I’m more than sure you all heard it by now. Gael Clichy will be out for a month and Kieran Gibbs will need to take his place this November, including of course the big game at home against Chelsea in the Premiership. Is this injury crisis a curse? I don’t know, but I’m sure it would be interesting to analyze it a little deeper as we suffer way too many injuries, many more when compared with other teams.

But anyway, Gael is not the only one, Nicklas Bendtner is also out and it’s a shame considering he did well against Liverpool and Spurs, in the few minutes he was on the pitch.

I predict an easy game for tomorrow. I wasn’t impressed by AZ when we played in Holland, it was more our mistake that helped them equalise rather than their determination, but no game should be taken lightly, right?

AZ Alkmaar

We all know they are nothing special from the game in Holland but also that they never give up. They needed a late strike from Jeremain Lens to win their last game in the Eredivisie but are still a long way from the top, trailing FC Twente by 14 points.

Favourite line-up

Now yes. This is a good time to start with Samir Nasri. It’s been a week since he was last in action and 45 minutes against AZ will be important to determine how fit he is. Of course, Kieran Gibbs will start on the left and to stand by what I said earlier this week, I would give Andrey Arshavin a rest and start with Emmanuel Eboue on the right.

Tomas Rosicky is back but as always, I prefer not to see a player returning from injury starting straight away. At a later stage in the game, I would also like to see Eduardo, who will be dying to find the net after missing easy chances on Saturday. The reason why I prefer not to see his start is that I still believe he’s not 100% fit yet, but he should be fit enough to play the second half and yes, find the net twice if you ask me.

Pre-match Interviews

Arsene Wenger is determined to end first in the group and the first step to achieve that is to beat the Dutch side tomorrow evening.

The Frenchman said:

We want to finish first in the group and that will not be done on Wednesday but we can make the first step, to win and qualify.

That will be a big step but you know we were warned at Alkmaar that this team has quality, that, in my opinion, they focus highly on the Champions League.

The Gunning Hawk Coverage

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