Morning all,

I’m sure we have all read thatΒ Brazilian side Gremio are claiming they are in talks to left-back Andre Santos. All depends on us being willing to let him go apparently. Come on Wenger, do the decent thing and just give him away. He is no use to us and it’s a chance to offload his salary!

What is with Arsene Wenger, he’sΒ obsessedΒ with attacking football isn’t he?

We have great technical quality and that’s why I believe we have such an important number of players that assist and score our goals.

Everybody is allowed to go forward. Everybody contributes to our offensive play. Because the players are quality, you find many of them involved in our goals.

To be honest I was not convinced at the start of the season that I would play [all the attacking players] together, but I am happy that slowly they understand each other well and we are efficient in goalscoring. In some games we score plenty of goals and we are certainly scoring more than last year.

What about everybody is allowed to get back and defend too, we don’t always see enough of that. In fact sometimes it’s our defenders on the attack getting us into trouble as they can’t get back in time or are caught out of position.

Maybe Steve Bould is having a quiet word, out of Wenger’s earshot of course. Last weekend certainly looked as if he had as we defended much better. Or did it appear that we were much better because Stoke really didn’t have a clue how to attack and nor did they try too.

Today should be a very different test, we are the away side and I’m sure Martin O’Neil will want his side to go for goal in front of his own fans. But they defend so our forward play will have to be at it’s best to break them down.

I’d take a 1-0 away win right now that’s for sure. Three points are three points so I don’t care how we get them today either, just get them.

Sunderland have had a few good results of late so they will be feeling a lot better than they were and they have a few good players who can cause us problems. Adam Johnson, Steve Fletcher and of course Danny Graham who knows how to score passed us, he did for Swansea.Β James McClean and Stephane Sessegnon can also cause problems on their day, so this is going to be a tough test today.

Team news:

Sunderland:Β Cuellar (doubt – hamstring), McClean (ankle), Cattermole (knee), Brown (knee)

Arsenal:Β Koscielny (doubt – calf), Vermaelen (ankle), Gibbs (thigh), Fabianski (ankle), Coquelin (hamstring),Β GervinhoΒ (rested)

Wenger said yesterday that Jenkinson, Miquel or Sagna would be the ones used to replace Koscielny should he not pass a late fitness test.

He also said that he hope the pitch has been especially prepared for our arrival:

Hopefully the pitch is good, the conditions are right and we can play our game.

We all know it won’t be but let’s not make that an excuse. Go out there and play the game we need to do in order to win.

That’s all that matters!