Aston Villa vs Arsenal - Match Preview

Team news:

If the early team news is anything to go by then Arsenal will be strengthened by the return of Ozil, the Ox and Giroud, which they hope will offset the loss of Theo Walcott.

More importantly Villa will do everything they can to patch up (not so) "Concrete" Ron Vlaar and insist he tries to last as close to 90 minutes as possible to give us a fighting chance.  Let’s face it with Ron we have something resembling a chance with Laurel and Hardy aka Clarke and Baker at the back we are in trouble.

Likely result:

I am being particularly pessimistic about this one purely because we beat them at the Emirates, and based on our woeful home record and I am going with a 0-3 defeat.

Likely line-up:

            Guzan

Lowton – Vlaar – Clarke - Luna

    Westwood - Delph

Albrighton – Gabby - Weimann
        
            Benteke

My Preferred line-up:

            Guzan

Bacuna - Vlaar - Clarke - Lowton

 Westwood - Delph - El Ahmadi

   Gabby            -      Weimann
        
            Helenius

Quite frankly I have had enough of watching Benteke plod around upfront without any desire so it’s time to stick him on the bench and give Helenius a run out.

Helenius might turn out to be rubbish but if he is willing to chase lost causes and put his head where it might hurt then I say give him a go.  I would like to see both Benteke and Helenius play together but I don’t think Arsenal is the right opponent to try this.  Arsenal will pack the midfield with quality and leave Giroud upfront on his own so we need to try and match them man for man with numbers and effort to make up for our lack of quality.

If nothing else I just hope that we give the Arse a good game and there are a few yellow cards dished out for bad tackles rather than dissent.

UTV and let’s get the 3 points!! Stranger things have happened!