Not a great sign, is it?

Our season kicks off in a few hours and we are already suffering from our first injury crisis. Put in mind our already thin roster, and this should come as a major cause for concern. Wenger did say last week that he only dip into the transfer market if we have another midfield injury …. and right on cue, Fabregas is out for the rest of the month!

So far we have Fabregas, Rosicky, Eduardo, Diaby, Toure, Senderos, and Nasri out. If fit, that would probably all our first team midfielders, and 1 of our strikers. Can it get any worse? Actually yes, With ManU almost signing Berbatov … Chelsea going for Robinho after getting Deco ….. Liverpool adding Keane …. our transfers so far have been 17 year old Ramsey and 21 year old Nasri. (spurs didn’t do too bad in their signings either)

Anyway back to the game at hand. FC Twente came in a very respectable 4th place last season in the Eredivisie, which meant they qualified for the Champions League playoff, where they breezed past 3rd place NAC Bredain with an 8-1 aggregate score, and then surprised many in defeating the heavy favourites Ajax, winning 2-1.

Those games were played at the end of last season, and since then there have been a few changes, most notably is Engelaar’s (the really tall player who dominated in the Dutch euro 08 team) move to Schalke. Their other playmaker, Karim El Ahmadi, went to Feyenoord.

This year in preparation, they played 9 friendly games, won 8 of them, and drew 1. The level of their competition in those friendlies isn’t really worrying for us. Actually the only decent competition they had was against Olympiacos (2-0), Ankaraspor (2-0), and Armenia Bielefeld (0-0), the rest was all lower division teams.

They recently hired ex-England manager McClaren as their new man, and it is yet to be seen if he will bring them any success this season. His record against Wenger isn’t the best, and what stands out are the 4-0, 4-0, 5-3, and 7-0 wins!

Their main threat will probably be their striker Kufo, who has a really great scoring record for them having scored 85 in 155 games, which is a very respectable 55% scoring rate! He was also the second top scorer in the Eridivisie last year with 22 goals, and was the scorer of both goals against Ajax in the 2-1 playoff win.

For Arsenal, most of the work will have to be done by our strikers in my opinion. With our second string midfield playing, our guys up front will have to try and make the most of the chances they get. I still don’t think it will be a tough game, and considering McClaren is in charge and his woeful history.

My predicted team selection -

Almunia

Sagna      Djourou      Gallas     Clichy

Eboue     Denilson     Ramsey     Walcott

VanPersie     Adebayor

I also think Vela and Bendtner will have a chance to show their stuff later during the game. I predict a 3-0 win.