Injury/Lineup Update

By: Martin | April 15th, 2009

I did a full preview yesterday, but some new things filtering in today that merit a short post. First, it looks like I was right about Gibbs starting at left-back–apparently the gaffer trusts him because he is “an intelligent boy.” Well, Doogie Howser and Encyclopedia Brown were “intelligent boys” too, but I don’t know that it qualified them to start at left-back in a Champions League quarterfinal. It’s a tough task for the young man, who will be the youngest member of the starting squad today, but hopefully he’s up to it. For what it’s worth, I think trusting him is a better option than inserting Eboue or Song into the backline and shifting someone else to play out of position.

The biggest news, though, is that despite playing for roughly half an hour as a substitute in the Wigan game, there is still a concern about van Persie’s groin, and he will undergo a fitness test ahead of the game to see if he’s able to go. If he can, he’ll almost certainly start alongside Adebayor; if not, Wenger has two options.

(1) Start Bendtner or Eduardo alongside Adebayor. The problem is that Eduardo is just coming back from a groin injury himself, and probably isn’t match-fit, although he’s a much better complement to Adebayor than Bendtner, who’s a similar type of player. (2) Play Denilson and Song in the center of the field (Wenger has said that Diaby will be in the squad but will not start) and move Cesc behind the striker in sort of a Gerrard/Lampard role. But when we’ve tried that recently we’ve struggled to trouble the opposition, and Cesc has been much more effective in the deep-lying distribution role. In the Wigan game, the floodgates didn’t really open for us until van Persie came on for Denilson and Cesc got to drop back into his preferred midfield role, and we proceeded to score 3 goals in less than half an hour. Either option is far worse than having Robbie in the squad, so here’s hoping he’s able to go–if he could even just make it past half-time and be subbed off for Bendtner, Eduardo, or Vela, that has to be our preferred option.

But we’ll know soon enough, I suppose. Come on Arsenal.