Berkshire’s finest will once again grace the nation’s television screens and will hopefully perform slightly better than the last time the Sky cameras caught them in action. Last time out on the box the Royals looked absolutely terrible in the 3-1 defeat against Aston Villa in March and unfortunately coming off the back of an embarrassing home defeat to Fulham, the Emirates Stadium is not the best place to strut your stuff against an Arsenal team looking to avenge their defeat against Manchester United last weekend that all but signalled the end of their championship chase.
Steve Coppell has promised to make changes to the side that fell to Fulham last Saturday and it is more than likely that John Oster will be the first casualty, with Glen Little poised to make his first start for the Royals since, ironically, Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham defeated us at White Hart Lane on the 1st April last year. It will be a much different situation that he finds himself in to that one year ago.
This time last year we had coincidentally defeated Fulham 1-0 at home and were sitting pretty in 8th place heading into the game against Bolton at the Reebok. What a difference a year makes. This year the Royals are faced with a similar situation to that of ten years ago, battling relegation, though I suppose it’s alot better to be doing it in the Premier League this time round than scrapping at the bottom of Division 1.
The boss has already decided he wants a positive attitude from the players because playing for a draw will only result in getting a hammering from the Gunners. I’m not entirely sure of what this will mean for the club who only seem to know how to hoof the ball forward and chase after it, hoping they will get a set piece in an attacking position (we boast a league high 30% of our goals from headers (11 of 37)).
Arsenal will be a difficult side, despite their indifferent form as of late, and I’m probably being ridiculously pessimistic but I think anything less than a 3-0 defeat will be a good result. Hopefully Adebayor will put on another clinic of how not to finish like he did against United, somehow I doubt he won’t.
My prediction: Arsenal 4 – 0 Royals, very pessimistic, I really hope I’m wrong but we made Fulham look like a top side last weekend and if we play anything like that this weekend, Arsenal will simply tear us to shreds.
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