Premier League action tonight as we take on Liverpool, looking to build on last week’s win over Crystal Palace. Not only that, we’re attempting to rediscover our mojo at the Emirates a little bit.
On April 4th we hammered Liverpool 4-1, as goals from Ozil, Bellerin, Alexis and Giroud, made for a convincing win. Since then, we’ve played five Premier League games at home, scored in just one (the 4-1 win over West Brom on the final day) and drawn blanks in the other four (2 draws, 2 defeats).
It’s hard to say it’s a problem per se, the end of season games had the prospect of a cup final hanging over them, but you would have to start wondering if we had further problems tonight. There’s a bit of extra pressure and expectation at home – particularly after the opening day defeat to West Ham – and it’s something the manager is aware of:
If you want to have a successful season you want to be strong at home. Normally we are strong at home. This is an opportunity to show that. We missed our first game and we had to look at ourselves, and we responded very well. Now we need to come back to our usual strength that we have at home.
In terms of today’s team, I’d be surprised if there were any changes from last week’s starting line-up. If I recall correctly, this game last season was one of the first when he played Aaron Ramsey from the right, and the Welshman was excellent that day. It worked pretty well last week at Selhurst Park, and having decided that the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ approach was the right one, it’d be odd if he changed that today.
Hopefully with another week’s training under our belt, we’ll be a little sharper than last week. It was a game we might have won more comfortably if our finishing in the opening stages had been better, so if we can improve there, and fashion some early chances, it might settle us down early on.
We’re at a stage in the season where you really can’t assess anyone based on form, but the Mugsmashers have won their opening two games and will come into this one with a little bit of momentum. And despite how early in the new campaign it is, you don’t want to fall too far behind the leaders. Man City’s three wins from three makes them the pace setters, and even if there are 35 more games to go, you don’t want to be 5/6 points behind them at this stage.
If the hope is that we are going to mount a title challenge, then we can’t let teams who are definitely going to be in that race pull away from us that quickly. It adds a little more importance to tonight’s game, but that’s the reality of being a team that has ambitions of wanting to win the league. If we don’t take three points tonight it won’t be fatal, but it will make certainly things more difficult.
Still, if that’s the gloomiest outcome possible, it’s offset by the fact we do have the players to win this game. For all the transfer market talk these guys played Liverpool off the park last season, and there are enough goals in the team to cause them real problems – and I still think they’ve got issues defensively.
I suppose you could say the same for us, the three Premier League goals we’ve let in this season have been poor, but if there’s some silver lining it’s that it shouldn’t take much to iron those mistakes out. Better organisation, along with more aggressive defending and closing down of opponents in dangerous areas, would go a long way to prevent our rearguard being breached. A clean sheet is overdue, that’s for sure.
There’s always pressure for every Premier League game, but I think there’s a bit extra on us tonight. An early season game against a traditional rival, a real need for us to get a win under our belts at home, and the fact others are winning their games, means we’re going to have to really dig in to win this one, but nobody ever said it was easy.
Time to show what we’re made of.
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As always we’ll have live blog coverage of the game for you later on. Check back here before kick-off for a post with all the links and details you need, or simply bookmark our default live blog page and updates will begin automatically – starting with team news about an hour before the game.
And if you fancy a flutter: Alexis to score and Arsenal win is 5/2 at William Hill, giving you a £20 free bet with new accounts when you bet £10: http://bit.ly/1ItYcXc.
Right, news throughout the day on Arseblog News, where we’ll have post match reports, reaction, ratings and more. Until later.
