Football is back with arsenal!

The king is dead Long lives the King
First of all what a summer that was??? I think no arsenal fan will be able to forget about 2007 summer, I know I won't. The king of Highbury is gone to the Nou Camp, long live King Robin! We lost the all time leading scorer of the club when nobody would have thought it. Well that's football for you.
Life after Vavavooom
Now we are heading for the 2007/2008 campaign without the charismatic, moody, nice guy who always banged goals for us. Henry's gone, Freddie is off after Vieira and Pirés left earlier, so now the invincibles page is completely turned. We are facing a new era, a new team, a new ARSENAL. This summer we signed three 'senior players' : Fabianski(a polish goalkeeper), Bakary Sagna( a french right back) and Eduardo DUDU Da Silva(a brazilian born croatian dazzling striker). If the pre-season is anything to go by we may very well surprise a few. But saying that it is very unusual for us, arsenal, to start a season and winning is the only way we would surprise! It is insane to say the least. What we know is to go to a season favourites for the league and favourites for the CL. But this time it is all like : "We will surprise all by challenging!" What the...??? Is this really Arsène's Arsenal really. Well I am afraid it is and not many gunners seem too worried about the situation. It shows in terms of reputation we have hit rock bottom what is it like in terms of potentiel an football? One thing for sure is until the season starts no matter how good a team seems to be it is all reputation and potentiel and thankfully only results on the pitch will matter. So like everybody I willl talk of formations, potentiels and chances for arsenal facing the new season.
Wenger had tested a lot of things during pre-season giving some glimpses about the new look arsenal. First we saw our classic 4-4-2 formation with Ade-Van Persie up front during the first warm-up games. We also saw the formation with Eduardo-Bendtner as well as Eduardo-Van Persie lined up as the two strikers. But noticeably we have seen, a 4-4-1-1 formation with Hleb in the hole, and Eboue as right back, formation in which the boss seems to have a lot of trust. In this formation however, it is so difficult not to worry about the source of goals. With one striker one can argue the goal threats seem limited but what is to really appreciate about this formation is the goal scoring chances we create and the matter which we create them. What is interesting is we create goal chances in so many ways that to me this looks very promising : we finally get the ball back from opponents half to have a go at them, we can build slowly, we can hit teams on the counter as efficiently as ever, and the lone striker is not having his back on goal trying to hold the ball for midfielders to join, no no nope, the midfielders bring the ball with them and make it easy for him to move well and get the ball where he wants; and our possession is even higher and the team more, much more compact making it harder to hit us be it with long ball or counter attack. It is a nice formation and I am very interested to see how it will go though I believe we may only see it in Europe and big games.
Let's see what it will be like when fulham visits the Emirates this sunday 11:00 (GMT Dakar Time). Ade is possibly out, Gilberto is definately out and some players may well be short of fitness : Cesc, Walcott, Rosicky. I still believe the team may look like this :

---------------Lhehman

Sagna--Gallas----Toure----Clichy

Eboue---Cesc----Denilson--Rosicky

-----------Hleb

-----------Van persie

or

---------------Lhehman

Sagna--Gallas----Toure----Clichy

Eboue---Cesc----Denilson---Hleb

------Van Persie--Eduardo

Either way it will be a great match and I can't wait.

Come on ARSENAL! 5-1 to the arsenal, anyone??