Stoke City – Arsenal Preview

Stoke City

Position: 10th, 12-7-16 (43 points, even goal differential)

Home Form: 9-4-4 (31 points, +12 goal differential)

Recent Form: DLDWD

Last Meeting: Arsenal 1 – Stoke City 0 (February 23, 2011)

Back in action tomorrow as we travel to the Brittania to take on Stoke.

As we all know, this has become a pretty heated rivalry in the last couple of seasons. We have really struggled with them on the road — 2 seasons ago, they beat us at the Brittania, and last season, they knocked us out of the FA Cup and then there was the infamous Ramsey-Shawcross leg-breaking incident and Arsenal comeback.

And once again, that seems destined to be the talking point — most of the pre-match media coverage has centered around that. But I don’t have too much energy for it today — you will recall that last time we played Stoke, the site got bombarded by Stoke trolls pounding away at their keyboards with rocks and primitive tools to express their displeasure at what I had written. But it’s been over a year, Ramsey is back, and I’m more concerned about winning matches and trying to hang onto 3rd place than any of that subplot.

….

But you know I couldn’t just leave it at that, right? I guess the main thing is that Ramsey will start in this one. I expect he will not get a warm welcome from the Stoke fans (the temerity of the boy, to have his leg broken like that!), although it would be great if they proved me wrong. And they’ll give a warm welcome to Shawcross, because that’s the sort of people they are. I just hope Aaron deals with it okay psychologically, and the players on both sides don’t get caught up in all of it and just concentrate on playing football. And this effort to turn Shawcross into the victim is so laughably, obviously wrong-headed that I don’t need to say anything more about it. Much of the talk leading up to the match has been about the fact that Rambo has apparently not told Shawcross that he forgives him, and Ramsey has drawn some criticism for that. Look — I try to be a good Christian, and believe in forgiveness, but this is between the two of them and is no one else’s business. If Ramsey doesn’t forgive Shawcross, what good would it do for him to say so insincerely? And the bottom line is that none of us were in his position and had to lose a year of our livelihoods and see our entire career threatened and possibly irreparably damaged at such a young age, and if Ramsey believes the tackle was very reckless (as I do), who among us can say that he should be compelled to forgive?

Anyway, on to the match. We know Stoke, and we know what they do. They will be content to let us have the ball in midfield, but the will hassle like gangbusters once we bring it too deep into their area, they’ll tackle hard, they’ll try to hit us on the counter, and will try to draw as many set pieces as possible, where they can use their superior size and strength to cause us a lot of problems. We really do need to be much more careful than usual about kicking the ball out of bounds deep in our own half and fouling in our own half. We need to take the approach that they cannot hurt us from open play, and to let them have space and opportunities we don’t ordinarily look to concede, but it can be very tough to change your approach on something like that just for one match.

Stoke’s strength is going to be their defense. They’ve conceded 43 goals — only 6 teams in the Premiership have conceded fewer. And they are especially stingy at home, where they’ve conceded less than a goal per game. There likely will not be a great deal of goals in this one, so we need to make the most of every opportunity we can create. But it seems like we say that every week.

Sairax covered most of the team news yesterday. Cesc, Diaby, and Nasri are all out. Clichy and Djourou are doubts. Flaps is out. In better news, the big positive is that Vermaelen is actually, finally back, for the first time since September. Here’s my best guess at a lineup:

Wojo

Sagna-Vermaelen-Koscielny-Gibbs

Wilshere-Song

Walcott-Ramsey-Arshavin

van Persie

Bench: Lehmann, Squillaci, Eboue, Denilson, Rosicky, Bendtner, Chamakh

Wojo keeps his place in goal. Sagna starts on the right. Assuming Clichy doesn’t make a huge physical recovery in time for the match, we’ll get to see Kieran Gibbs in action along the left — I’m a big fan of Gibbs, but he hasn’t been the most impressive in action for us thus far this season. Koscielny will definitely start, and the big question is who starts alongside him. Assuming Djourou isn’t fit enough to start, the decision Wenger must make is whether to start Squillaci or whether to put Vermaelen back in. Vermaelen played a full match for the Reserves last week, so his fitness level must be pretty close to ready, and I think Wenger would rather give Vermaelen a return to get him back integrated into the side. And it will be very, very good to have him back, although I would caution that I don’t think we should expect too much from him — he’s been out of action for 8-9 months, with only one Reserves match. The rest of this season will just be about him getting back into the side and getting used to playing with his teammates, and then next season with the benefit of full pre-season training we can look forward to having the player we had last season back.

The midfield kind of dictates itself with the injuries — Jack and Song will hold it down at the back, with Rambo in more of an advanced role, although as many of you pointed out, there was a lot more switching between Rambo and Jack last week, which gave the midfield a bit more movement and dynamism. But I can’t really see Denilson or Rosicky getting a start this week barring a late injury.

And then up front, van Persie keeps his place as the striker. I have to think Theo will maintain his starting spot. And out left, Arshavin is the most likely candidate, especially after his hard-working, tough shift in the second half against Manchester United. Rosicky, Chamakh, and Bendtner are all available in reserves, but I think they’re more likely to see some time as substitutes than they are to start.

And this match is meaningful. We are not going to win the title, so put that out of your mind. But St. Totteringham’s Day should happen either today (if Spurs fail to beat Blackpool) or tomorrow (so long as we can get a point), and that will clinch a top-4 finish. And with Manchester City falling to Everton today, we are now 5 points clear of them, and they don’t have a match in hand any more. So a win tomorrow would take us 8 points clear and on the verge of clinching a top-3 finish and straight into the Champions League group stages. Which would take a lot of pressure off going into the final 2 matches. So let’s go ahead and do that and take some pressure off, eh?

That’s about it, really. This will definitely be a tough one because of the bad blood between the sides, although Stoke don’t technically have a lot to play for, since they are comfortably in mid-table and have the massive FA Cup final coming up on Saturday. In terms of how timing, we could have done a lot worse, but I don’t for a second think that they’re going to roll over and let us win. We’ll need to have a good match to get 3 points, but we can do it.

Come on Arsenal.

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Category: Arsenal News, Fixtures, Premiership, Preview, Stoke City