Will starting Giroud this evening do more harm than good?

By Avenell Dave

Shoud he play or should he watch?

That's the question we'll have to wait until later this evening to find out with Arsene Wenger giving little away about the fate of Olivier Giroud ahead of the League Cup game against Coventry City.

If strikers are all about confidence, Giroud should start this evening.

Against a struggling Coventry side who have just appointed a new manager and are in disarray after falling into the third tier of English football, it should be a comfortable night for the Frenchman to find his scoring boots.

But is it really the best policy for Giroud to play in such a game?

Watching him so far this season, he hasn't done a whole lot wrong. He's had a couple of decent chances that he didn't take but that apart, his overall play has been fine.

And there are so many risks if he plays tonight.

It will turn into the 'let's help Olivier score' show, with players doing their best to set him up chances.

If he does score, how valuable is it against a team 60-odd places below us in the ladder?

If he fails, the media pressure, which is already unreasonable, will continue to grow.

It doesn't help that VanPurseStrings is scoring regularly, of course, even though I remain convin ced that Giroud will score more than the Dutchman by the season's end.

He's also an important member of the squad, the only striker apart from Lukas Podolski (unless Theo Walcott gets his way) so if he gets injured by a clumsy tackle, we're streched just as we're gaining momentum.

From all intents and purposes it looks as if he will start this evening so let's hope he gets a goal or two and comes off with 55 miinutes gone.

This is actually a game for fringe players such as Arshavin and Santos to blow away some of the cobwebs and help use their experience to sweep aside our visitors.

I've put Chamakh in the team but it would be interesting to see Walcott in the centre to see how well he really can do in the middle.

I'm so conflicted about him. He does it for us in big games and I have a fear he'll do well somewhere else if he leaves us.

But it's fair to say he's never really fulfilled his potential and while contracts remain unsigned, the uncertainty surrounding him will probably not povoke the most supportive response from fans.

So let's see a decent, profesional performance tonight.

And no sympathy appearances for a Frenchman who needs the time to show what Wenger saw in him when he signed him in the summer.

Addict XI 

Shea

Yennaris Djourou Miquel Santos

Eisfeld Coquelin Frimpong 

Walcott Chamakh Arshavin

Does Gervinho deserve his place in the Arsenal team?

By Avenell Dave

It says it all about sunday's draw at Citeh that most Addicts were disappointed with a draw. 

Sure, the home side could have won it when Aguero fired just wide and they are always capable of causing problems. 

But yet again, our workrate, our commitment and our ability to cause problems bodes well for the rest of the campaign. 

Much of the talk during and after the game was about Gervinho, a player who really does divide opinion. 

Ungainly, unconventional and hugely frustrating, the Ivorian certainly lacks the elegance of the player he ultimately replaced, $amir Na$ri.

But when you look at the stats of both players when they first arrived, Gervinho doesn't look like a bad player.

Last season he scored six goals and created four more, while in his first season Na$ri scored six and created two others.

So there's not much in it.

Of course, because he misses chances, because he doesn't play with the efficiency and elegance of others, including Na$ri, he gets lambasted by some.

But if you watch Sunday's game at the Etihad, you'll see a player who not only carries on looking for the ball and working hard for the team (his tracking back is a symptom of the new hard-working, defensive regime) but also of a player who pulls opponents towards him.

That in turn creates space for others and while us fans have no idea what he is going to do next, you can bet defenders don;t have a clue either.

Arsene Wenger went with more solidity in midfield yesterday, added Aaron Ramsey in place of Alex Oxlande-Chamberlain or Francis Coquelin and it worked.

I'm forever banging on about how fine a player Ramsey is but like all others, he makes mistakes. Sadly he seems to be one who provokes more ire than he really deserves amongst his own supporters.

What worries me at the moment is that after a superb first half, we looked a little jaded, just as we did in Montpellier in midweek.

It's tricky making too many changes to a settled team, particularly when we're doing so well, but after the Ch*vski game, we need to rotate a bit more to ensure we keep the players fresh.

If you look at our title rivals, they all tend to do this and have done already, albeit with bigger, more established squads of course.

Abou Diaby, despite his brief injury lay-off, looked lost at sea at times in the second half and while his ability to retain the ball and dribble his way out of trouble can be superb, so too can his refusal to make simple passes or clearances cause unnecessary problems.

But it's hard to be too downhearted after a decent result in Manchester.

There is a long way to go in this title race but, hopefully, we've shown that we can compete with the other top sides and now we need to beat the leaders at the weekend to underline once more that we're in this race for the long haul.

Big Jens backs Gunners title challenge and the genius of Le Boss

By Avenell Dave

The football world is full of idle boasting and vacuous comments, declarations of intent and idle chitchat.

There are few players from the modern era who say it as it is, who make sense and surprise you with their honesty.

Jens Lehmann is one of those players and thanks to the folks at Laureus, the Sport for Good Foundation that uses sport to help disadvantaged children around the world, Lehmann, who is an ambassador, has spoken with Addict and a couple of other blogs to chew the fat about Arsenal, where he is currently training to get his pro licences.

Lehmann believes the German internationals at Arsenal have done a lot to galvinse the team and given that Per Mertesacker has played in a defence which has conceded just one Premier League goal and Lukas Podolski has scored a couple and taken English football in his stride, I'm not going to argue. He even thinks we have a real shot at the title this year.

Lehmann said: "No one thinks we are contenders for the title but Arsenal could win it this season. Now with Lukas Podolski and Per Mertesacker they have two German players who are very experienced because of their caps in the national team of Germany, I think they’re near 100 and still at a young age.  They bring some German mentality into the side which is based on discipline, work ethics and performances.

"Arsenal always had a great approach, they always made it into the top four with probably the smallest budget of all the big teams now, and so why should it not happen this year that all of a sudden, when nobody expects them to win something, all of a sudden they go on to win something."

As you would imagine of someone whose job it was to keep goals out, the former Germany international is full of praise for the new defensive resilience: "You can already see that there is some progress in that department.  And I hope that there will be a good balance between Arsene’s offensive mind and probably Steve Bould and Neil Banfield’s secure tactics which actually wins you trophies.  And so I’m quite optimistic about the current season and hope of course that Arsenal will win something."

And Lehmann doesn't blame the club for selling RvP in the summer despite the uproar that decision provoked in some fans.

"At the moment they are making responsible decisions.  When you see Robin Van Persie, when you see that a player wants to leave for money reasons and probably because he thinks that somewhere else it is easier to win, you have to let him go, particularly when he has only one year on his contract, and when he played the first season without an injury in eight or nine years, so that was an extraordinary season for Robin. And then to make a decision: do we keep him or do we let him go?

"The future will tell us, and what will come into place next year with the financial fair play rule. Then we will see how these rules actually come into place for clubs like Chelsea, Man City, who are spending beyond the budget and then it could turn out that clubs like Arsenal all of a sudden are far ahead of those clubs."

Given his ignominious rejection by Arsene Wenger, an ill-advised decision by Le Boss it's fair to say, you wouldn't blame Big Jens for being bitter about the way his original reign ended.

This is the guy, after all, who went his debut season unbeaten and then helped to get us to the Champions League.

It says much about how Wenger treats his players that Lehmann bears no ill will towards his former manager.

"Arsene Wenger is a coach who does not only inspire you on the pitch but as well off the pitch, because when you talk to him you are always finding it very exciting and you are always getting some great information about some other things in life," said Lehmann.  

"I think that makes a great coach as well.  And he made Arsenal, he bought and sold so many players with a fantastic financial track record, that actually the new stadium and everything he has built comes down to him and to his performance.  

"So I quite enjoyed working for him, whereas at times it was psychologically very, very demanding, and I still had to recover from that even years after.

"He just took me out after my second defeat on English soil, and that, for a guy who came there with his family and brought his whole life over to England, and being faced with the possibility to move somewhere again with the children, it was quite challenging.  

"I was arguing with him quite often, particularly when he took me out of goal, but then after 20 minutes of arguments we would talk for another half an hour on private things, very smooth and relaxed, so there was always a professional relationship and a private one, and the private one is still very good right now, and quite fortunately because I’m doing my coaching licence at Arsenal, and so I’m looking over his shoulder and they let me train the reserves sometimes and the Under 18s, which is a big gesture, and I really appreciate that."

Lehmann is the patron of a Laureus football project in Germany, one of their most recently-appointed ambassadors to use sport to help young people and he is proud of his contribution. He concluded: "Everybody knows when you donate something to Laureus it’s given for something good, and that’s what actually makes the reputation and when you see the amount of ambassadors and where they are all coming from, from all kinds of sports, and former world class athletes, you see how great, how fantastic a foundation Laureus is."

For more information about Laureus, please visit: www.laureus.com