Arsenal vs Olympiakos Preview

Top of the morning to yall

After the team’s first defeat to Chelsea on Saturday, olympiakos visit the emirates in the champions league as Arsene Wenger serve the second of his 3 game ban. The truth is that we cannot win in every game we play in the season but like I said in my last post, it was a wake up call and am sure the lessons must have been learnt. As for the fans reaction to the loss, it’s a testament of how quickly they can turn on the team following a bad performance.

The big news since the weekend was Diaby’s injury and the manager has confirmed that we would be without him for the next 3 weeks, which means if and that's a big IF all goes to plan, we will have him back after the international break.

Arsene has however pointed that it’s a chance for other players to show what they can do while he’s away.

It is as an opportunity for somebody else to stand up and play
We also have Ramsey, Coquelin, Chamberlain, Wilshere, it depends on if you want to be more offensive. We have plenty of players who are in between higher up and lower down in midfield.
Arteta can play higher and deeper as well. So we can put a deeper midfielder in like Coquelin and then Arteta can move forward.

He pretty much summed up his midfield formation without Diaby there for me. As I said in my last post, loosing Diaby early in the game was one of the reasons we lost the midfield battles and consequently the game and when he was injured, I expected Coquelin to have been introduced to instill some steel in the midfield but went for a “softer” Ramsey. Maybe he realises it now.

Coquelin: To stand in for Diaby? 

Arteta would also face a late fitness test and I hope that one passed. It would be a cruel thing to lose 2 key midfielders at once. So fingers crossed, he should be fit for the game.

I expect The BFG to come back into the side. The Vermiscielny experiment did not work out last Saturday and I guess the manager would want to return to his much more effective Vermisacker pair. Upfront, I expect Olivier Giroud to get another start. His last minute miss on Saturday consigned us to defeat and I think he’s suffering from a chronic lack of confidence and only getting goals can solve it and he can’t get goals unless he gets game time, and not -10minutes to the end of the game- game time. We have invested £12million on him so we might at well get the best out of it.

Mertesacker: To be back in the defence tonight

Tonight’s lineup might look something like Mannone – Jenkinson, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Gibbs- Arteta, Coquelin, Cazorla, Gervinho, Podolski, Giroud. It should be a really straight forward game but am sticking to my no betting, no prediction policy here but I’d say a victory for the gunners.

We have met Olmpiakos in two of the last three seasons in Europe and the head to head stands at 2 victories apiece. So history suggests this to be a straight forward victory but it wont be easy, we might have to grind out the 3 points. Any team in the group stages of the Champions League must be worth its salt so we will have to write them off at our own peril and am sure that has been made abundantly clear.

That's about all for now folks, if you have enjoyed reading this post, follow @NigerianGunners on Twitter and don’t forget to share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

God bless the Arsenal, iree o.