Preview Of Arsenal V Shakhtar Donetsk In ECL Tonight

With Saturday's victory over Birmingham and the controversy over Jack Wilshere's red card still fresh in our minds, it's time for Arsenal to move on as we play Shakhtar Donetsk at home tonight in group H of the Champions League.

As is traditional with the Champions League, we will play them at home tonight and then we will travel to the Ukraine in two weeks.

As the group stands, both Arsenal and Shakhtar Donetsk have maximum points from their first two games and are huge favourites to be the two teams to progress to the knockout stages.

The other two teams in the group obviously play each other twice as well and they both know it's do or die for them at this stage.

A couple of draws between Braga and Partizan Belgrade will leave both of them with virtually no chance of qualifying, regardless of the outcome of our games with Shakhtar. 

From an Arsenal perspective, a win tonight will leave us on the crest of qualification with three games still to be played and possibly allow the manager to rotate the team a little for the last few games.

With that in mind, the boss will pick his strongest team available to him tonight—I'm sure and his options are gradually increasing, as players slowly make their way back from spells on the treatment table.

As it stands, we are no longer on top of the injury league table at physioroom.com and it actually looks like our injury problems are going to be a thing of the past quite soon; having said that, I imagine that by this time next week, we will probably be on top of that league table yet again as is customary for Arsenal over the last few seasons.

Our biggest problem would seem to be in defence, where three of our first choice back four are still unavailable and the only decision the boss has to make is whether Gael Clichy or Kirean Gibbs plays at left back as we have no options in the other positions.

I imagine that Clichy will play and make up the back four with Emmanuel Eboue, Sebastien Squillaci and Johan Djourou with Lukasz Fabianski in goal. To be fair to them as a unit, Birmingham created very little in the way of decent goal scoring chances on Saturday and their goal came from a header from the tallest player in the Premier League.

Shakhtar Donetsk will pose a different sort of problem to Birmingham though, as they look to play a very attractive brand of football. Their team has quite a few Brazilians in it and any time I have seen them play, I have thought they played a similar style to Arsenal.

They have done very well to break the stranglehold that Dynamo Kiev had on their domestic game and they even managed a UEFA Cup win a couple of years ago.

Of course, the most interesting player among their ranks is former Arsenal player, Eduardo and I'm sure he will get a great reception from the Arsenal faithful tonight on his return to the club, where he promised so much before it was cruelly taken away from him by an horrific injury against Birmingham in February 2008.

I won't go into my feelings on the challenge that caused the injury but prior to that game, Eduardo was settling into our team very nicely in his first season in English football. He looked like the most clinical and natural goalscorer that I have ever seen playing for Arsenal and I was genuinely excited about his future with us, but sadly it was not to be.

His comeback from that injury was never really complete and his touch in front of goal seemed to have deserted him on all but a few odd occasions when his genius shone through. Towards the end of last season, it was obvious that his chances with Arsenal would be very limited and he asked for a move to try to resurrect his career elsewhere.

There was talk of him joining Aston Villa but to be honest he needed to get away from the English game and the culture of taking man and ball when you make a tackle being a good thing.

I genuinely hope that he finds the sort of form that he was showing before that injury but I just hope it doesn't happen tonight.

As a mark of the type of man that Eduardo is, he said that the most important thing for him is to get the three points tonight but that he won't celebrate if he scores. He said he respects the club, he had some great moments at Arsenal and he has respect for the supporters, the manager and the whole club.

If you're at the game tonight, don't forget to show Eduardo the esteem that we hold him in as Arsenal fans.

Back to the team that the boss will play tonight and in midfield, his options have increased just a little with the return to the squad of a certain Cesc Fabregas. It's strange to see him back tonight, considering that the boss said he was very short of making last Saturday's game; I suspect that he gave him a few extra days to recover as he believed Birmingham were beatable without him and we need to ensure that he is fully fit for some tough league games that we have coming up, starting with the trip to Man City on Sunday.

I think Cesc will start from the bench tonight and the boss will keep the same midfield that played against Birmingham on Saturday with Alex Song, Wilshere and Abu Diaby all starting the game.

I'm pretty sure that Marouane Chamakh will lead the attack, as Nicklas Bendtner has a long way to go before he has found his touch—such as it was, again after his protracted injury problems.

I would imagine that Samir Nasri play again play on the right but the big decision is whether Andrei Arshavin or Tomas Rosicky plays on the left. I recently decided to lay off the criticism of Arshavin as he was coming up with the goals and assists, even if he didn't appear to be exactly interested sometimes—but his display on Saturday when he was up against a very poor right back for Birmingham was very poor to say the least.

I know he played two games for Russia during the international break and maybe he just needs some time to recharge his batteries. As a result, I think Rosicky might just get the nod tonight, considering the fact that he was a genuine threat when he replaced Arshavin on Saturday and has done very well every time he has played this season. 

It still means that the spine of our team will be missing but Cesc will be on the bench and Tomas Vermaelen is close to returning from injury too.

That just leaves Robin Van Persie to recover but it's anybody's guess when exactly that might happen and how long it will last for when it does.

His national team manager wants to call him up for a game with Turkey on November 17th but our boss says that it would be a scandal if he played for his country before returning to club football after his injury.

I presume that means that we won't see him before the game against The Spuds on November 20th and that's still a month away. I thought we were told he would be back in mid-October but then again, the projected return dates of injured Arsenal players are more than a little flexible to say the least and he's usually on the far end of the scale. It's a shame because he is our first choice centre forward; when he plays, he is capable of winning games all on his own but he seems to play less and less as his career progresses.

Anyway, back to tonight's game and my prediction for the outcome. Arsenal will have to play a lot better tonight than they did against Birmingham and they will need to keep the tempo up for the entire 90 minutes. I think we can expect a free flowing game as Shakhtar look to play good football too and the first goal could well prove to be crucial.

Both teams will look to pick their opponents off on the break if they get that first goal and hopefully it will come to Arsenal. I'm going for a 2-1 win for Arsenal with Rosicky and Chamakh getting the goals although we might need need to bring Cesc on towards the end if things aren't going our way.

Finally for today, there's a quick update of the Fantasy League I'm running in conjunction with 11Gunners.

My team somehow managed to score a respectable 57 points this week—which is good considering the fact that only nine players actually played and Drogba, Cesc and Alex were among the players that didn't.

The league is now ranked 68th out of over 212,000 leagues and here's a look at how the top 10 in it stand.

1	Leave-Ma-Arcelona	Gurdeep Jugpal	63	496
1	Laverick 'N' Sons	Stephen Laverick	77	496
3	MahindraUtd	Ankeet Mahindrakar	72	489
4	DUO's Gunnerz	David Okere	50	481
5	GunnerBhoys	Dave Brown	71	473
6	Sura FC	Anand Wenger	69	469
7	RipRoarinReds	Cole Friedlander	58	465
8	Los Galacticos XI	Mark Conroy	64	463
9	The Bombers **	Brent Ghouralal	68	463
10	Lokomotiv Gav	Gavin Ball	54	461

I made a little bit of progress towards my goal of finishing in the top 50 in my own league by moving up to my highest position so far of 90th. Hopefully, I can continue that progress.

I also noticed that most of the players that I mentioned as essentials in any team did very well again this week. That's the lot for today.

See You Tomorrow.