Jose Antonio Reyes has to sit out a one match ban because of the absurd "time-wasting" booking dished out in the first half of the second leg against Juventus. But Cesc Fabregas has recovered from the foot injury, picked up early in the 5-0 win over Villa and exacerbated in the loss to Man United, which has seen him miss out on the last 2 matches against Portsmouth and West Brom.

Sol Campbell is out, but it's unlikely anyway that he'd have supplanted anyone in the defence which has kept a record-breaking 8 Champs League clean sheets in a row. A player who probably would have done (despite Mathieu Flamini's excellent form) is Ashley Cole but, despite having returned to training, Arsene Wenger is not sure enough about his fitness to throw him into a match like this just yet. Instead, Cole will play for the reserves on Wednesday. Along with Ash and Sol, the only other injured absentees are Lauren, Gael Clichy, and Pascal Cygan.

Having Cesc back is fantastic news. While Abou Diaby is showing promise, he doesn't bring nearly as much threat to the field as Cesc does. Reyes is a loss of course, but with Alex Hleb, Robert Pires, and Freddie Ljungberg (who was rested at the weekend but returns to the squad) we still have the personnel to play the 5 man midfield which has become standard in Europe this season. Diaby should be an option from the bench, along with Robin van Persie and Dennis Bergkamp. Wenger has in fact hinted that Dennis may be used, saying that we need a lot of experience for this one. Dennis's cameo against the Baggies on Saturday suggests that he'd be up to it, but I suspect that he'll be starting on the bench again. It's not like Bobby, Freddie, and Gilberto don't have plenty of experience too. Theo Walcott will be on the bench, but it'd be peculiar if he got used now in preference to the 2 Dutch strikers, having missed out up till now.

As Fabregas has pointed out (along with everyone else), Villareal's main threat is his opposite number in their ranks: Argentine playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme who. "... is up there with the best players in the world. I have no doubts about that. I still can't understand why he didn't enjoy success at Barcelona. Since he left the Nou Camp he has grown a lot as a footballer. He can be very dangerous. All their attacking play goes through him."

That ought to make things easy: stop Riquelme and you stop Villareal. But they haven't got this far by being a one-man team any more than Arsenal have (whatever our critics might say). Wenger won't be changing his system to deal with Riquelme, saying that "...one of the keys of the game will be for us to keep him quiet. But we will not man-mark him. The distribution comes from Riquelme and that is where they are dangerous - mainly for his delivery. He is the leading figure in the team."

They do have another dangerman, a surprising one for those that remember his spell at Man Utd, in the form of Uruguay striker Diego Forlan. He has been benefiting from Riquelme's craft rather a lot, and showing what a good finisher he can be, since his move to Villareal, and who says, "I don't know what is the team's secret though, we are young players and we enjoy playing football. Riquelme is a key player but we have a strong team spirit and we are all important."

But Villareal do have a problem in defence, where their first 2 choices at centre back were both injured during the 1-0 loss to Barcelona in La Liga on Friday, and miss out. Of course, one could point out that Arsenal have their first umpteen choices at full-back out too... but the replacements for Gonzalo Rodriguez and Juan Manuel Pena (likely to be defensive midfielder Cesar Arzo and either Alessio Tacchinardi or Quique Alvarez) won't have the experience of filling in at the back, in such big games, that Emmanuel Eboue and Flamini can now boast. Both Pena (strained knee ligament)and Rodriguez (torn ankle ligaments) are unlikely to be available in time for the second leg next Tuesday as well.

Villareal will also be without their keeper and former Arsenal target (rumoured not to have been signed because he's too small!) Sebastian Viera, who will be replaced by Mariano Barbarosa.

It will of course be another special night at Highbury whatever happens, as Arsenal Stadium hosts its last ever European tie. Le Boss has been waxing lyrical (in a way that few English managers would)... "Highbury has that roof, with the metal posts coming down, that makes it a stadium from another age. The contrast with the pitch is nowhere better in the world. For me, that is something special. I sensed there was a special soul in the stadium, because it is a little bit strange, and you cannot have that feeling anywhere else."

"When you first arrive to Highbury, you do not expect it - you are saying 'where is the stadium? where is the stadium?' and then suddenly you are in front of it. You do not know why it is in the middle of the city. You are used to that here, but on the Continent we are not used to that - you see the stadium from three miles away."

"What I always like in England is that you feel the club belongs to the population around there - you can go out of the door and go to a football game. That does not exist anywhere else. That is specific to Highbury, to Liverpool, to the English game."

"They were built for the people."

He wants to give the people, and the stadium, a fitting send-off, but warns against being complacent.

"I do not believe the hard work has been done. The hardest work is always the next step."

"I really deeply feel Villarreal are a very good team, and that they have all the ingredients in every position to give you problems."

It's a salient warning, but one which I think few Arsenal fans will need. We're all too used to the team performing against the big clubs but coming unstuck against the less fancied ones, and I'm sure I'm not the only Gooner who'd feel a tad more comfortable if we weren't favourites to get through to the final.

It looks likely to be Barcelona that the winners will face, after they took a 1-0 advantage home from the match in Milan on Tuesday.