The Barn Door Live - Chatting Midweek Premier League

I have to confess that after six or seven weeks of feeling very good about my line-up, I'm definitely not as excited for the quick mid-week turnaround. Arsenal's win against City yesterday while thrilling for me as an Arsenal supporter feels like it gave both United and City some degrees of freedom to play less than their best line-ups for the remainder of the season. United have pretty well won the title and City are pretty much locked into 2nd so the places I had reserved for United players like Antonio Valencia, Ashley Young, and Wayne Rooney recently are now up for grabs. My theory is now that Arsenal, Spurs, Newcastle and Chelsea (as well as the relegation-threatened clubs) are the ones that have little choice but to play their best players.

As a result, I ditched Valencia and Young for Robin van Persie and Aaron Lennon. I'm not in love with the move but for the remainder of the season my goal is to find players who are going to start and I can't see many scenarios where RvP and Lennon wouldn't start this week with Champions League places in the balance.

I'll be in and out of the chat as work allows today but in the meantime, here's my line-up for this week:

DDG

Evans, Ivanovic, Kyrgiakos

Siggy, Beausejour, HBA, Lennon

Jelavic, Cisse, RvP

UPDATE: Here's how the other bloggers line-up:

Nik's Team: Given, Flanagan, Gallas, Ivanovic, Sigurdsson, Pienaar, Lennon, Ben Arfa, Valencia, Tevez, van Persie... fb.me/100YeYR3j

— Nik Argiropoulos (@nikarg) April 9, 2012

@jspitzberg's team: Given, Baker, Evans, Bertrand, Sigurdsson, Lennon, Ben Arfa, Valencia, Tevez, van Persie, PCisse

— Never Manage Alone (@NMA_Blog) April 9, 2012