Highbury House

Morning all,

Before we start I hope your Christmas Day went just how you had hoped it would and I hope Santa was kind to you and yours and for one or two of you, I hope your heads have cleared and your stomachs are getting back to normal.

Wolverhampton Wanderers today here at The Emirates Kick off at 3pm. Wolves are in 17th position in the league, while we are currently 5th.

17th position may seem a long way off the pace but we were there not so long ago and people had written our chances off, so this is not a game to take lightly, as Wolves will want to emulate the way that we recovered.

Maybe they will but for today we need to make sure that their season kick start doesn’t begin against us!

I kid you not when I say that we are not at our strongest but when are we? However, we do have a knack of getting the best from it.

Throughout the squad we have about 9 or 10 players out injured but talk is that we may start seeing some of our injured fairly soon.

As far as I’m concerned it’s not to say it’s not before time!

Our back line has been shuffled round long enough, our full backs had been depleted to zero, and we have been using centre backs to cover these positions.  We have weathered the storm well but what we have been sadly missing is creativity down our flanks and that’s because we have been without Sagna, Jenkinson, Gibbs and Santo.

Our options have been reduced, so for the time being we are only firing on half cylinders.

The players who have come in to cover have filled these positions admirably but at the same time they are centre backs and lacking that little bit of creativity that our forward players need to do their jobs right.

Theo Walcott and Gervinho have not looked at their best for the last few games which is understandable when you consider the players missing but as these injured players start to return, our situation will cure itself and the missing cylinders will fire up again.

That will happen in the New Year, just as some are getting a bit tired, others will return and give us that extra zip.

For today though, we need to rely on and trust in who we have and that should be enough to beat Wolves.

No resting players unless absolutely nesseccary, one or two if really needed but no more – leave the meerkat at home and let Chamberlain be ready to change the game if needed – and Yossi, well surely he has pushed Arshavin further down the team sheet!!

We have a good squad, an excellent Manager with good staff. We are a great club which is financially stable and the outlook looks very bright indeed, we have injured players returning any day soon and we are in 5th place.

As said, we must now push on, take care of Wolverhampton Wanderers and anybody else that comes our way.

Results did us another favor yesterday with both the Chavs and Dippers dropping points so today let’s make sure we capitalise, if we don’t then come May we could just regret it.

I have only good feelings for the second half of the season, everything is in place and it’s now time to go out and show the world what we are capable of.

I know we can win things, its time to go and do it.

COYG

Written by Steve Palmer