Good morning to you. Hope you slept well. I keep having terrifying nightmares at the moment, none of which include Phil Collins, dolphins or Robert Pires shaving off all his hair (what? Oh …), and they do have something of an effect. Oh well, maybe I need to eat more cheese before bedtime. I’m not eating much cheese at all, if any, but maybe some cheese will take my dreams to trippier, happier places.
Anyway, here we are once again: Interlullsville – Population: All of us, minus all the international footballers. We’ve gone into it in pretty good shape to be fair. Even if the win against Burnley came very, very late, a win is a win is a win, and you can see from the player reaction they’ll take the good from it. They won’t be sitting around analysing the shite out of it, they’ll just say ‘Three points, job done, next game.’
It might be a nice time to consider what we’ve done since that opening day defeat to Liverpool which felt so avoidable. There are echoes of 2013 when we lost to Villa then went on a very healthy run – and since the Mugsmashers we’re unbeaten in 9 games. The record is quite impressive, actually.
Played: 9
Won: 7
Drawn: 2
Lost: 0 (because we’re unbeaten)
Goals for: 20
Goals against: 4
Clean sheets: 5
Making Diego Costa furious: 1
That’s pretty all right. When Arsene Wenger said he had a ‘team of men’, perhaps that’s reflected in that response. A maturity to deal with what was a pretty ghastly defeat, consolidate, then kick on a bit as we have done in recent games and performances – the tiredness at Burnley notwithstanding.
We’ve found a central defensive partnership that looks extremely promising. I did fear that similarities in playing style between Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi might show up some incompatibilities, but the German has settled in very nicely alongside the on-field captain. Make no mistake, he was thrown in at the deep end a bit. Sure he’s an experienced player, an international and all the rest, but he had little or no pre-season with Valencia and was thrust into action at Arsenal into a team still reeling a bit from the start to the season and with a £35m price-tag on his head.
It’s still very early days, he’s played just 6 games for us and anyone drawing any definitive conclusions about him would be doing so prematurely, but it’s difficult not to be encouraged by the way he’s played and the way he’s dovetailed with Koscielny. All going well we’re looking at a partnership that will take us through the season. For certain games there will have to be rotation, but right now we’re looking at a third/fourth choice duo of Gabriel and Rob Holding.
The Brazilian has definitely fallen down the pecking order, not simply because of Mustafi’s performances or price-tags. He was given ample opportunity by Arsene Wenger to stake a claim in the first team, but has never been fully convincing. I think that Man Utd game last season is one that shook the faith of Wenger in him, and maybe a couple of others. He still provides pretty solid back-up though, and I’m interested to see how Holding will progress over the course of the season, there’s a calmness about him that I like.
Midfield is replete with options, and when you have a player as good as Mohamed Elneny struggling to start games, I think that speaks to some depth. In some ways the Egyptian has been unlucky because the consistency and solidity he shows every time he plays is far removed from some players in years gone by, but when that’s the kind of quality you can call on from the bench it can only be a good thing (as long as you can keep the guy happy).
The front four didn’t have their best day against Burnley but it seems to be working for the most part. As I said yesterday though, games like that do illustrate the importance of a different kind of striker in the squad. While this new iteration of our forward line adds some unpredictability to the way we attack, some of that is simply to do with the fact we played with Giroud up top for so long that people knew what to expect.
If we do the same with this lot, then teams will cotton on to it quick enough, and we saw that Burnley almost managed to keep us from scoring and negate us from an attacking point of view. Some of it was down to a legginess on our part, but they watched us and set up to counter that. Ensuring we can mix things up with Giroud or Lucas from the bench will be important as the season goes on.
All in all, I think it’s been a good response to a disappointing start. But we’re just 7 games into the Premier League season. It’s right to be encouraged by what we’ve seen, but at the same time cognisant of the fact there’s nothing won yet and the season is long and treacherous. Those dark November days are looming on the horizon, and perhaps our ability to deal with that traditionally tricky month will be a better test of our quality and character. For now though, thumbs up.
Going back to Sunday’s game briefly, I enjoyed the manager saying he didn’t see the goal because he was fuming at the fact we took a short corner. It all worked out well in the end, but I suspect there might have been some dressing room questions had it not come off as well as it did. Similarly, the ‘Oh my god they took it short!’ in this fan filmed video from the away end tickled me. All’s well that ends well, but short corners will continue to do my head in.
Finally for today, check out this week’s Arsecast Extra in which James and I discuss the Burnley game, the absence of Lucas, answer loads of listener questions and more.
Download – iTunes – Acast – RSS
Right, that’s that. More Interlull japery and high-jinks tomorrow. Until then.
