Last night was the warm up – Birmingham and Stoke conspired to score five goals between them, wow – this evening is the main event for all but one fantasy manager out there.
Eight kick-offs in our special floodlit gameweek and there’s all sorts of news to digest…
Alex and Anelka miss out for Chelsea with their knocks as Didier Drogba and Jose Bosingwa come in, youngster Matthew Briggs makes what I think is his first Fulham start at the other end – nothing like being thrown in at the deep end. Blackpool have made ten changes from the side that drew with Everton, Ian Holloway clearly taking a leaf out of Mick McCarthy’s book and prioritising his efforts away from Aston Villa who give youth a chance again with Barry Bannan, Ciaran Clark and Nathan Delfouneso all filling holes in an injured squad once more.
Up at Wolves Thomas Rosicky and Andrei Arshavin meanwhile send Theo Walcott and Samir Nasri to the Arsenal bench. Flu scares or mind games? Dimitar Berbatov and all his supposedly ill chums recover to start for the Manchester derby as does one Luis Nani, the Mexican kipper Javier Hernandez is left to the bench. Tevez’ friends were proved wrong as he starts for the home side this evening.
The unchanged sides are unsurprisingly three coming off good weekends as Liverpool travel to face Wigan (Tom Cleverley is given another chance to impress), Newcastle who welcome Blackburn (who are going with a different approach up front) and Bolton who travel to Everton where David Moyes has recalled Marouanne Fellaini, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov and Louis Saha with Seamus Coleman and Yakubu dropping the bench and Johnny Heitinga out of the squad.
The Dugout Discussion is open once more for all you looking to try and keep track of eight fixtures together, and Leicester hosting Sheffield United too of course, throughout the evening.
To end on a slightly more sour note, recent nights events have found the sharing of false line-ups before kick-off, whether attempted in humour or not, any person(s) involved in this kind of activity is in breach of our Terms and Conditions and will be reprimanded accordingly. For your own sake and that of your fellow community, take a second to think before you post.
You can shout off at me instead if you like, the hand of rotation seems to have avoided me this midweek. All I need is Drogba to have a quiet day and the comeback could be on …yeah right! Good luck.
