Arsenal warm up for Chelsea with midweek win

Arsenal put a laboured performance against Spurs behind them on Wednesday night as they comfortably beat Galatasaray in the Champions League. Danny Welbeck scored a hat-trick whilst Sanchez added to his tally this season as the Gunners sealed a relatively easy win at the Emirates. It was refreshing to see us play with so much confidence and looking ahead to Chelsea at the weekend it should give us a boost going forward.

Danny Welbeck is quickly becoming a fan favourite at Arsenal

Danny Welbeck has given Arsenal a different option since he joined the club. He's the polar opposite of Giroud and showed that with his goals in midweek against our Turkish opponents. Each goal was taken with great assurance and showed our ability to now get players in behind. It meanwhile showed the willingness of Welbeck to impress and assuming he can now kick on he'll prove to be a great addition to the side. The first was a lovely reverse ball from Alexis into the English forward, the second showed great strength and determination to get away from Melo whilst the third was a little dinked finish over the keeper.

Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez have rarely played with each other so far in Arsenal colours but Wednesday showed exactly why they should be playing more often with each other. Ozil was deployed in his favoured number 10 position, where he was against Villa, so it comes as no great surprise that both of our best performances this season have come with Ozil playing in the free role behind the striker. The German provided the assist for Sanchez's goal who stuck his chance away in familiar fashion. It reminded me a lot of a Barcelona type goal he'd score and that made it even more pleasing on the eye.

Alexis Sanchez has been quite brilliant since his arrival in the summer and is already proving why he was worth the fee to bring him to the club. The Chilean now has 5 in 11 games and both his assist and goal were of real quality.

The only negative from the game was the red card to Wojciech Szczesny. Arsenal had looked fairly comfortable for most of the night so to conceded was disappointing. The Polish stopper came racing out of his goal but brought down Yilmaz who was denied a goal scoring opportunity and therefore Szczesny saw red. It was then Yilmaz who sent sub Ospina the wrong way to make it 4-1.

With Chelsea at the weekend I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. We've struggled to find any real consistency this season and draws have been an issue. Saying that, I'd happily take a draw at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. It'll be very interesting to see how we line-up and whether Wenger finally changes his tactics for a big game or not.

As seen with last season's trip to the Bridge, we got completely thrashed as a result of our fullbacks pushing on and us not having a defensive midfielder. Flamini was average against Galatasaray in the week whilst Arteta is out injured. I'd like to see Diaby played there as I think it could be interesting to see what he could bring to that defensive minded midfield role. I think he'd suit it perfectly and providing he's fit enough to play, he could be the midfield enforcer we've been looking for in these big games.

I'm feeling more positive for the Chelsea game due to the win in the Champions League in the week but if we don't change things up tactically we could be on the end of another drubbing. One thing's for sure though, we definitely won't suffer the same sort of embarrassing score-line, and the players will desperately be seeking revenge!

The team's line-ups:

Arsenal: Szczesny, Chambers, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs, Flamini, Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain(67), Ozil(76), Sanchez(60), Welbeck.
Subs: Ospina(60), Bellerin, Coquelin, Wilshere(67),  Rosicky(67), Campbell, Podolski.

Galatasaray: Muslera, Chedjou, Melo, Kaya, Sari(67), Kurtulus(45), Sneijder, Dzemali, Telles, Pandev(69), Yilmaz.
Subs: Bolat, Bulut(67), Camdal, Bangna(67), Altintop(45), Adin, Balta.

My man of the match: Danny Welbeck.

Referee: Gianluca Rocchi.
Attendance: 59,803.