Back to the Premier League grindstone today with a trip to Crystal Palace and a 3pm kick-off on a Saturday, which seems like something of a novelty these days.
There’s not much new in terms of the team news other than Jack Wilshere is back in the squad and Hector Bellerin is facing a fitness test on an ankle problem. There will likely be some changes from the team which beat Boro on Sunday with Ospina, Monreal, Mertesacker and Coquelin coming back in, but what will be most interesting is what the manager does further ahead of that.
Can you, away from home, play Alexis, Cazorla, Welbeck, Ozil and Giroud? The lack of central midfield options suggests Santi will be asked to slot in there (unless he brings Wilshere straight back in), and once you’ve done that you might as well play the others. It’s not as if we looked desperately unbalanced or anything in the cup game.
There’s the possibility of starting Walcott ahead of Welbeck, I suppose, but I do wonder if he might consider the former United man a bit more conscientious in terms of his defensive work. There’s not much in it either way and I suspect Palace will have to be ready for a very attack-minded Arsenal side today.
The hosts have improved under Alan Pardew, winning 5 of their last 8 games, compared 1 in 14 under Neil Warnock. On the opening day of this season we had a very, very late Aaron Ramsey goal to thank for the three points, so it’s not going to be a walk in the park by any means. The manager says it’s going to be an ‘intense’ afternoon and they do have some dangerous players in their ranks.
Other than that, what can you say about it? It’s a London derby, and a game from which we really should be looking to take three points. Other than Man United who visit Swansea today, the teams around us all play tomorrow. Sp*rs play West Ham, while Southampton and Liverpool meet at St Mary’s so somebody’s dropping points – a win today allows us to put some pressure on them all.
Fingers crossed.
In other news Arsene Wenger has played down any suggestion that Atletico Madrid have agreed to sign Santi Cazorla this summer. He said:
He extended his contract last year. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, we’ve not been approached.
Of course whether the club has been approached is almost irrelevant these days because they’ll find out if a player is interested in joining them first through ‘unofficial’ channels. And at 30, I have no doubt that Santi will want to go back to Spain at some point before his career ends. However, I can’t see it happening this summer.
He’s just too good and too important for us to consider letting go. His contribution this season, and in particular the last couple of months, has been immense, and the fact that he’s playing so well with Alexis and Ozil is a bonus too. Some of the burden has been taken off him too. When you look back at his first season he was brought in to add creativity to a midfield which had none. Alex Song was our most creative player, and that tells you everything you need to know about the state of play.
Now, we have players like Ozil and Alexis helping share that responsibility (both Cazorla and Alexis have created the same amount of chances in the Premier League this season at 57), and it looks to have liberated him a little bit. On top of all that he’s just a joy to watch and we’d be a poorer team without him, so unless there’s some plan for a like-for-like replacement, then there’s no benefit to him going anywhere until it suits both parties. Maybe summer 2016 wouldn’t be a surprise.
Santi himself spoke about Alexis being the signing of the season, but also had some interesting words about the team as a whole, saying:
The key is belief. We are a good team, but when we played the FA Cup final last season, I could feel among the fans and among the club, some kind of fear to lose.
That is something that we should remove from our minds now. Personally, I think that our squad is as good as Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City or Manchester United. We don’t envy their squads and we have the quality to fight with them face to face. It’s down to us to make that step forward.
Wise words really. I’ve said numerous times that the early season results weren’t really representative of the quality of the squad in general. Yes, it had a couple of gaps, but those appear to have been filled now, and with players back from injury and more balance from top to bottom, results have improved.
What we need to do is ensure the blips that frustrate so greatly (Sp*rs, Southampton etc) becomes less and less frequent. And he’s right, it’s down to the players to perform to the level that they want to be at and that we would very much like them to be at.
Right, not a lot else happening. We will have live blog coverage of the game later on. Check back for a post with all the details, or bookmark our default live blog page and updates will begin automatically.
And if you need to pass some time before kick-off, check out this week’s Arsecast.
Catch you later.
