Tomorrow. Arsenal against Spurs. Big game. Important. Scary Gareth Bale. Aarrrrrgh. That’s what’s running through most Gooner’s heads at the moment.

Tomorrow, at 4PM GMT, Arsenal will take the field against their local rivals, at their tumbledown home, to attempt to wrest back the initiative in the race for the top four.

Can Arsenal pull it off? Will they be able to deal with Gareth Bale, who has performed such incredible footballing acts for a monkey?

All this has been covered in a match preview, so I’ll talk about something else.

Home sweet home

Two of tomorrow’s major players will be graduates from the Southampton academy, a highly regarded academy that continues to produce excellent footballers.

Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott play opposite roles on the wing, so they’ll come into direct competition with each other, something they’ve been doing in terms of stats this season as well.

Both are playing their best seasons yet, and in theory it’s hard to separate them. Gareth Bale currently has 15 Premier League goals to Walcott’s 11, but Walcott also has 11 assists, while Bale somehow only has 1.

Obviously stats aren’t everything, and Bale appears the most consistent and dangerous of the pair, but as ever form goes out of the window on derby day, and Walcott can be deadly when he feels like it.

Clive Woodward is the former director of football at Southampton, and he spoke of how proud the club are to see their youth prospects fulfilling their potential:

“Gareth and Theo were just that, kids, when I was at St Mary’s but their quality was evident even then as 16-year-olds. They both had obvious talent and were very exciting to watch. And it helped them greatly to be part of a tremendous academy side.

“There are people at Southampton, or who were at Southampton when they were developing, who will feel tremendous pride when Gareth and Theo are in action this weekend.”

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could also play a role tomorrow, and his potential is undoubted as well. Let’s hope Southampton continue producing players like this.

So Arsenal can buy them, obviously.

Return of Overmars?

Normally Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp are the Arsenal players linked with coaching roles at their former teams, and while that’s still a possibility, Marc Overmars has suggested he could join the coaching staff at Arsenal in the future.

The former winger currently acts as a scout for Ajax, but is quoted as saying he’d be happy to return to Arsenal in a scouting and organisational role. He stresses he’s had ‘no contact’ with Arsene Wenger over a return but thinks he could be on a list of people the Arsenal board are considering to invite to the club.

His precise job is somebody who works on transfers, both the contract side and the scouting, which is an area Arsenal have struggled with of late, so having somebody like Overmars join could be very beneficial.

Tomorrow’s blog will either be overjoyed or suicidal. Tune in next time to see which it is.

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