Morning all, a bit of a quickie for you this morning as I am somewhat *boilked* and not at home.
We’ve got a couple of days to prepare and get ready for Southampton on Wednesday. Their game yesterday against Man City didn’t go particularly well for them going 1-0 down, then City went down to 10 men and Southampton conceded two more goals. Perhaps it’s the start of their bubble being burst, hopefully we can deflate them a bit more. There must be some measure of self-doubt when you let in 2 against a team with 10 men, so anything that knocks their confidence is fine with me.
We’ll find out today if we’ve got any left backs for Wednesday with doubts over Kieran Gibbs and Nacho Monreal after they picked up knocks against West Brom on Saturday. Last season we’d have been able to call on Thomas Vermaelen to slot in there (and what a piece of business we pulled off there – he’s not going to play against until next season), but if we are shorn of both Gibbs and Monreal, it’s a difficult one to predict.
I don’t know if there’s a youngster ready to step up to the first team, Mathieu Flamini is needed in midfield, and the last time we played a makeshift left-back it was Francis Coquelin, and he’s on loan at Charlton until the end of December (see, there’s nearly always a downside when you let strangers play with your Coq). In terms of his versatility, maybe Calum Chambers would be the option with Bellerin in at right back, but after achieving some measure of solidity at the weekend, it would be a shame to have to mix things up that much. Fingers crossed that one of the left-backs can make it.
Meanwhile, Olivier Giroud talks about how we need to be able to see out games more often. I think back to Man City at home, and obviously Anderlecht recently, when we let games slip from winning positions. He also talks about making sure that we do more at the other end of the pitch, saying:
We must all defend together and maybe we have to have more of a killer touch in front of goal. Each game we can have a lot of chances to score. We need to take them.
Maybe West Brom is an illustration. 8 shots in the first half, no goals. Now, it’s not as if any of them were absolute sitters (although I thought Santi could have done better with one from the edge of the box). All the same, it’s safe to say that over the course of the season we haven’t been as efficient as should be in front of goal and it is easier to see out a game when your cushion is greater than one goal.
The margins are so fine, if Berahino’s header was a fraction lower then we’d all be feeling rather different about things this morning. Still, when you’re trying to rebuild confidence, you can’t be too picky about how you win games as long as you win them.
And Saturday’s goalscorer, Danny Welbeck, spoke about his happiness after going 6 games without a goal:
I’ve had a couple blocked off the line [in recent games] and it just wasn’t going my way, but I’ve got the goal and I’m just looking forward to scoring more and helping the team to win games.
He also touched on the forward line-up now that Olivier Giroud is back and Theo Walcott is on the verge a return:
It gives the manager a good headache and he’s got a lot of options going forward. Going into the games, everybody’s going to be giving 100 per cent.
I thought the way we played against West Brom was quite interesting, with the two wider players switching while Giroud stayed static (har har) in the middle. What did worry me a little was how narrow we were at times. Welbeck obviously likes to play more centrally, while we know Alexis tends to drift inwards and get to where the action is. You could look at Theo as somebody who plays more naturally wide but then that is probably going to mean being without one of the other three.
It might well be a ‘good’ headache for the manager, and no Arsenal fan can really complain about a surplus of talent in one area when we’re usually bemoaning a lack of options due to injury and maiming and osteoporosis of the face, but it might well take him a while to figure out how to best deploy them and against whom. When you consider that he’s got to get Mesut Ozil back into the team too at some point, it’ll give him plenty to think about.
Right, that’s about that. Despite the fact I am away from home, James and I (all things going well) will be recording the Arsecast Extra this morning. If you’ve got a question, fire them to us on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog using the hashtag #arsecastextra and we’ll get to some of them as we record. It should be available for you mid-morning, so keep an eye out.
Until later.
