A Fresh Start – Arsenal Ready To Kick Start Their Campaign- Arsenal vs Swansea

The 8-2 thrashing at the hands of Manchester United seems ages ago. Since then the club has added players like Mikel Arteta, Yossi Benayoun, Mertsacker, Park and Santos while players like Traore and Bendtner have left the club, the latter on loan to Sunderland. You can’t help but get the feel of a fresh start and a new team to start playing from the one we witnessed in August. With departures of Cesc and Nasri and the defeats to Liverpool and Manchester United there was a sense of gloom over the club which seems to have now changed into renewed hope of a good run in the league and cup competitions. The International break couldn’t have come at a better time. The players went away for 10 days to reflect on their performances and also put behind the result at Old Trafford.

The International games also provided a few of our players to get back in form, namely Robin Van Persie who scored 4 against San Marino, Ramsey playing well for Wales the other day, Mertsacker and Yossi getting valuable match practice playing for their countries.

From the looks of it seems like Mertsacker and Mikel Arteta will have to hit the ground running in the absence of Vermaelen and Jack Wilshere. Call it poor management or bad luck we need to get behind the team now and make the (new) players feel comfortable straight away.

The break has been kind to us and all our players have returned in good fitness and no injuries/knocks as such. With 35 games still to play, the players will quickly have to get back to their best and start piling up points and get back up the table. I wouldn’t look too much into the results against Liverpool and Manchester United since those were our toughest games and the league isn’t won by beating you rivals, its won by how you play against the other 16 teams. Keep in mind Manchester United won the league a couple of seasons ago by defeating their top 4 rivals only once. So there’s still hope.

The team for the home game against Swansea should see a lot of debuts with Santos, Mertsacker and Arteta all in line for a start. We should get three points comfortably but you can never write off promoted teams at this stage of the season, remember Hull and WBA? So it will be interesting to see if we go for a win or we go out guns blazing and hoping to improve out goal difference.

I’m going for a 3-0 win to the Arsenal with Robin,Arshavin and Ramsey scoring.

Line Up Prediction:
Szczęsny
Sagna Koscielny Mert Santos
Frimpong Ramsey
Arteta
Chamberlain Arshavin
Robin Van Persie

Go Gunners!