So, here we go. A new season, from which much is expected, begins at home today against West Ham. Last season we beat them home and away, and today’s fixture gives us a good chance to get off to the right kind of start.
In terms of the team, I can’t see much in the way of change from the Community Shield last week at Wembley. The only question for me is whether or not Theo Walcott keeps his place ahead of Olivier Giroud. The former was involved in the goal but struggled to make a real impact, while the Frenchman came on, looked more dangerous, but missed a couple of chances that might have just swung it in his favour.
The rest of it, in the absence of Alexis Sanchez, picks itself. We have some good pre-season momentum to take into this game: 5 games played, 5 games won, 15 goals scored, just 1 conceded, but none of that will matter a bit if we can’t kick off our Premier League season with a win.
West Ham essentially threw a game in midweek to prepare for this. Back in July Slaven Bilic was talking about how early European competition can be a help in terms of fitness, that you might be sharper and more match fit than your opponent, but he chose to play 10 blokes nobody’s ever heard of, and Carl Jenkinson, against a team from Romania who duly beat them.
At this point there are hardly worries about fatigue, so his concern must have been seeing what Arsenal did against Chelsea and ensuring none of his best players got injured. From our point of view, we have a good, settled squad that looks confident and cohesive on the pitch, and hopefully that will translate into the performance we see today.
Arsene Wenger says:
One of our targets is to start strong. We had a good preparation and that should give us the needed confidence. The Premier League is a fight in every single game so we have to prepare ourselves mentally for that and come out of the blocks straight away against West Ham.
Our ambition is to win the Premier League but we have to sustain that by performance and fighting spirit in every single game.
And regardless of who starts up front, the manager is looking for goals from all areas:
We have to develop our collective game. I think we have to depend less on one guy who comes in and then scores all the goals, and continue to develop our players and the collective aspect.
I don’t see why a guy like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should not aim to score 10 or more goals. Alexis can score goals and Ozil has to fix himself a target of at least 10. Five for a guy who plays behind a striker, you want more goals from him. We can share that a bit.
It’s an interesting balance: are you better off with a truly ‘World Class’ forward who can get a large portion of your goals, or with a team that isn’t reliant on one player? It took us a while to adapt to the loss of Henry, and even van Persie after he managed to finally stay fit for 18 months, and it does make sense that a team that has plenty of players who can score with consistency and regularity is better off than one who looks to an individual to do the damage.
At the same time though, those players are often the ones capable of moments of brilliance that make the difference between a draw and win, or a loss and a draw. At this moment in time, across Europe, there don’t seem to be too many of those players available so the focus on the collective is understandable – especially when we’re looking for good players to do more, rather than hoping average ones can hit a purple patch.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in the opening games of the season, particularly when there’s still doubt over who is going to be used most often as a striker. Can the Ox pick up where he left off against Chelsea? Will Mesut not Missit? Will the battle between Giroud and Walcott drive them to better things (and I’m curious to see how two players who have never really been in direct competition with each other deal with that situation)? We shall find out in due course.
The live blog returns later on, so you can join fellow Gunners watching, chatting, and following the match in real-time. Check back later on for a post with all the details on that, and how you can join the live blog community. We’ll also have match reports, reaction, player ratings and more, over on Arseblog News.
For now, some breakfast, some Match of the Day, a dog walk, and then football. Bring. It. On.
