Arsenal must capitalise on nervous Villa

I don't get down to the Emirates very often, but I'm going tomorrow and can't wait.

A victory against Aston Villa is particularly important, as the West Midlands club is seen as the only realistic challenger to the Premiership's top 4 tier - and at present Arsenal are still the most vulnerable to dropping out of that elite club.

Can Arsenal push on from last week and beat Villa? Yes, of course. The Villa players will be riddled with self-doubt having lost recent games to Newcastle and Middlesbrough, and if my memory serves me well, Villa have not beaten Arsenal in the Premiership for a decade, and not beaten Arsenal at their home ground for 15 years.

That might change Martin O' Neil's team talk and approach to the game, but either way the Villa players will know the stats and will arrive at the Emirates with a sense of trepidation.

Villa's defence has been leaking goals recently, 2 in each of their last 3 matches, but Petrov, Young and Carew may all return tomorrow - boosting their attacking options considerably and giving the whole squad a lift.

6 ft 4 in Carew can punish Arsenal more than anyone - for obvious reasons.

As for Arsenal, we all know they can beat teams who play an open, attacking game - and Villa are not typically a side who string out two banks of four at the back and try to squeeze out a result. However, O'Neill is a good tactician, if anyone is capable of exploiting Arsena'ls flaws - he can.

The big question, is what will Arsenal's line-up be? Well, Van Persie is suspended, Adebayor is unlikely to be match fit and Vela played the full 90 minutes midweek. I therefore expect Wenger to play the same team formation that beat Manchester United 2-1 last Saturday.

Arsenal can put their season back on track if they beat Villa tomorrow. Upcoming games against Manchester City and Chelsea also look difficult on paper, but it's becoming clear that these are the sort of games Arsenal can profit from - even if victory in all three seems improbable.

It's the teams that get behind the ball for 90 minutes and look to score goals from set-pieces that really hurt Arsenal, and that's the connundrum that Wenger has to figure out - what formations to play, what players to pick, and what tactics to employ to open up those defensive teams that Arsenal clearly struggle against. And Wenger should be doing better on that front, but as I've said many times - tactics are not his strong point and never have been.

What I would like to see from the first team, however, is similar effort to what they produced at home to Man Utd least weekend, and in that respect they could learn a thing or two from the reserve side that played against Wigan midweek in the Carling Cup. Those kids were full of hunger, full of desire and full of passion to win those second balls in midfield.

Until last week, Arsenal's first team has not been doing that regularly enough this season; they have been lazy and arrogant at times, not wanting to get their shorts muddy. Walcott, Nasri, Fabregas and Denilson need to WANT to scrap - not just learn to scrap. Are they willing to hurt themselves to get a result? Without that passion and commitment; the common basic necessity that every team that is successful needs to possess, they will never win anything - and they will also be cheating fans who are paying through the nose to watch them.

In other news, Arsenal striker Eduardo is nearing a return to the first team having re-joined his team mates in training. He will of course require several reserve games to fully test his newly-functioning limbs - therefore, presuming there are no setbacks, we can expect to see Eduardo back out on the green green grass in January.

As for Thomas Rosicky, the club has thrown some light on his injury problems and further insist the player will return to full action within 6-8 weeks. It appears that the formation of scar tissue was the primary setback to Rosicky's recovery.

There has been a lot of confusion regarding Rosicky's injury, some fans stating they never expect to see the player pull on an Arsenal shirt again, however, there is some ignorance attached to those comments. Basically, everybody heals differently from an operation, and scar tissue formation is often an unpredictable and unkown quantity. It can take time to build at an injury site, and if an excessive amount has built up it can reduce flexibility in the muscle, reducing blood circulation and sensation.

This leads to a weakened muscle and continued problems, especially for top level athletes. Deep massage is one techique to reduce scar tissue or attempt to prevent its formation, but in Rosicky's case it appears that a secondary operation was required to scrape off the excess tissue in order to solve the problem. Hopefully, if successful, and all indications post-op have been that the operation was a success,  then Rosicky's return to duty in 6-8 weeks is not over-optimistic. In fact, there should be optimism that scar tissue was the cause of the secondary operation and not failure to repair the initial underlying problem.