The season starts tonight when Arsenal visits Fc Twente in the Uefa Champions league 3rd qualifying round. Hampered by an injury hit midfield, Wenger may be forced to hand Aaron Ramsey his first competitive start.

There is the usual amount of doom and gloom surrounding the club, this time stemming from our extensive injury list.

• P Senderos - Hamstring Injury - no return date
• K Toure - Hip/Thigh Injury 16th Aug 08
• C Fabregas - Hamstring Injury 23rd Aug 08
• S Nasri - Knee Injury 16th Aug 08
• V Diaby - Thigh Muscle Strain 13th Sep 08
• E Da Silva - Broken Leg Dec 08
• T Rosicky - Hamstring Injury 27th Sep 08

Fc Twente has had a good pre-season (8-1-0) under McClaren, while he is reviled in England here the Twente fans are so far quite pleased with his methods and results.

In McClaren, Twente has a manager that has always sought to improve his coaching education, spending much of his time after the England job, visiting teams abroad observing and learning coaching skills and techniques from different countries.

Despite our last meeting with McClaren ending up in a 7-0 rout, his team has always gven us a hard time. Considering the travelling squad, I think we will get the same hard time.

My guess at the line-up tonight would be

Almunia
Sagna - Djourou - Gallas - Clichy
Eboue - Denilson - Ramsey - Vela
Adebayor - V. Persie

Of course Eboue shouldn’t really be in, but given he is Wenger’s lovechild he must be included.

Everyone understands the importance of getting through this stage of the UCL, and while it will not be easy, the squad has enough quality in there to prevail in the end.

Final score 0-2

What do you think?

Tags: Arsenal, Arsenal FC, Fc Twente, UEFA Champions league

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 17:07 and is filed under Match previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.