Who is not in the squad for Carling Cup?

Parade
By Boris Mellor
January 8 2007

Arsenal.com is a mine of information when it comes to discovering what the squad is for the Tuesday night's Carling Cup Tie at Liverpool.

You can discover that Freddie Ljungberg (hamstring) is currently the only player without a chance of featuring in Saturday's Premiership game at Ewood Park. Also "Emmanuel Adebayor is very strongly coming back. Blackburn is possible for him," said Wenger. Lauren is not in the squad for Liverpool, he has a small toe injury. William Gallas will not play either. So that is Ljungberg, Adebayor, Gallas and Lauren who are not in the squad. So who is in it Arsene?

Well Diaby is in it with a good number of other players, but we are not told who the rest of the squad are. Now we can assume that the Carling Cup has gone up on Liverpool’s list of priorities now they are out of the FA Cup, so we can expect them to field a strong side. Will Arsene respond by naming a strong side?

Well the BBC claim that he is naming the squad from: Almunia, Eboue, Poom, Lehmann, Hoyte, Toure, Senderos, Clichy, Hleb, Silva, Flamini, Rosicky, Henry, Walcott, Van Persie, Baptista, Djourou, Diaby, Fabregas.

I am not entirely convinced where are Denilson and Aliadiere? Surely some youngsters will be there? Three goalkeepers? True it says from – but what use is that? How tired is Henry after his 19.6-mph goal? And a tough match due at Blackburn (bound to be in pissing down conditions too) on Saturday.

Wenger has always refused to put out a very strong team at this stage whoever the opposition, he has always claimed he wants to develop his youth. So will this year be different? More questions than answers I am afraid.

Anyhow it is too hard to predict the squad at this stage, let alone the result, but you know punters you only have until 19:45 Tuesday night to enter your prediction on the table and win the prestigious Arsenal Times Predictor of the Year Challenge Cup. What do you mean its too hard without knowing the team? I have told you who’s not in the squad what more do you want? By the way it’s the score at the very end of the match, but before any possible penalty shoot out.

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