Eugh, this is becoming intolerable now, this absence of football. I don’t know why, but it feels even worse than an international break period. And there was even football on last weekend, which was supposed to at least keep me preoccupied until The Arsenal roll back in to town, but alas it has made things worse. I think it’s because we saw City gain points, Villa and the Scum may have dropped points but they still picked up something and because we weren’t playing, there was no right of riposte from the Arsenal team. Which then makes it all the more frustrating. It’s like if somebody says something to you online and then you are blocked from being able to respond – deeply annoying.

We’ll get our opportunity this weekend though and we simply have to take it. I have been listening to a lot of Arsenal pods, watching a wee bit of video and reading a couple of bits online, where there has been a few people looking at that Liverpool game as a potential season-definer, but right now we just need to hurdle the current obstacle of Palace before we get to thinking about whether Liverpool could end or kick start our second half of the season.

We’re hoping to do some podcasting tonight by way of a preview with a few Palace fans tonight on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this evening, but I’m not sure if they’re confirmed yet, so keep your eyes peeled if you fancy joining the team to discuss what’s going to unfold at the weekend. without wanting to go too much in to a match preview though, I do wonder what Palace fans make in general of their season. They’re in 14th position, they’ve won five from 20, losing nine and drawing six and they have a man in charge who even last time he left them it was because they thought his career was pretty much done and he was in retirement mode. Roy Hodgson comes across as a likeable football man, but his time as an elite manager is drawing to an end and Palace and their fans must be thinking about how long they are going to be able to keep him around keeping them from out of trouble. They’ve tried other managers either side of Hodgson’s stints in charge and whilst Paddy Vieira looked good at the start, they quickly panicked and went back to Roy when there was an unfortunate run of games. I wonder what they think ahead of games like this? And I wonder how they will set up missing a few of their big players like Ayew and Olise. They have the impressive Eze and that’s somebody we’ll need to keep an eye on, but I also wonder what Roy will be thinking ahead of our game, because Palace have an FA Cup replay this evening away to Everton.

In some respects that’s quite beneficial for us because it means the Palace players and coaching staff have their focus on tonight’s game and trying to get through it. So it becomes interesting to see how Roy approaches the game this evening. If they rotate their team then it probably doesn’t go down too well with the fans; they are in the competition and a cup run excites every fan who dares to dream, so going back to my other point with Palace sitting in 14th they are currently five points off the relegation places, it doesn’t mean they are fully comfortable. We know that money talks and there is money in the Premier League ahead of a cup run, but if Crystal Palace can’t dream about getting deep in the competition, what can they dream of? Their fans are surely not sitting at work today ahead of the game thinking “can’t wait to see us avoid the drop by getting to 40 points”. It’s cups that excite and so my hope is that they show little sign of rotation tonight.

Because if that is the case, then Roy will be taking a team to the Emirates that played on Wednesday, got back in the early hours of Thursday, probably has Thursday off and then is training on Friday ahead of a 12.30pm kick off on Saturday. You know how Klopp has talked about how harsh it is to be on the 12.30pm kick off time on a Saturday having played midweek? Well let’s hope that Palace have the same issues. There will be some people saying “why are you hoping for Palace to be fatigued? We’re The Arsenal and we shouldn’t need a leg up” and I understand that point of view, but I’m a marginal gains man and if you offer me any advantage for The Arsenal in every game in a season, then I’m taking it all day long. I want Palace to play tonight, I’d LOVE it if it went to penalties, then I want a rested Arsenal team to rock up at the Emirates wanting to correct the errors of the Christmas period and early new year.

And in that vein I also want to see Forest progress to the next round of the FA Cup too, because if they beat Blackpool away this evening, then they will be playing the weekend before we play them on Tuesday 30th January and again, if that means Forest have had less prep time and less time to recover for the visit of The Arsenal, then all the better for me. It feels like we’ve been unfortunate with some of the situations we’ve found ourselves in of late (teams scoring with minimal chances, or fortune going their way through deflections or own goals), so if we get a little bit of an advantage by playing a few fatigued teams and if that enables us to get three points by any means necessary, then that’s absolutely fine by me!

So tonight i’ll be keeping an eye open on those games and hoping they go the way that benefits The Arsenal.

Catch you all tomorrow.