Gilberto to play in Siberia? Doncaster Rovers Prev

Coach
By Boris Mellor
December 21 2005

Well not quite Siberia, but Donny (as the locals call Doncaster) will be a good six degrees colder than London on Wednesday night. Its even colder in Donny when the East wind blow, fortunately a nice South Westerly will be blowing which will warm it up to balmy zero degrees.

Arsene once famously said that he was not just interested in players performances in the World Cup, but how they performed in some Northern town in freezing rain on a Wednesday night. . Perhaps Wenger is sending Gilberto to Doncaster to try his theory out. There again Gilberto might not get a full game.

Of course there is a lot of talk as if this is the Arsenal regular first team. You know the sort of thing "we know Arsenal are not playing well at the moment but we will have to take them seriously". If we don’t score headlines will proclaim the Gunners have not scored for 23 hours and ten games in a row.

However the pundits, or the manufacturers of football clichés, could put it another way round "we know these Arsenal youngsters can play, pity we aren’t playing the regular first team Rovers might have more of a chance". However Doncaster beat Manchester City, and Aston Villa; and the Rovers' confidence is high. Aston Villa put out a very strong team and still lost. Small teams on a run are highly dangerous; they can have more team spirit, and cohesion, than a mixed squad not used to playing real competitive football together regularly. Matches like this are a banana skin waiting to happen.

Some think Wenger should put a stronger squad out, but he will keep in mind that from Boxing Day onwards it's a game every three days in the Premiership . Arsene will still want to fight for that CL place; he will not risk too many senior players on the lager cup. The team will be selected from:

Almunia

Poom

Gilbert

Eboue

Djorou

Senderos

Quincy

Muamba

Hleb

Larsson

Van Persie

Lupoli

Bendtner

Song

Cygan

Gilberto