Gunners Determined To Make Birmingham Sing The Blues

There’s the next 3 points to collect out of the remaining 21. Birmingham City have done fairly well this season and have the second best defensive record at home, shipping only 10 goals so far.

Alex McLeish’s boys have already relieved Chelsea and Manchester United off 2 points each at St. Andrews, and there’s nothing to suggest that it’s going to be easy for the Arsenal today.

The recent history between the two clubs has been highly publicized in the last few days, especially since Eduardo is likely to play at the ground where he nearly lost his career 2 years ago.

I get the sense that Arsenal will want to exorcise the demons of Feb 23rd 2008 and today’s as good as any an opportunity to cross that threshold.

My fear is that Birmingham will resort to unsavoury tactics to try and stop the Arsenal as recent encounters suggest this is a pastime of some of their dodgy players.

I still can’t erase the image of Liam Ridgwell hacking Theo Walcott down and turning around to hi-five his team-mates as if to say ”mission accomplished”. The Birmingham defender recently did the same to McCarthy and wasn’t even hauled into the referees book.

It’s incidents like that which encourage players to live dangerously on the pitch as they get bolder and bolder every time they get away with this mindless violence and thuggery.

Arsenal must not be distracted though. Not even by the thought of Barcelona turning up in North London. There’s 3 points to collect today and nothing else will be acceptable.

The Gunners have become adept at wearing down teams and killing them off in the last 15 minutes of games, and this has all the hallmarks of being such a game. Birmingham on the other hand have been the worst team at conceding in the last 15 minutes of games.

There were doubts about Nicklas Bendtner playing today following his ankle injury that saw him substituted at the West Ham game. However, the Great Dane is likely to start as he is critical to Arsenal’s charge for the title.

When Arsene Wenger elected not to go out into the transfer market in January, a lot of noise could be heard with fans remonstrating about the fact that Wenger had placed his faith on the 22 year old Dane.

There’s absolutely no evidence so far to suggest that the Arsenal manager was wrong, and in fact, Bendtner has exceeded all expectation having bagged 6 goals in 6 games. I’ve suggested before that it’s hard to see how buying a striker could have matched Bendtner’s return so far.

Furthermore, Arsenal has statistically done very well with Bendtner in the team when we play mid-table opposition. In the 7 away games to mid-table teams that the Dane has started, Arsenal has collected an average of 2.57 points per game.

All signs are that Alex Song will continue in central defence with the suspension of the ’Verminator’. The Cameroonian ace slotted in seamlessly last week and is a good bet to partner the veteran Campbell.

My sense is that Wenger will go for a starting line-up of:

• Almunia,
• Sagna, Song, Campbell, Clichy
• Denilson, Diaby, Fabregas
• Nasri, Bendtner, Arshavin

It’s not going to be a walk in the park, but I would expect that Arsenal are professional enough to do the job that they were sent to do at St. Andrews.

Enjoy the game wherever you are.