Hello. It’s a bank holiday here. They’re not the same when you work for yourself, but I feel like I should get some benefit from it like all those people who work 9-5s etc who are having a lie-in this morning. I suppose I did get up at 7am instead of 6.15am as usual, although I’m hard-pressed to think that 45 minutes are adequate.
Anyway, no rest for the wicked, especially not today as it’s Halloween, the day when it’s quite all right for children to go and beg for sweets from neighbours and strangers. I’m going to dress up as a man who does a blog about Arsenal. That should scare them senseless.
There’s no rest for Arsenal either as we’re off to Bulgaria to play Ludogorets in the Champions League tomorrow night. It’ll be interesting what way the manager approaches this one. He clearly took the first game very seriously based on the side he selected, and that was reflected in the scoreline to an extent. In the end it was a pretty comfortable win, but there were periods where they caused us problems.
So, will he pick a very strong side again, and look to rest players if we get ourselves into a commanding position, or does he risk resting a few from the start, hoping that the quality and depth we have won’t affect us too much? All this, of course, is because tomorrow night’s game has to be viewed in the context of what’s coming at the weekend, the North London derby.
I know, I know, it’s only the next game that’s really important, but when a game like this is looming on the horizon you have to take it into account. Arsene Wenger has to think about winning against Ludogorets, keeping the momentum going because we don’t want any kind of blip ahead of the Sp*rs game, and keeping legs relatively fresh. I suppose the good thing is that it’s a Tuesday night game, so there’s a bit more recovery time – especially as we don’t play until Sunday.
Anyway, there will be a press conference today from Sofia, so we might get a clearer indication of his thinking there. I suspect it’ll be the strongest side we can field, with perhaps one or two little tweaks, looking to get November off to as good a start as possible.
November. Now that’s a Halloween scare. It’s traditionally a difficult month for us, and with games against Sp*rs, Man Utd, and PSG it’s going to be a challenging one, but the boss is backing his players to cope even it’s not smooth sailing all the way:
We now have some difficult games coming up, we have a difficult November, so by the end of the November we’ll know more about ourselves, but the desire and the mentality is great in the side. We have a great togetherness and we have quality as well, so they are good ingredients, but we have to show that we can do it week in, week out.
And he’s taking the positives from the Sunderland win:
This win strengthens our belief that we can bounce back from the disappointing result we had last week and that we can also bounce back within a game when it doesn’t go our way.
All good, but there will be more challenging scenarios than beating the bottom club, so how we come through those will give us a better idea of how this team is set up for the rest of the season. It’s starting to heat up, and you know what they say about handling the heat in the kitchen. You better open a window and let some cool air in. Exactly.
Not a lot else happening, so I’m gonna leave it there for now. James and I will be here later for an Arsecast Extra. If you have any questions or topics for discussion, please send them to us on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog, and we’ll have the podcast up for you before lunchtime.
Have a scary one.
