It's back to premiership action for us with Newcastle again coming over to Ashburton Grove, the second time in 4 days. After the blip at Shite Hart Lane, normal service has resumed for the gunners with our win over the Geordies.

The key for me in this one would be scoring early. If we do manage this we could be in for an easy ride, if not we could have our work cut out for us, but just a bit. We could expect more from them going forward if any of this is to be believed. The man at the Newcastle helm Kevin Keegan speaking about his teams attacking threat and Michael Owen in particular offered this:

Michael is nearly back to where he wants to be. He is looking really sharp, it is just goals now. If we get him opportunities, he will score.

Arsene agrees with Keegan in this respect and said:

Owen's sharpness will come back. He made some good runs on Saturday and got into two or three dangerous situations.

In this game he will be sharper than he was then. You see that the quality is there, but he is not 100 per cent yet. 

So Owen will be the man to watch out from by the looks of things , but he's not the only one not by any means. Despite all of this you would never expect us to get nothing but the 3 points from this encounter. We are on a bit of a high after beating them fairly comprehensively on Saturday last and I see no reason why today should be any different. You could argue and say that they would understand our game better and so on, but that works both ways doesn't it. And this year we have shown that we do have a plan B as displayed in the last premiership game against Fulham.

In team news ahead of this one we will have Almunia restored to his premiership start position in goal, while Bacary Sagna will probably find his place in the side after sitting out the FA cup tie on Saturday. We should also probably see Eduardo partner Adebayor upfront and Diaby take up Rosickys position and that's the only changes I see from Saturdays starting line up.

Speaking of our Czech midfielder who left the pitch early in the first half of our FA cup game against the Geordies, it turns out that he will be back in contention in the next "few days" and "not weeks" as feared. Also, there is good news on Kolo Toure who was injured on his ACN adventure with the Ivory Coast, he should be back in action in 8-10 days. The pick of the lot however is Robin Van Persie's return to training for the Arsenal. By my reckoning, with him and Ade upfront we should have quite a rollicking twosome upfront, wat say? But we will have to wait 2-3 more before this happens. More on all of these stories here.


The first story that I was drawn to today was the news of the FA Cup 5 th round draw, as you all must be aware we play the Manky shite in this one. This match is scheduled for the 16th or 17th of February and that's just a few days before we take on the defending champions AC Milan in the Champions League. Should be quite a coupla days for us don't you think? You'd have to say if we come through these two ties successfully, we would have enough to take on anybody and push for both cups.

In other news Cescy Fabregas believes that we should focus on ourselves and not what Chelski and the Manky shite are up to. Saying:

We will see what happens, but all we know is that we have to keep winning. We do not have to look at the others, we have to look at ourselves—if we win every game, we will be champions.

It should be a very exciting fight to the finish in the premiership, lets hope the boys can go all the way. Cescy also had this to say about RVP:

We all feel sorry for Robin and hope that we will be together again soon, to keep going as a team. It is not nice when you see players who deserve to be in our position as well to be out injured.

And lastly Le Prof takes a dig at Fergie and co here

And that's that for today! Come on you reds!