Tonight we play Blackburn at home in an opportunity to extend our lead of the premiership after a great footballing weekend for us so far. Yesterday saw Chelsea held to a mind numbing 0-0 draw at home against Liverpool, and more importantly, Manchester United suffered their first loss at home this season. To make things worse for them, it was a local derby against Manchester City, and it was their first loss to them in Old Trafford in 34 years! This loss also broke their 13 match winning streak, which is their longest in 103 years!

Why am I mentioning this? Why should we care? Because it shows how good we have become. Even with a run of 13 winning games their best in a century, we are still leading the premiership! Arsene Wenger also proved himself a master in psychological warfare in matching Ferguson’s usual mind games when he said only 12 days ago about their one day trip to Saudi for a friendly:

“You can suffer in the next game as you travel, you come back, you need time to adjust and you switch off when you are away to a different country. So the focus could go a little bit and you can suffer.”

He was proven right with their recent performances and this result also must make Wenger’s words resonate somewhere in the back of Ferguson’s mind.

The day just got better later with the African Cup of Nations final ending in a very convincing win for Egypt, who proved to be the best team in the tournament by far. That Aboutrika guy is incredible, a midfielder with 81 goals in 128 games for Al-Ahly, and 10 in 33 for Egypt. He is a god to most Ahly fans and Egyptians fans overall, he was the main reason Al-Ahly went undefeated in 55 games in all competitions, a streak that lasted a year and half where they won everything possible, including the domestic league and cup and the African champions league. Aboutrika is a mix of Pires/Riquelme, not blessed with speed or strength, but incredible vision and reading of the game. His problem is his loyalty to his club, which is a shame since we don’t get to watch him against top competition continuously, and at 29, its hard seeing him go and start a career abroad.

Anyway I got sidetracked there, it was a good game with the only negative being Song’s injury which meant he had to limp off in the early minutes and was subbed. If he was playing, the game would have been different, I can guarantee that! He has been in excellent form for Cameroon like I said in my last post, and has actually been selected in the best African XI from the tournament. And just as a reminder, he is ONLY 20 years old!

Now to the game at hand tonight against Blackburn. We need to make up for the game we drew at Ewood Park earlier in the season, where Lehmann practically ended his career at Arsenal with a mistake from Dunn’s goal. It seems though that he will get a chance to redeem himself today with Almunia being sick. Our injury list is long and still hazy in terms of who might be fit just before the match. Alongside Almunia, at a worst case scenario, we could miss Flamini, Senderos, Rosicky, Djourou, Van Persie, Eboue, Toure, Song, Denilson, and Diaby. Hopefully from now till game time, we’ll have a few names back, hopefully Flamini being one of them.

Blackburn’s squad isn’t having any better luck for this game with their missing players. Players expected to be out through injury or suspension include Nelson, Samba, Dunn, and Pederson. Derbyshire might also miss the game with his girlfriend expecting to give birth anytime. Personally, I am glad that Samba and Pederson are out. Samba is a solid defenders who has proven his strength against us more than once, and Pederson can really whip in some great crosses. This still leaves them with Bentley, who is as good if not better in crossing than Pederson. On the receiving end of the crosses is the very dangerous Santa Cruz, who is very dangerous in the air, and is proving to be one of the buys of the season.

I expect alot of crosses and long shots from Blackburn, which means Gallas needs to be very alert, and it also means that if Toure is not available, Gilberto will more likely replace him instead of Hoyte, purely because of the height advantage. Hoyte has proven himself to be a very capable CB when he had to play in that position, and I personally think he plays better as a CB than he does as a RB, but its not a fair judgment since he only played there a couple of times.