurring problem of such severity so early in his career is cause for concern.

I’m no doctor, but when I used to run a lot I had a stress fracture in my leg, and it’s a very, very weird injury, in that it doesn’t actually hurt very much unless you’re doing the activity which caused the injury in the first place. And that almost makes it more frustrating, because within a couple days of the injury, you actually feel perfectly normal, but have to refrain from hard exercise for such a long time. Because of this, I think a stress fracture is one of the easiest injuries to exacerbate due to insufficient layoff time, and this is something Clichy, Wenger, and the Arsenal medical staff need to be very careful about. Because Clichy’s probably going to feel like he’s 100% by the end of November and early December, and going to be pushing to get back on the field. And we’ve got a lot of tough matches around that time, so the temptation to bring him back is going to be great. But the first priority at this point absolutely needs to be making sure he’s 100% healed from this, and then doing tests or biomechanical analysis to determine exactly why Clichy has suffered this very unusual injury twice now, and what can be done to prevent a recurrence in the future. Here’s hoping they can.

On the pitch, I actually don’t think this hurts us all that much. The fact is that Clichy has never been able to recapture the form he showed in 2007-2008, when he was the Premiership’s best left-back and looked like he was ready to become one of the world’s best fullbacks for the next decade or so. He’s still been a good player, but his confidence appears to be quite low at the moment and he hasn’t really been the same marauding presence down the left since the 2008-2009 season began. Add in an unusual number of bad defensive mistakes which have led to goals or scoring opportunities for the opposition, and I think we can say that Clichy, while certainly one of the better fullbacks in the Premiership, isn’t the world-beater we were hoping he would become by this point in his career.

While he’s still just 20, Kieran Gibbs will get another chance to show that he’s ready to play at the highest level. It’s unfortunate that everyone only remembers his slip which gifted a goal to Manchester United in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal last season, because up until that point he had done a very capable job filling in for Clichy. He has continued to shine for the England U-21s and the Carling Cup squad, and will be itching to show that he’s ready to play first-team football. He is also aware that Fabio Capello is eyeing him for a possible national team call up ahead of the World Cup, so he has every motivation in the world to play great football. If I may make a bold prediction, I say he’s going to impress us, and leave Wenger with a dilemma on his hands once Clichy returns to the squad. And Armand Traore is healthy again, so he will provide cover for Gibbs while Clichy is out.

Nicklas Bendtner is also out for a while with a groin injury, which forced his early removal from the Spurs game on Saturday, and Wenger said he would likely be out for around a month. Fabianski, Denilson, Walcott, and Djourou are still out with long-term injuries as well. In better news, Rosicky returns to the squad after being out with his knee injury, although Wenger says he will not start tomorrow. My best guess at a lineup:

Almunia

Sagna-Gallas-Vermaelen-Gibbs

Diaby-Song-Fabregas

Eduardo-van Persie-Arshavin

Eduardo’s really just a guess–Eboue could easily start there as well. It’s also going to be interesting to see where Wenger sees Nasri fitting into the 4-3-3–he got injured so early in the preseason it’s not clear what his role will be. Last year he mainly played on the left wing, but he’s capable of playing in the center of midfield, and played a bit as a supporting striker in France so could be moved to the frontline. Then there was all that speculation last season about him playing as a holding midfielder. It’s weird for two reasons: (1) Alex Song has played well enough to have a firm grip on that role at the moment; and (2) Nasri’s got so much skill and technique (and so little size and strength) that it seems like he’d be best used further up the pitch. I think he’ll probably start out on the bench this game, but will be starting somewhere soon enough.

I gave my general overview of AZ’s squad in the previous preview, so there’s no need to go over that again. The big news is that AZ will be missing their best player and primary attacking threat, Mounir El Hamdaoui, for the match.

The bottom line is that AZ is an inferior squad missing their main scoring threat. We will be looking for a measure of revenge after gifting them a point two weeks ago when Arshavin stupidly conceded a free kick by being offsides so late in the game, and Diaby’s poor defending on the resulting free kick into the box gave them a last-gasp goal. This is also a very important match because a win would, in all likelihood, clinch our spot in the knockout rounds (the only way it wouldn’t would be if Standard were to win all 3 of its remaining matches, unlikely since they’ve only been able to salvage one draw from their first 3, and we were to lose our remaining 2). As I’ve said before, this would be a huge weight off because it would allow Wenger to rotate the squad in the final two group stage matches (home against Standard and then away to Olympiakos), and focus on fielding the strongest possible side in league fixtures against Chelsea and Liverpool. We’ve got a lot to play for and have been very successful at the Emirates in European fixtures, so anything less than 3 points would have to be viewed as a massive disappointment.

In other news, Robin van Persie has been saying things which reveal him to be all kinds of awesome. Regarding the win over Spurs at the weekend, he said:

It always feels good to beat Spurs. It even feels good when we don’t play them and they get beaten, so it’s especially good when we’ve played them.

Ha—take that, Robbie Keane. He also responded to the news that we drew Manchester City in the Carling Cup (the game will be on December 2, once again bumping our much-ballyhooed game in hand against Bolton to a later date) by saying:

What’s the draw? Manchester City away? Nice. I want to play that one. If the boss decides to let me play, I’m happy. I’d love to play. We fancy winning that competition.

Now, clearly, Wenger will not let him play in that match, and we do not actually fancy winning that competition. Our reserve team would really have to put together one hell of a game to get through to the semifinals—Manchester City beat our first-team at the Eastlands, and they have not been fielding a weakened side in the Carling Cup (they don’t have to worry about fixture congestion nearly as much as we do, since, you know, they didn’t qualify for Europe last season). But you know, in some ways, it’s a good draw for us, because I think everyone (me included) expects City to win that match in a walk. But that means that there is absolutely no pressure for the youngsters, and they can go out there with nothing to lose and play their hearts out. If they were to somehow scrape through, Wenger would be lauded as a genius, everybody would be falling all over themselves to praise Arsenal’s youth setup, and Manchester City would he humiliated. I’m smiling just thinking about it.

But I like it that Robbie is so positive. I think having a team leader with that kind of attitude is infectious, and rubs off on the younger players. I also sincerely bet he would love to play against Manchester City again, if for no other reason than to break his foot off in Adebayor’s ass in retaliation for “the stomp.” Remember Adebayor? He’s the guy who hasn’t scored a goal since then. Anyway, the chance of taking a stupid red, if nothing else, is ample reason to keep Robbie on the bench for that one.

Finally, van Persie has talked about how he’s growing more and more comfortable in the single-striker role in an article on the official site . It’s an interesting read, and it’s been clear from his recent performances that he’s thriving. And it’s not just the return, although 8 goals in his last 9 games speaks for itself, but just how comfortable and effective he looks.

I think at the beginning of the year many of you, me included, thought he would be better in one of the forward/wing slots, because he doesn’t fit the traditional target man mold like Adebayor or Bendtner. What I failed to realize, though, is that a traditional target man doesn’t have much of a place in the way we play, because our center striker actually gets very little of his service through the air. Instead, we work the ball up along the ground, and our “target man” gets balls into his feet. So he doesn’t need to be that physical or imposing or good with his head, but instead needs to have a good first touch and enough skill and technique to control and keep the ball with his feet until support arrives. And van Persie is great at that. He’s so dangerous at spinning defenders one-on-one and getting a shot off that guys marking him will generally give him a little bit of space to latch onto passes and hold play up. And our 4-3-3, when we’re playing aggressively, usually means that he has passing options to either side of him almost immediately, so he doesn’t have to use his body to shield the ball from defenders for any extended period of time. I guess at some point we should just stop being surprised when Wenger sees something that we don’t, huh? But it’s funny–while everyone debates whether Torres, Rooney, or Drogba is the best striker in the Premiership, Robin van Persie, bought for less than £3 million, just keeps scoring goals with the best of them. And that’s just fine by me.

That’s it. Here’ s hoping we get those 3 points and punch our ticket to the knockout rounds. Come on Arsenal.