Good morning, it’s a Friday and nothing happened yesterday. Well, nothing from an Arsenal point of view anyway. Not even a screed of team news to keep us going, so we’ll have to get all our info from the manager this morning at his press conference.
We have Hull in the Premier League tomorrow and then a midweek EFL Cup game against Nottingham Forest. Taking nothing for granted – not that you ever can with Arsenal really – but those are two winnable games which should help build some momentum before what’s going to be a much more tricky fixture next weekend when we face Chelsea.
There’s a big interview on the official website with Granit Xhaka who talks about how happy he is at Arsenal. I have no doubt that he is happy but I suspect he might be happier if he got picked more often. I know it’s very early in the season still, and there’s definitely something going with certain players who were away during the summer being eased into action. It doesn’t appear to be a uniform policy, because for each Olivier Giroud and Xhaka who have been left on the bench when they were expected to play, there’s a Laurent Koscielny and Mesut Ozil who have been playing more regularly.
On that basis you’d be able to make a reasonable case that it’s the perceived importance of the player to the manager rather than fitness issues that are dictating his selections. However, on the basis of recent performances you could make a counter-argument that it’s time we gave Xhaka the chance to make himself one of those players. Midfield isn’t working the way it should, it’s not quite an absolute shambles, and maybe even the introduction of one man won’t be enough to right all the wrongs, but when you have a £35m deep-lying physical midfielder sitting on the bench more often than not, it’s no surprise that people want to see him in action a bit more.
Similarly, the use of Alexis up front is clearly a tactical decision from the manager, but that 45 minutes at Watford aside it doesn’t look like it works very well. Even though he was a big stroppy eejit when he came on against PSG, I think we looked better from an attacking point of view when Olivier Giroud was up front and Alexis had moved to a wide position. Using an actual striker might well be just the thing we need to join the attacking dots, rather than asking three players who are more effective out wide to try and link up in any cohesive way. Give the team an attacking focal point perhaps.
It feels a bit as if the start of the season has been disrupted by various things: the Euros, the Copa America, players arriving back late from international duty, caution on using them too early, signings close to deadline day, and a squad that’s so large and deep it’s giving the manager pause for thought. When you have so much to choose from it’s not always easy to pick your time (something Tim Stillman touches on in his column this week).
We’re now five competitive games in and it’s about time we started to see things take shape a little more, because until that happens the issues we have with the football we’re playing will continue. The roles of certain players remain unclear when they are selected, and it’d be good to see the manager address that. Tomorrow’s team selection will hopefully do that a little bit, and maybe we will get some thoughts from him during today’s press conference.
Right then, time now for this week’s Arsecast and I’m joined by Paolo Bandini to look back at the PSG game, Arsene Wenger’s team selections, Alexis Sanchez up front, David Ospina in goal, and our somewhat erratic defensive play. We also discuss Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, tactical set-ups and lots more. There’s some debunking of spurious records, lots of the usual waffle, we look ahead to the Hull and Nottingham Forest games, and we hear from an old friend right at the end.
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Right, that’s really about that. We’ll have all the team news and other news from the press conference over on Arseblog News throughout the morning and the rest of the day. Enjoy the podcast, I’ll be back tomorrow with a full preview of the Hull game and all the rest.
Until then.
