Champions League action tonight as we face Galatasaray. It’s a game from which we need to take three points after our opening round defeat to Dortmund, and for which tonight’s team will require some thinking from Arsene Wenger.
He is, essentially, without, or in doubt of, his first choice midfield. Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey definitely miss out through injury, and although Jack Wilshere is in the squad, the manager isn’t sure if he’s going to start him or not (a double dose of not wanting to aggravate any injury he might have along with knowing he’s got Chelsea to face on Sunday, I’d say).
The back four picks itself – being the only back four we’ve actually got – and despite his form being less than stellar this season, Mathieu Flamini is the obvious pick as the deepest lying midfield. Who plays ahead of him is the question.
If it were me, I’d pick Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, with Mesut Ozil just ahead of him in his favoured role. Out right we’ve got Alexis, left Santi Cazorla, and up top Danny Welbeck. However, that doesn’t mean the manager will think the same way. It wouldn’t really surprise to me to see a line-up with Tomas Rosicky in it and Alexis as the front man with Welbeck on the bench. I don’t know why, it just strikes me as quite Wengerish.
However, regardless of the team I think we’ve got the players to get the right result tonight and the manager knows that the games at home will prove crucial, saying:
The group stage is a minimum of 10 points so the home games are vital. It’s early but we are maybe more under pressure to win the game than if we had won the first. But it is the same in the Champions League – you want to win your home games. You need one good result away from home and then win all your home games.
And he then hit the form of this season right on the head:
We don’t lose a lot but we want to find the winning edge together.
If there’s trepidation ahead of tonight’s game it’s borne out of what happened at the weekend more than what happened against Dortmund, who we know are always a difficult side to play against away from home. A very average Sp*rs side came to our place and got a point, and Galatasaray are probably better than them. I mean, I haven’t seen them at all this season, but how could they not be?
Obviously we have to avoid that great big self-destruct button we like to push with too much regularity, but if we can do that, and if the team manages to click a bit like it did against Villa, then this is a game from which we really should be taking three points. Anything less and our path to the Champions League knock-out round is going to look quite thorny and thistley (and with some yellow eyes blinking in the shadows) indeed.
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Elsewhere, Mikel Arteta is set to become the latest player to be given a contract extension with reports that he’s agreed a one-year deal which will keep him at the club until 2016. I have to say I’m a little surprised, although I don’t think it’s bad news by any means.
Based on a couple of things he said a few months back, I thought that perhaps this was going to be his last season, but obviously I interpreted that wrong. I know I’ve touched on this before but he gets far too much stick in my book, and as a player his influence on this team has been overwhelmingly positive since he signed from Everton in 2011.
Now, that doesn’t mean I think we can’t improve our midfield in the transfer market, but what I think and what the manager is prepared to do are two very different things. He looks at his squad and thinks Flamini and Arteta are good enough to fulfil the role in this team. On the evidence of this season you could fairly easily argue against that, but there’s not a lot can be done about it until January – and even then a defender (or two) is probably the more important purchase.
For all that though, Arteta is an influential guy in the dressing room. Read the quotes from Santi Cazorla in the link above. He’s experienced, consistent, super-professional and a good example for all the players in the squad, and although he’s struggled for form this season, that’s true of more than one of our players.
I suppose we have to ask why a manager who was, for so long, almost opposed to having players over 30 in his team, is prepared to extend Arteta’s deal. He’ll have made the decision based on what he sees, the statistical and physical analysis they do, and if there were signs of real decline he’d have kept the contract in his desk, I think. He’s done it before, but obviously sees value in keeping the Spaniard at the club for longer. Let’s hope he can repay that faith.
Whether or not it precludes an upgrade in the transfer market remains to be seen. I don’t see it happening in January anyway, unless there are serious injury problems (not beyond the realms of possibility), but perhaps next summer he might move Flamini on, creating more room in the squad for an appropriate purchase.
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Until later.
