Week 20

28th DECEMBER 2010

Mad quick predictions today because I’m hungry and it’s 15 minutes before KO.

Should probably give Mark the grace of letting you know that I’m assuming he made these before yesterday. Even an old duffer like him would have struggle to say that Ancelotti’s egos have ‘turned a corner’ now!

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For anyone new to the party this is where we pit our minds against the greatest of all ex-moustachioed pundits to see whether the preddo’s really do maketh the man. Every week Mark will whisper his crazy predictions to a junior BBCfootball.com writer and we’ll try our best to beat him, or at least not fall asleep. You can see how [badly] we get on in running totals down the sidebar every week.

Think you know / knew better – have a go yourselves in the comments. You can’t be worse than those drunks on the cream sofa…or us.

I have to say though I am torn this morning between reading articles about how ‘Ruthless Arsenal have finally come of age’ or how ‘Chelsea’s dip has become a decline’. Tough.

"Mum! We beat Chelsea! Muuuuuum!"

Seriously though it was pretty universally acknowldged that we needed something special to turn our Chelsea hoodoo around and Arsenal really turned up with the goods. Early on we were finding our balance between controlled and charged with attack – though it should be said that this feet-finding was never sloppy, always contained – but as the half grew, we grew as well and the goal that started it off (that special Arsenal combo of scrappy and genius) was more than deserved.

It sent a tense stadium into something approaching delirium (if only we knew what was to come) and the whole-ground screaming which accompanied our every attack just before the goal more than qualified the bedlam that came after it. It was the best atmosphere I’ve ever seen at the Emirates and long may it last but it’s a two-way thing. Cheesy pre-match video montages sit much better when the game afterwards is as bad boy as it was yesterday.

The game wasn’t without the odd anxious moment but a deeply professional performance from Arsenal saw that chances of any genuine importance didn’t really get to materialise. We harried and Chelsea’s rhythm curdled. Even then though the crowd should be forgiven for their nerves after half-time, 1-0 up has been meat and drink to opposition in the past, but if they jogged out late then the first breath of the 2nd half dispelled any sense that we were going to stand off. The moment Chelsea kicked off Cesc sprinted into the ball – it mimicked a certain goal from kick-off in a North London derby last season – and set the attitude which won it for us yesterday. Our. Park. Our. Ball!

Admittedly after the two goals had put us in cloud cuckoo land Arsenal had times when we struggled to keep posession. Especially after the goal was conceded a anxiety fed some breathlessness in us keeping possession and you got some sense in the last half hour that the team tired, perhaps emotionally more than anything else. But we held out and could have had a fourth had Nasri been alive to it and Diaby put a bit more behind his chance. Chelsea’s lack of cohesion in attack was not all their own making, however much we should enjoy eulogising their brave loyal title-challenge, it was just as much to our credit that they never got going – we didn’t let them.

Now, inevitably talk turns to whether we can keep this up. Let’s be clear, yesterday isn’t yet the beginning of a title-challenge, it’s a credible place from which to mount one and a great psychological statement of intent. Crucially for the fans and the collective emotions, it was a step forward that was directly of our own making – not as a result of other’s slippage. If someone’s going to win the league that’s what they need, to step up and start excelling on their own terms.We’ve hinted that if we meet our potential in effort and confidence then we can do that but we all knew that already didn’t we. It’s doing the do that counts and doing it consistently.

Which is no small feat because this little fortnight off is now followed by a punishing schedule of games. It’s only just over a week until we play City next Wednesday but before then we’ve got to play Wigan away (remember that one?) and Birmingham at St Andrews. not easy fixtures and it’s a breathless schedule but it’s the kind of challenge you should hunger for if you’re really going to win titles. It’s also a pretty perfect time for us to face an onslaught. We’re high on positivity and belief and given that Chamakh & Andrey effectively will have had 2 and a half week’s breather means we shouldn’t be hungover in attack either.

Finally, a word to the Chelsea fans. In good song as you’d expect, they could be forgiven for wanting to pre-empt a few chants against their brave loyal men but they really set a tone with singing about Jack Wilshere hitting girls. Not being funny or anything but, I’m sure he doesn’t. It’s just not accepted wisdom guys. Neither is Robin van Persie really consistently still thought of as a rapist. From where I was sitting we went pretty easy on their players, brave loyal John Terry (definitely the best professional fouler I’ve ever seen play) included. Kudos for returning ‘Stand up for the Arsenal’ with ‘Stand up for the Champions’ but did you all need to leave so quickly before the end? Apart, of course, from the bright sparks who wanted to have a scuffle outside the stadium. Honestly, they’re a classy bunch.

Still, the tears of South Londoners got drowned out pretty quickly when you’re under the Hornsey road railway bridge and someone starts singing…

ONE TEAM IN LONDON!………

Well, we’ve redemonstrated a professionalism against smaller teams away from home, dropping impressively few points there (Sunderland draw is the only one that springs to mind). These have generally been matches won in scrappy circumstances through a bloody-mindedness learned last season in those last minute defeats of Wolves and Hull et al. Such doggedness is s a welcome string to our bow even if the obvious counterpoint is that we’re often only in the position of needing to scrape such wins because of the same old inadequacies. Tellingly though, there’ve been few if any overwhleming wins in the league. Games where we were really just too much to contain. (City perhaps, though the old red card helped there). It’s evocative of a below par season on the whole. Make no mistake whoever wins the league this year can only claim to have been significantly the best for the second half of the season at most because this first period has been the footballing equivalent of a hung parliament.

Arsenal have fluffed their lines on the few big ocassions they had to claim a stranglehold on things – most obviously two weeks ago at Old Trafford – and failed to make their away form count for something by displaying  a bamboozling self-destructive streak at home. Newcastle, West Brom and Tottenham have all beaten us at the Emirates in seriously disappointing fashion and we’ve lost away to the usual suspects. 3rd place behind City sits uneasily in the gut for all sorts of reasons but it’s just about fair a reflection of how off-the-boil everyone’s been that we’re making the hairdresser look good.

As usual, and perhaps understandably, it’s the disappointment in the big games that’s taking centre stage. Tonight’s another one of those and, speaking as someone who schlepped up to Manchester, I know how stomach churning the big disappointments can be. At Chelsea we were the victims of circumstance a little but at Utd we were shaky, hesitant and got thoroughly dealt with. Old Trafford was a game drenched in lethargy. Without drudging through too much acrimony we can’t play like we did then (anodyne, toothless, first half, blustering but ineffective second) against Cheslea and expect to get anything apart from what we’ve got used to in the last few years.

On the other hand, our game at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season had green shoots to cling on to. There was enough verve and steel to the way we played to suggest we could well edge them at home and the fact that we were undone that day by moments of madness feels a sign that if we cut the dicky moments out of our game and keep the attacking intent then we might just find a balance that works. Perhaps I’m conveniently overlooking the fact we still didn’t score but it mimicked Utd away last season in that lingering sense of generally outplaying the opposition but still losing. Yet, in Manchester two week’s ago? There were less defensive shockers but there was also a withering lack of that verve, intent and belief too.

What to say then. Can we beat Chelsea? Of course. Do we really know which Arsenal team will turn up tonight…not so sure.

It’s an uncomfortable irony that among the incredible things  Wenger has imbued into this young team, the mind control of a winning mentality has not been one of them.

That’s often the real source of frustration among fans I’d say. It’s less that the players simply aren’t good enough and more that they don’t yet have the leadership/professionalism/confidence/inclination (who knows!?) to galvanise their talent into a game that’s really hard to beat. On paper we could easily be a title-winning side. On performance we’re far from it. It’s a mental thing as everyone keeps saying but our tactical idealism also makes it an uphill struggle. Never playing to stop the opposition means that we’re one-sided mentally – defending our inconvenient cousin. Often even when we win, we’re more than beatable. Being impregnable is always less of a concern than unlocking the opposition, playing our game, etc etc. Such is our philosophy that these guys play with the burden of beating the opposition by art rather than craft.

Would we really want it any other way?

I’m lucky enough to be going to this game too, so seeing as it’s getting dark outside in N4 that’s enough navel-gazing for now I think.

A win tonight would be something really special. The fans are due one, the team are due one and if we do everything right Chelsea are more than beatable. Let’s not let this slip away by stumbling on self-belief which is why maybe despite all the above some good old bullish optimism is needed. Arsenal right now are special in all the most frustrating ways: brilliant, compelling, precocious but flawed, self-defeating, immature.

It’s an intoxicating mix, it’s why we’re still the best team to watch in the Premier League and it’s what makes hearts worth breaking for.

Come on you Gooooooooners!

PS. Ashley Cole stinks.

Week 19

26th DECEMBER 2010

The dearth of un-snowy games last week lent itself rather nicely to a small fightback against the evil powers of Lawro. Wrongly backing City to beat Everton at home looks schoolboy with hindsight. They’re probably the only worse chokers than us, or perhaps a certain Lasagne-blaming wannabes.

Nevertheless we’ve clawed back a precious few points and the disruption’s left the table looking perversely favourable for us Gooners. Two points off the top is the understandable mantra right now even if, ‘game in hand’, would just as fairly be a stinky Manc’s reply. I do wonder if the blue and red sides of the city (I say the city, I guess I mean 100% genuine [Welcome to] Manchester & Salford), are getting on better now that they’ve both been victim of their best players making it patently clear just what currency their loyalty’s measured in. Wouldn’t happen at Arsenal of course…apart from Adebayor.

Back to this weekend and I’ve got the biggest sign yet that the waters have a win in them for us against Chelsea tomorrow.

Lawro has predicted us a win

From someone as adventurous as he is, that’s frankly incredible. I will presumably have jinxed any good fate created by aping that fact here but bugger it, I think the vote of confidence from a sourpuss like Mark is exactly the kind of boost we need. This is revolutionary, this is new labour. Sort of.

As for the other games my thoughts are getting depressingly close to Mark’s these days. I’m putting that down to some part of having our fingers burnt by the flair preddos (though they’re great when they work) and also just having much more of a sense of the teams in the 2nd half of the season.

Thoughts before Cheslea and serial Balotelli bashing on its way!

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For anyone new to the party this is where we pit our minds against the greatest of all ex-moustachioed pundits to see whether the preddo’s really do maketh the man. Every week Mark will whisper his crazy predictions to a junior BBCfootball.com writer and we’ll try our best to beat him, or at least not fall asleep. You can see how [badly] we get on in running totals down the sidebar every week.

Think you know / knew better – have a go yourselves in the comments. You can’t be worse than those drunks on the cream sofa…or us.

Week 18

18th DECEMBER 2010

Some late-morning preddos to get us started this weekend with elated comment on the trip to Utd and thoughts on our clash with the Orks this afternoon to follow.

We beat Lawro by the narrowest of margins last week as a lack of ambition with Chelsea-Spurs and what turned out to be a foolhardy surplus of hope with us and utd came back to bite us where it hurts. Still week on week, a lead is a lead, as Alex Ferguson would tell you.

There’s not a great pick of ties this week until the big boys play each other on Sunday, a couple of scrappers aside. I’d like to go for another dispiriting score draw on the big match but a sense of revenge and pragmatism is leading me towards a Utd loss. Gifting Chelsea good wishes is surely the kind of bad karma that sees you reincarnated as a gnat but times must and all that.

Anything less than a home win for us against the chain gang that is Stoke is inconceivable.

Let’s take them to school,,,chances are most of them haven’t been after all.

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For anyone new to the party this is where we pit our minds against the greatest of all ex-moustachioed pundits to see whether the preddo’s really do maketh the man. Every week Mark will whisper his crazy predictions to a junior BBCfootball.com writer and we’ll try our best to beat him, or at least not fall asleep. You can see how [badly] we get on in running totals down the sidebar every week.

Think you know / knew better – have a go yourselves in the comments. You can’t be worse than those drunks on the cream sofa…or us.

Samir introduces Nemanja to the can-can

Arsenal head up North today and I’m lucky enough to be going with them – so here’s a speedy take on why despite the rosy outlook, now’s not the time to let a good opportunity slip.

We need to make this count primarily because the others are getting better. Those directly below us are thriving as much as us on the lack of an outright title contender. City are drawing with us on points – a nasty surprise which must echo the feelings of Chelsea and Utd when a couple of games’ worth of slipping-up brings your rivals right back up to speed. Spurs too, God love ‘em, are becoming a match for any team, especially at home. Even if I think that they and City lack the consistency to push for the title (says the Arsenal fan!) they’re another addition to the list of tricky away games which we’ve still got to cover.

And what of those who in previous years have been accustomed to finishing above us? Like dogs smelling faeces Chelsea have filed their 1-1 draw with Spurs under ‘unlucky not to win’ and to be fair to them it’s not too inaccurate a diagnosis. They might still have dropped two points (courtesy of a priceless clown-hero act by Gomes) but Chelsea are uncomplicated thinkers. If they see that they were close enough to a good performance then that’s what they’ll move forward with and with their big guns returning we can expect blockheaded determination to dovetail into an improvement on recent form. Rather than three weeks ago, I’m happy that Utd are playing them first.

And on the subject of everyone’s favourite has-beens – I’m not sure I agree with sourpuss Alan Hansen that Rooney’s back to his best but they’re starting to look like they’re ticking over a bit more than before. In some ways our big advantage today is the fact that we’ve done so badly against Utd in the past few year’s. Bear with me because I know that sounds like Guiness-thinking but I’m going on the logic than Utd really aren’t expecting us to put up much of a show tonight – or at least, they’re expecting nothing less than to win. If they are going to be complacent, which arguably they have been a lot already this season, then I think it could easily come out in underestimating Arsenal. They’ll have the comfortable victories for recent memories while we’ll have the gutting defeats. That should serve to make us the more determined team so as long as it figures into the Arsenal psychology in the right way (!) then I think the past form could be our advantage and their banana skin.

Of course the psychology is a game fans tend to play with themselves more than it actually manifests on the pitch. Mind games aside and tactics considered, what Utd really need to do is hit us on the break and stay strong enough in their half of the pitch that our pinball passing penetrates no further than the edge of their box. What we really need to do is come out with a performance that is as much about bossing the pitch as it is stringing elaborate passing sequences together, so that when we don’t have the ball, we’re not in crisis mode. Assuming that they’ll happily sit back we also need to be able to switch our play to sidestep an entrenched defence – a spot of crossing to Marouane perhaps – and NOT shoot ourselves in the foot with laziness or clumsiness at the back.We all know who the key players will be and for all the eulogising about his snappy hamstring, I think Cesc could make the difference today. We need drive, force, determination and all that gubbins. Training ground flair won’t cut it.

It won’t be easy but it never is. If we come out with a performance of the energy we saw at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season – with a bit less of the calamity James act – then it only takes a more efficient front line for us to come away with the points. Efficiency of course, has never been this team’s strong point but today is a chance to prove that we can summon it when it’s needed.

Here’s to Rooney’s bank balance, to the Glazer’s overdraft limit, to Nani’s tumbling and Rio Ferdinand’s tweeting. Most of all though thanks must go to Patrice for being enough of an attention-seeking fanny to give us an extra reason to beat them tonight.

Come on the Arsenal!

Week 17

11th DECEMBER 2010

I can’t quite believe it’s true but we actually beat Lawro last week. Our, frankly incredible, 13 points weed all over his paltry 9. If I had waters that I could feel, I expect I’d be feeling that a mighty mid-season comeback is on the cards. No – not another 3-2 Arsenal slip-up in a crucial grudge match. Us, beating Lawro to the preddos league prize which, like FIFA, we both own, run and award at our sole discression. Or should that be digression?

Now generally speaking I despise the guest prediction makers they have on the BBC site these days. This is partly because it rather takes the steam (ahem!) out of our own little competition but also because the quality of guest is usually so dire. This week that is not the case. King of cool and natural born Gooner (though his dad’s a Utd fan I think), Idris Elba does to Lawro what standing next to an averagely sexy man does to Stuart Pearce. Well worth a look if not just to soak yourself in his 100% Hackney loveliness.

Back to the preddos with no delay and there’s an eerie similarity between our thoughts and Lawro’s this week. One can only assume that Lawro is aware of the feature, an avid fan, and has been carefully assimilating our prediction style so as to add a bit of flare to his own soothsayings. Replacing our flair with his discipline is probably a bit Benitez over Mourinho being as it really doesn’t get you points, but who are we to scoff at a BBC pundit.

Fearing egg on the face as he so often does, Lawro’s gone for a score draw in the big game of the week between us and Utd. I’m keeping it modest with a slight win (like Idris!!!!) but secretly predict a comfortable 4 goal lead by half-time. To us, ideally. I think Liverpool’s poor away form will count against them more than Newcastle’s national joke status. What with the over-righteous fans, bad owners, hugely self-inflated sense of entitlement etc, there’s not that much to choose between the Scousers and the ‘Toon Army[-like-pet] ‘ these days.  Also not enough to choose between Bolton and Blackburn for me. Fat Sam’s effective but Coyle’s got them passing which, around there at least, qualifies as a Ballon d’Or baiting miracle. Elsewhere me and Marky-mark share the same prediction for Spurs vs Chelsea, though I suspect for different reasons. I’d be happy with nearly any result there apart from one which sees Chelsea get the train back on the tracks. Dispiriting draw ideal, but if it takes a Spurs win to finish off what’s left of Chelsea’s crumbling unity then I’m happy with that too.

A strange chance to enjoy a whole weekend’s football without the sense of purpose that an Arsenal game brings so…

Here’s to games that we’re only slightly interested in!

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For anyone new to the party this is where we pit our minds against the greatest of all ex-moustachioed pundits to see whether the preddo’s really do maketh the man. Every week Mark will whisper his crazy predictions to a junior BBCfootball.com writer and we’ll try our best to beat him, or at least not fall asleep. You can see how [badly] we get on in running totals down the sidebar every week.

Think you know / knew better – have a go yourselves in the comments. You can’t be worse than those drunks on the cream sofa…or us.

Pat it's f-ing freezing! Get me my sleeping bag!

December sees us play Utd away and Chelsea at home while Chelsea play Utd, Spurs and then finally us on the 27th. It’s a series of games which could easily come to define our season and we go into it in a strong position point-wise. So why the anxiety?

Well, the fact that the Fulham win ended with us needing to run it into the corner despite looking like running away with it in the first 30 minutes, or perhaps to be more precise – the fact that those two things coming together in the same game is hardly a surprise anymore – that’s what’s worrying.

As has been covered elsewhere we started the Fulham game in pretty unplayable fashion. It’s a common feature of our attack than we make inordinately more chances than we finish but even by those standards the first twenty minutes were ridiculous. By the time the replays on the chance we’d just missed were done, the live action was struggling to catch up with the next one. And if the cameras couldn’t keep up, Fulham sure as hell couldn’t either. But it didn’t take a soothsayer to predict that the old adage about rueing missed opportunities was going to come true, in fact it’s taken more as an inevitability now that unless we go up by three or more, chances are we’ll concede and have to fight our way back in front again. It makes for some quality gallows humour but it’s only funny while we manage to muck through despite our cavalier streak. On the occasions we don’t, and going ahead is just a first course for a mains of frustration and dessert of disappointment (see: Sunderland away, the unmentionables at home), well in those games the joke joke runs a little thin.

Much is said about the spirit it takes to muster said fightback and less is said about the wastefulness cum clumsiness which means we so often have to. It’s a kinf of first past the post logic which is understandable even if it’s not the most rigorous. When we win talking about the fact we shoot ourselves in the foot seems moany in the extreme. When we lose it’s the writing which was always on the wall instead. And we know from experience that line is pretty thin. Had Fabianksi failed to make a, rather lovely, late save against Fulham – we’d be discussing the latter. So it’s not just a pessimist’s love of criticism that makes some people register complaints even given our lofty table position – it’s because they remember that the trick won’t work every time.

If we’re going to defend like that because we’re an attacking team then we need to score more of the chances we make in games where we’re fast and loose. If, in fact, we’re going to score relatively few of the zillions of chances we make, then we need to defend better. Doing both is a risky cocktail which might work against Fulham, but might well not against Utd away, or Chelsea at home – the games we need to do well in if we’re going to make this top of the table position count for something in the long-term. And I know this point has been laboured but it really is the poor form of the other two big guns that’s making our own patchy season look good. Not the other way round.

Now, I don’t think Arsenal are unable to change their game, and I stand by the perspective that in many ways we were unlucky at Stamford Bridge and the same performance again at home could see us win. indeed, the obvious counterpoint to all this doom-mongering is that if the results work out the right way, then who gives a toss how convincing we were but getting away with it is only as good as the lessons you take from it.

This year’s Champion’s League group-stage qualification – another ‘s’posed to be so easy’ – brings the chance to prove we can learn from our slip ups and make good on our tendency to complicate things by following through when it really counts.

The opposition aren’t in the same class as in the games which loom in December but in many ways the questions asked are the same.

So, while our fate is still in our hands I hope we see a Braga at home kind of performance and not a Braga away kind. Despite the notable away game hiccups, the European stage has also been a platform these players have felt comfortable and confident on which to show off and really take the opposition to the sword at times.

Here’s to doing that tomorrow then drawing Spurs in the next round and having a right royal knees up when we spank them four nil. On which note, big hugs to the guy behind us in the pub last week whose comment on Nasri’s second goal made my day

Well he’s the French Gareth Bale

Priceless.

Come on the Arsenal!

Oh yeah, the global conspiracy to overshadow wikileaks – FIFA voting systems!

Wayne Rooney's loss of form is attributed to SPACE JAM style trickery

The writing was on the wall since Triesman embarrassed himself to be thrown off the team. The English media were always going to go to town on FIFA. Why?

Well, why not. That’s what newspapers and Panorama are there for and FIFA are hardly make it hard to catch them with their pants down. What part of our national identity are we defending here our effective gutter press or our poor old big-money footballing institutions? That FIFA weren’t going to take kindly to being called-out is hardly a surprise, nor should it be.

The word flying around right now – ‘corrupt’ – is more pantomime than accurate. There’s no military coup here. FIFA are just money-led – a publicity machine. That modest, scrupulous bodies like the Premier League and the FA could find it in themselves to twist just being big money-lovers into anything more sinister is pretty weak.

The only thing we could be surprised with is the brazenness of the public reversals. The English football establishment rejected any integrity offered by taking FIFA to task offered when they pooh-poohed the Panorama doc. They’d prefer to think it behind closed doors but keep the rictus grins going out of the house for the chance to lick bum in Zurich. Then when the inevitable happened they turn on FIFA to try and claw back some moral high-ground. Depending on how much you’re into your national football it’s either hilarious or depressing.

Duplicitous? No. Unfair? Not even slightly. Because we’ve got better infrastructure? No one said that was the one defining factor. Because someone said they’d vote for you and then they didn’t? This really is playground logic.

England are the kid who expected his classmates to come to his birthday party because he’d got a bouncy castle even though he’d been a shit to them all year. Yes, it was arrogant. The arrogant part was thinking that you could just wheel out the three stooges and FIFA would lie down and fawn all over the England bid. It’s not that they can’t be bought on money and glam – they clearly can – but you can’t expect a half-arsed effort, full of rancour, which the country and the media only fitfully gets behind to win out just because you run the best league in the world © Sky.

The pity is that if the media and the cronies didn’t make such an embarrassingly-zealous hullabaloo about it all then less flag-wavey fans, myself included, could have got behind it a bit more. The best footballers in the world playing at the Emirates! I know we get that every week but as we slip seamlessly into finding some satire to puncture all this self-righteousness let’s perhaps not forget that the real ones losing out are the fans. It would have been great fun.

Provided all the tickets weren’t getting sold on Edgware Road for 100K training grounds of course.

Whoops!

Week 16

04th DECEMBER 2010

One of the advantages of publicising yourself in print is an opportunity to look back at oneself cleanly and without rebuke. Here’s what I said of last week’s line-up

Liverpool will smash Spurs this weekend, Blackburn, hopefully, will hold Utd to a draw at Old Trafford since Rooney can only score penalties now, but I’m not quite hoping that Newcastle have enough in them to stop Chelsea. Sadly, they’re cack.

Hmmm. Wrong on ALL counts there, so it’s no wonder that we’re just over 30 points behind Lawro. It was only a couple of perfect scores that saved us from a more significant humiliation. Such is the joy of a partisan predictions table I suppose.

This week I’m changing precisely none of my recklessness. A buoyant Birmingham will surely put a halt to Spurs at home and with Chelsea facing a wounded Everton team with the memory of Sunderland’s spanking fresh in the mind I’m hoping for more dropped points at the top.

Extra sick-factor comes this week from the fact that Lawro shares his prediction table with greasy ex-speechwriter David Cameron. It’s a nice touch to a week that’s been a bit embarrassing in the FOOTBALL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD stakes – more on which later.

On that queasy note I’m going to go for brevity rather than substance here and sign off with a characteristically sexy snippet from Mark:

Newcastle battered Chelsea physically at St James’ Park last week and then hung on for a point but they are again without defenders Mike Williamson and Fabricio Coloccini so Sol Campbell is likely to be picked again.

A physical battering from Sol. Now that’s something to fawn over.

————————————————————————————

For anyone new to the party this is where we pit our minds against the greatest of all ex-moustachioed pundits to see whether the preddo’s really do maketh the man. Every week Mark will whisper his crazy predictions to a junior BBCfootball.com writer and we’ll try our best to beat him, or at least not fall asleep. You can see how [badly] we get on in running totals down the sidebar every week.

Think you know / knew better – have a go yourselves in the comments. You can’t be worse than those drunks on the cream sofa…or us.