Blimey am I not a fan of these Sunday 1.30pm kick offs. It’s a ruddy pain in the derrière if I’m completely honest. After all, Sunday’s should be solely for sleeping in and recovering from any said hangover that one might have. Particularly if Arsenal have won from a 3pm kick off on a Saturday. Sleeping and terrible TV. That’s what Sunday’s should be about.

Still, rather than be accused of being ungrateful for what I’ve got, I should be thankful that I get to go in the first place. Which I am. Many cannot, I am privileged to be able to, even though I certainly pay my pretty pennies for it.

Listen to me, moaning away like some sort of grizzled old prospector who hasn’t found a single ounce of the yellow stuff in months. Today is a happy day! Or at least, it is for now as we all prepare for the game this afternoon against the Orcs of Stoke. Should we be victorious in battle (and I’m sure it will be a battle), we will leapfrog the Spuds and be right on the coat tails of Southampton, so perhaps there is cause for optimism rather than grumbliness.

There’s optimism too on the injury front. We’ve got a trio of midfielders returning in the shape of Ramsey, Özil and Flamini and I suspect we’ll see at least one of those players start. I couldn’t be 100% sure who that would be, but if I was forced under duress to pick one, I’d go with Ramsey. He’s the only player who’s position hasn’t seen a colleague step up and perform well in, so with Santi’s and Le Coq’s form being as it is, I expect those two to accompany Rambo in the heart of our team.

The defence should pick itself and, you’d have to think that Szczesny will start. I know there’s been a lot of talk about Ospina, as well as Wojciech’s attitude, but his attitude hasn’t suddenly changed overnight from the Southampton game. He’s always been viewed as a little bit arrogant and so I’d be surprised if Arsene bought Ospina in for today’s match up. If he does play, as The Arseblogger said on his Friday Arsecast, I think there’s more to this smoking story than meets the eye. Players had smoked before, but to be booted out of the team like that would point to something else in my opinion. There will be those of you probably saying now “yes, but he was terrible against Southampton so that might be why he could be dropped” and I understand that line of thinking, but the game before against West Ham he was excellent, so I don’t think Arsène would drop players on the basis of one game. He’ll look at it over a series of games and so far you can hardly say Szczesny has gone all ‘Almunia’ on us, can you?

The front three will be an interesting one to pick. Alexis and Giroud come straight in I think, but who occupies that third space? For me, as much as I’m loving the longer term prospect of Walcott and Alexis’ pace in our front three, I would give The Ox the nod this lunchtime. My thinking here is that the Ox is better with the ball at his feet. He’s a better dribbler and will be able to beat a man. Let’s not pretend that Stoke will come here today and be anything other than very compact and sit deep. They will hope to give us possession in front of them and not allow any space in behind their defence by sitting deep. Theo is a player that is unplayable when there is plenty of grass to run in to, but if teams sit deep, I’ve seen him struggle at times.

Last week against Hull was the perfect game for him because it was a knockout competition. Hull got nothing from sitting back and keeping it to 1-0 and so there was naturally more space for Theo. He got more chances as a result and if he had been back a few weeks earlier and already had a few games under his belt, I think he would have cleaned up. But I can’t see him getting that much joy today.

The Ox can be a little bit wasteful at times, but he is better operating in smaller amounts of space and so that’s who I would pick. The good news is that with so many players returning, we have plenty of options from the bench should the afternoon not go the way we are hoping it will.

This will be a tough game. It always is against that lot. They will rely on Arnautovic and Bojan to hit us on the counter and Mark Hughes will want to see Crouch holding the ball up as much as possible to bring those runners in to play.

If you look at both teams you say this is a home banker. But we are the patchiest form team in the league. Every game this season that I’ve rocked up at home has been a case of shrugged shoulders when somebody asks me over a pre-match pint ‘what’s the score going to be?’. I have no idea. We could win this by three goals (unlikely), or we could labour to a draw, or just as easily get done over by the one shot Stoke have in the entire game. Your guess is as good as mine.

What we do need to start seeing though – like, now – is a string of victories being put together. It’s unlikely to happen in the immediate future, as we have an away trip to Momeychester City next weekend, but that makes the importance of three points, all the more obvious today. Last season we were flat track bullies with every team below see the or eighth in the league. I’ve accepted that we’re never going to win away games against the bigger teams, but if we can get back to home and away wins against the mid and lower league teams like Stoke today, then we should have enough for fourth. But we haven’t done that all season, so our form needs to change, and change soon, if that standard season trophy is achieved once again for the bagillionth time under Arsène Wenger.

That’s yer lot from me today. Come on you reds!