Man City tonight; Meet the Oracle

Arsenal's bid to guarantee the fourth Champion's League spot continues tonight with Manchester City visiting the Emirates Stadium.

There will have to be one change to the starting line-up as Freddie Ljunberg is out with a hamstring injury. Rumours that his injury were caused by overexerting himself at his latest Calvin Klein underpants modelling-shoot have been vehemently denied by the club. Well no, not really... I just made that last sentence up.

Arsene will select what will hopefully be a match-winning team from this group of gentlemen:

Arsenal (from): Lehmann, Eboue, Toure, Gallas, Clichy, Hleb, Fabregas, Gilberto, Rosicky, Ljungberg, Adebayor, Almunia, Diaby, Baptista, Senderos, Aliadiere, Denilson, Djourou.

I think it will look something like this:

GK Lehmann
RB Eboue
LB Clichy
CD Toure
CD Gallas
LM Rosicky
RM Hleb
CM Fabregas
CM Diaby
CM Gilberto
CF Adebayor

Subs: Poom (ed. that should have read Almunia); Senderos; Djourou; Denilson and Baptista

This is what I think Wenger will plump for. I don't think Baptista has done anything to warrant a place ahead of Aliadiere but after the latter sat out the whole game against Bolton, I think that he is slipping further down the pecking order.

This Blogger still has high hopes for the Frenchman, so I hope I'm wrong.

Another man who seems to have drifted out of the first team squad is Justin Hoyte. I must admit that I feel a little sorry for Hoyte -who played for the reserves the other night.

While he may not have the skill of Eboue, his certainly has a far better attitude and I don't think he's let the side down once when he has played at his natural position of right back.

In other news, Cesc Fabregas has been nominated for both the PFA Player of the Year and the Young Player of the Year which is no mean feat as he hasn't performed as well as he can this season - which can be partly explained by some of the swamp donkey performances of the players around him.

Meanwhile, Arsene spoke about how he might have signed Drogba for Arsenal when the striker was playing in the French lower divisions. Pointless talk really, I'm sure the winning lotto numbers have passed through my mind at some stage of my life. It doesn't mean that I ever filled out a winning lotto slip.

Well that's it really...

Oh, hang on... my brother has asked for his opinions to be entered on to this blog. So welcome to a new regular feature of The Gooner Times.


On Theo Walcott's appearance against Everton:
"That Walcock [sic] fella is fuckin' shite. What the fuck is he doin' on the pitch with a broken shoulder..."

On Sol Campbell:
"Sol's got a lovely set of teeth..."
I have no idea what the hell that meant.

On Freddie Ljungberg and Sylvain Wiltord:
"I don't care what any of you fuckin' say. Freddie's shite. Wiltord's a far better player."

"Look at the state of Freddie wearin' that hat. He's always fuckin' lookin' for attention.

On Roy Keane
"Keane's always lookin' for attention. He's like bleedin' Geri Halliwell."

On Cesc Fabregas
"What the fuck did I tell you? Once Fabregas starts scorin', we'll be all right. Put that in your fuckin' blog. I want to be known as The Oracle."

More from 'The Oracle' next week. Or sooner, if he decides to impart any more pearls of wisdom.