Remember Tomas Danilevičius? + Your Arsenal hero of October and Az Preview.

Phew. Where do I start? I know, I’ll start with a Lithuanian most of you have forgotten about.

I was watching (albeit very briefly) Inter at Livorno the other day. It finished 2-0 to Inter btw. Big man Danilevicius (6ft+) came on as a sub for Livorno. The name sounded familiar and then it hit me. He used to play for us almost a decade ago, although his impact was as brief and unremarkable as that of Bischoff.

Also playing that Serie A game was Vieira of course, who I saw once in those 20 minutes of tedious viewing. It pains me to see him play for Mourinho’s joyless brand of football. That team is proof that a global XI doesn’t necessarily equate to the fun we have here.

What, they’ve won 3 titles in a row? To paraphrase a quote by Brian Clough, they can throw those medals away because they won them all by hypnotizing the crowd into thinking they won it with sheer entertainment, thus cheating them.

Anyway what they do is their business I guess. And so the results of the Arsenal hero of October 2009 are in. It was close. ish.

31 % cheered for Captain Cesc but the winner was Van Persie who scooped up 41% of your votes. The sparking trio of Ramsey, Eastmond and Nasri only took 2 % of the vote. For the record, Vermaelen came third and Song was fourth. Thanks to all who voted. Do you agree with those results?

We’re back to Champions League football on Wednesday night against AZ Alkmaar. The away fixture triggered an unexpected but statistically expected dip. We can’t expect our boys to win every game especially in handsome margins. However, we are back at the home of football so I fully expect our style and substance to end Koeman’s freaky little run against Arsenal and English sides in general.

In case you don’t already know, the negatives are that Bendtner and Clichy are out. For a while. The Dane has a groin injury while the Frenchster’s back problem has flared up again. Walcott is also out as is Denilson and Fabianski.

The good news. It’s very good. Rosicky is back in the squad as is Nasri I think. The additions of these two will aid the attack-defense balance. Our possession game is also helped if either one of them plays. I forsee them featuring at some point against Koeman’s team.

There aren’t any further injuries so the rest of the team picks itself really. I’m going for a 2-0 win to seal the qualification. Then we can sit back and watch the reserves for the other two remaining matches.