By Boris Mellor
November 18 2006

Wenger is confident that Arsenal has not only shown they can beat the big teams, but can now achieve consistency. The new stadium blip is over, it just shows how high the bar is that three draws and three 3-0 wins are considered a blip.

 I still believe that a slightly better away performance, or two, would have made the difference for the title race. We are still in touch, but the pressure is on.

Wenger may be right that the addition of experience into the team will guarantee the much sort after consistency we lacked last season. Fortunately all the experienced players have returned safely from International games, however it will hardly have freshened them up for games on Saturday, Tuesday, and Saturday, three very important games in 8 days (Gallas and Henry were the only Premiership players to play 90 minutes for France, the rest played 45 minutes). The last of the three is away at Bolton, but just as important is Hamburg at home on Tuesday. The point of all this is that Wenger cannot pick a team just for Newcastle today, but for the very crucial week ahead.

It was clear at West Ham that the team tired in the last twenty minutes, I think Wenger made a mistake not to freshen it up more. I suspect he will make more changes this time, and it is rumoured he will rest Henry and Freddy today ready for Tuesday. Will the beast come on at last; who will replace Gilberto if he does not get back from Brazil?

Wenger will probably pick from the following Lehmann, Hoyte, Toure, Gallas, Clichy, Fabregas, Song, Hleb, Henry, van Persie, Baptista, Ljungberg, Almunia, Djourou, Senderos, Eboue, Flamini, Walcott, Aliadiere, and Adebayor.

Newcastle hasn’t won a Premiership game in 9 tries, they are third from the bottom, and Arsenal are third from the top. That means that the Tynesiders will be desperate and will look to frustrate Arsenal. One Toon player has already called for the Magpies to get into Arsenal’s face. But Roeder claims that they want to play football too.

Arsenal have three 1-1 draws, and three 3-0 wins at the new stadium, what will the seventh result be? Surely it can’t be another repeat score? Mind you 3-0 would do nicely.

Don’t forget to enter your prediction on the table.