Morning all. There was a welcome break from the Interlull with a bit of football yesterday, but due to work commitments I couldn’t watch the 3-2 win over Al-Nasr in Dubai yesterday. Hopefully it was an experience that all the Arsenal fans over there who go to see the team in person enjoyed, and as far as I can tell we came through the game with a clean bill of health which was the most important thing.
We actually went behind when the home side took advantage of Shkodran Mustafi slip slidin’ away to curl a shot in off the post, but Carl Jenkinson levelled the scores late in the first half. Alex Lacazette put us ahead in the second half following a lovely flick from Mesut Ozil which set him up, before young striker Tyreece John-Jules showed nice composure after robbing the ball from a defender to round the keeper and pick his spot to make it 3-1.
They scored a late penalty, but that was just Arsenal giving the crowd the full Arsenal experience and refusing to do things the easy way. That’s how you give the people value for money. You can see the goals here.
Afterwards, Unai Emery said:
My objective with the players today in the first and second half was to get into their rhythm and continue with the work we’ve been doing recently. The players are also showing they wish to do something important this year.
While Lacazette was behind the idea of taking the players away during this extended break from competitive action:
It was a good idea by the club to bring the players available here to Dubai It’s been good weather, it was a good pitch, great facilities. Everyone enjoyed it and we worked well for one week. Now we have to come back to London and stay focused on the Premier League and Europa League.
And that really is the key thing. There’s little point in analysing what happened yesterday, it has no bearing on what we have left to do this season, but if the trip in general has been of benefit to the first team players who are the ones with it all to do when we get down to business again, then all well and good. The team will return to London now and start the preparations for Monday night’s Premier League encounter with Newcastle.
They’ll be joined by those away on international duty, and last night saw Sokratis and Kolasinac go head to head when Bosnia & Herzegovina faced Greece. They both played 90 minutes in a 2-2 draw, Kolasinac got booked, and hopefully neither of them have aggravated the minor injuries they’ve been dealing with over the last little while.
Meanwhile, Granit Xhaka scored a superb goal for Switzerland – with his right foot, no less:
However, it was not a good night for the Swiss as they let a 3-0 lead slip, conceding three times to Denmark from 84th minute to the final whistle to end up drawing 3-3. Xhaka came off in the 79th minute with his team well in control, so he bears no culpability for the capitulation, and from some quick trawling of the Internet this morning it seems that decision by the Switzerland manager has not gone down particularly well. Stephan Lichtsteiner did not feature.
Elsewhere, Alex Iwobi played 73′ of Nigeria’s 1-0 win over Egypt, in which Mohamed Elneny played the full game for his country, and as far as I can tell that’s our lot in terms of players in action during this break. I now officially declare this to be the end of Interlulls until next season, and we can get on with the important business of the Premier League and Europa League between now and the end of the campaign.
We still have a few days to kill before we’re in action again though, the fact we don’t play until Monday night means we have a third consecutive Arsenal-free weekend (BOOOO!), but there should be team news and other bits and pieces to keep us going over the next few days.
So, let’s turn our attention to the summer and our pre-season tour of the US appears to be taking shape. The full details of our fixtures are due to be made public today when the International Champions Cup have a launch event to hype up what are just pre-season friendlies, but given how many Arsenal fans there are stateside, these games are creating plenty of excitement. Here’s what we know so far, based on stories in the local press there.
July 17th
Arsenal v Bayern Munich : Dignity Health Sports Park, Los Angeles.
July 20th
Arsenal v Roma : Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte.
July 23rd
Arsenal v Real Madrid : FedEx Field, Landover (near Washington DC).
I think there’s one more fixture to be announced, which could be against the Colorado Rapids, but we’ll know later today when the full schedule is made public. I have to admit that there’s part of me that intrinsically rails against the hype of pre-season, trying to promote these games as competitive or meaningful in any way doesn’t sit right with me, but at the same time we have to be realistic enough to know that football and business are so intertwined now that we either get on board with this kind of stuff or get left behind.
It’s not that the games themselves are going to be huge money-spinners, but as a way of furthering and connecting the Arsenal to fans who might only ever have this one opportunity to see the team they support, it’s so important. Throw in buzzwords about brand and so on if you like, but it’s inescapable – this is the way football works now, for better or worse. The club usually try and build other events around the games too to make the events fun for fans, and while it’s not what you’d call ideal preparation, it’s what happens these days and we have to make the best of it.
It’s a long way from the tranquility and privacy of the Austrian pre-season camps Arsene Wenger used to take the team on, but so much has changed between now and then there’s little point worrying about it. If it wasn’t the US, it’d be somewhere else in the world where the global appeal of this club would see fans come out in droves to see their team, so let’s get on with it, and in general the calibre of pre-season opposition should provide us with a relatively decent challenge, so that’s something.
Right, that’s your lot for this morning, till tomorrow.
