Carabao Cup action tonight as we face Sunderland at the Emirates.
I expect a lot of change to the team, almost complete rotation – the old 360, a full earth. With the news that the Premier League is going to continue over the festive period, the need to rest, recuperate and recharge some batteries becomes even more important, so I think we’ll see something like this:
Leno, Cedric, Chambers, Holding, Tavares, Elneny, Maitland-Niles, Smith Rowe, Pepe, Nketiah, Balogun.
Just guesswork, and the inclusion of Smith Rowe might be a risk, but he’s only had a couple of substitute appearances of late. I imagine it will depend entirely on if/how the injury he had recently is affecting him, if at all. The training pictures showed some of the Academy lads taking part, but whether or not they’ll be involved remains to be seen. One or two might make the bench, but I think there’ll be some experience/quality on there if it’s needed.
A win would set us up with a two-legged semi-final in January. I mean, the utter pointlessness of two legs in this competition is a talking point at the best of times, but these days it’s absolutely nonsensical. When you consider where it falls in the schedule too, it’s going to make our lives a bit more complicated, and by bit, I mean substantially:
Jan 1st: Man City (H) – Premier League
Jan 5th: Carabao Cup semi-final 1st leg
Jan 9th: Nottingham Forest (A) – FA Cup third round
Jan 12th: Carabao Cup semi-final 2nd leg
Jan 16th: Sp*rs (A) – Premier League
The other fixtures in this round are Brentford v Chelsea, West Ham v Sp*rs, and Liverpool v Leicester. The idea of three North London derbies in 11 days is just too unpleasant to countenance, so that’s exactly what we’ll get. If it’s not that, it’s likely to be Chelsea or Liverpool, difficult games against difficult opposition with a squad that is stretched thin because we’ll have lost four players to AFCON (assuming it goes ahead, and at this point I can’t see a cancellation so late in the day).
Maybe I’m worrying too much, playing games of football is what professional footballers do, and I’m sure they view it differently than we do, but things are going well in the Premier League, and it’d be annoying if a couple of games in the Carabao Cup and some injuries/knocks because of this schedule knocked us off course.
Tonight could be a useful exercise for some of the fringe players in that sense. If we’re going to have a couple of casualties, then some minutes for them would be beneficial. Anyway, I guess it’s a weird mindset to have going into the final stages of a cup competition, and we don’t have any Europe this season so perhaps it’s not as challenging as I’m making it out.
Once we can avoid that lot because I still don’t want to play them three times in quick succession. Three chances for Harry Kane to launch himself studs up into the legs and knees of Arsenal players while the referee and VAR look the other way despite gruesome injuries and then he goes on Sky Sports afterwards and says ‘I ThOrt I gOT the bAll’ even though replays showed he took out a cutlass and eviscerated the Arsenal player and feasted on his gizzards. The Arsenal player got booked by the way, for spurting blood in an unsportsmanlike manner.
Come on West Ham! I mean, I would want West Ham to win anyway, but even more so this time.
As ever, we’ll have live blog coverage of the game for you, and the post-game stuff on Arseblog News.
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Yesterday was the second anniversary of Mikel Arteta’s appointment, he told the official website:
Now it is a new phase where we start to rebuild the team, we take a very clear direction with how we want to move forward with the club, a real connection between the team and supporters, the ownership and board and I think now it is excitement.
Excitement to keep driving this project forward, to keep working with this really young squad, but ready to compete, to get better and take the club back to where it belongs.
It’s fair to say it’s been a tumultuous couple of years. On the pitch, off the pitch, at a club in turmoil, and in the world itself. I don’t know if you could call it a baptism of fire, but for any manager so much of what went down, footballing or otherwise, would have been a challenge. For all this to happen in your very first job in management is something else.
Things are looking pretty good right now, and for me the next step is greater consistency. It feels like the boat is about to capsize, and he gets it right, before sailing into stormy waters again. That cycle is too much, but hopefully if we can keep things going in the Premier League, where those difficult moments are much shorter and the good results and scoring goals things happens with greater frequency, then we can be sure we’re heading in the right direction.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the new Arsecast Extra, all the links you need are below. Till tomorrow.
