bigmick wrote:Well amidst all the turmoil, posturing and nonsense, I do hope that everybody concerned remembers that this is a very important game for us on Saturday. Arsenal play Wigan at Home, while Man Utd and Chelsea face the hardly daunting tasks of trips to Bolton and Derby respectively. I would have thought it was nigh on a certainty that all three of those will win, so we really can't be affording any slip-ups.
No doubt at some point between now and the kick-off the old chestnut about International breaks and "tiredness" etc will rear its ugly head, and the temptation will be there to have a wee feck around with the team. I really hope this is resisted. Torres if fit would be a logiccal reintroduction, but other than that I see no real reason (barring injuries I don't know about) to overly change the line up which has scored ten without reply in the last couple of games.
Hopefully we're over all that resting Gerrard/Torres stuff for away games now, and we can put all this speculation about who said what to whom behind us and get a result, and by a result it looks like a win is pretty paramount to be honest.
The best chance we have of ensuring the manager gets his financial backing is by staying in the race for the League title as long as possible. To do so we need to win games such as this one, and probably beat Man Utd at Home as well. It's all doable provided the players and management keep their nerve.
Mick, here's the team that played against Besiktas and Fulham:
Reina
Arbeloa
Carragher
Hyypia
Aurelio
Benayoun
Gerrard
Mascherano
Riise
Voronin
Crouch
You've advocated bringing Torres back in--a "feck about" that I think we all would agree with. On top of that, Benayoun's still out with his groin injury, as far as I'm aware. So, we've got to also "feck around" with the wide players as well. Personally, I'm not that concerned with preserving the momentum from our last two matches since a two week break categorically throws all that out the window, in my book.
FWIW, I'd line up like this:
Reina
Arbeloa
Carragher
Hyypia
Aurelio
Babel
Gerrard
Mascherano
Kewell
Crouch
Torres
And, if that team gets us a result tomorrow, I'd stick with it until forced into a change because it is, for my money, the best team available at the moment.
? 
Strong bench
