Hope that you all enjoyed yesterday; I’m in the good books for not even turning on the computer until this morning. Business as usual now though and thankfully not another Brussel Sprout in sight until next December. Premiership football is back again with the visit to Vicarage Road to take on bottom placed Watford. Of the teams to come up, Watford have struggled the most seemingly missing the one component required to stay up: goals. Arsenal meanwhile are fresh from a six goal pre-Christmas blitz which would indicate a no-brainer away win. So a tight, closely fought match it is then.

Arsene will no doubt ring the changes for today, in midfield in particular with another two games in six days after this one, all against teams fighting for their Premiership existences. Eboue will miss out once again apparently but I would not be surprised to see Senderos coming into the centre of defence to give Djourou or perhaps even Toure a rest for the this one. But it is midfield where I suspect he will really ring the changes. Rosicky will almost certainly be relegated to the bench having just returned from injury and I suspect Fabregas and van Persie may well keep him company. Hleb will probably switch to the inside right of midfield with Walcott filling the wide berth. Flamini will pop up on the left notionally whilst Baptista should be given a long overdue start. Arsene must recognise the importance of Hleb instead of Fabregas as highlighted earlier in the season where the team struggles in the absence of a creative midfielder next to Gilberto.

My expected line-up would be:

Lehmann; Hoyte, Toure, Senderos, Clichy; Walcott, Hleb, Gilberto, Baptista, Flamini; Adebayour

To be honest, I am expecting a re-run of the Wigan game with perhaps a two – goal difference between the sides. It would be good for the team if they could procure that advantage by say the seventieth minute so that Arsene can maybe bring on others to rest some more of the players ahead of the trip to Sheffield United on Saturday. That is one reason why I do not expect to see Fabregas this evening – United are in good form and may well prove a sterner test than Watford. No disrespect to our upcoming opponents but the reality is that anything less that nine points from a run of Watford, Sheffield United and Charlton will be a disappointment for the team. With Liverpool going to Blackburn and Tottenham before entertaining Bolton on Monday, it is the ideal opportunity to get into third and get a couple of points advantage as I suspect Liverpool will get four or six points from those games.

In other Arsenal news, Jens Lehmann is apparently “relaxed” about his Arsenal future with the indications being that he will stay on for another year, a change from his position earlier in the season when he was believed to be viewing a move back to the Bundesliga. Whilst Lehmann is becoming more irrascible with age, there is little doubt that he is one of the top three ‘keepers in the division. I suspect Arsene would want to keep him on to improve the squad elsewhere in the summer but also bring in a younger ‘keeper and gradually bring them into the side as the German’s replacement.