Morning all.
The phrase ‘more of the same’ is generally used in a pejorative sense, but if that’s what we get from Arsenal later on, I’d be delighted. The same would be defensive strength, composure and control, and a way to score goals against every team we come up against, and there’d be no complaints if that happened this evening when we visit Sunderland.
They’ve had a very strong start to the season, and currently sit 4th, with the joint second-best defensive record in the league. They beat Chelsea a couple of weeks ago too, and I think we know that there’s zero chance Mikel Arteta will view this as anything other than a serious test for his team, saying:
When you analyse them and see how well organised they are, how they adjust things, and the spirit they have within the team, I’m not surprised. They fully deserve the position that they have at the moment. We know the type of game that we expect to play tomorrow and where the opportunities are, and the things that we have to do very well to beat them. that’s what we’re going to try to do
In terms of team selection, despite some suggestion we might have one of the injured players back, the manager was pretty clear in his opening statement on player availability, saying:
We remain the same and there’s nobody new that can join the squad, so all the same.
More of the same, but perhaps with just a hint of you can never quite take Mikel Arteta at 100% face value when it comes to team news. I think we’ll see a couple of changes from the team that won in Prague, with Riccardo Calafiori returning at left-back, and Martin Zubimendi and Eberechi Eze coming back into midfield, but apart from that there are few options for Arteta, especially in the forward line. That trio of Leandro Trossard, Bukayo Saka and Mikel Merino as the centre-forward are basically all he has at his disposal, beyond a 15 year old Max Dowman and 17 year old Andre Harriman-Anous.
If we see either of them later, I would hope it’s because we’re in a comfortable enough position to be able to rest more senior players. Which is to take nothing for granted, of course, but as talented as they are, and with all due respect to them, if that’s where we’re looking for a badly needed goal we might be in a bit of trouble. Who knows though? Players can surprise you.
With Manchester City and Liverpool facing off tomorrow, this is an opportunity to put a little pressure on both those sides ahead of that one. Ideally they’ll both drop points, but whatever happens there, we have to make sure we do our job first and foremost. This will be a lively one, I think. Sunderland’s start to the season means the Stadium of Light will be noisy later on, there’s the whole Granit Xhaka thing (which I wrote a bit about yesterday), and there was a real physical edge to their game against Everton on Monday night.
I don’t think we’re the kind of team that gets pushed around these days, but Sunderland won’t be giving up any points at home without a real fight, and I’m sure the manager will have prepared his players for that. As we have done in every game of this outstanding run we’re on, we’ll work hard for anything we get, and hopefully that edge we have in terms of individual quality will be enough for three points.
It feels like one last push before the Interlull, and while there’s hope that a few of those injured players will be back the far side of the break, we need the ones we have now to dig in and help us win this game. Fingers crossed.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We will have live blog coverage for you later, although we haven’t yet fully ironed out all the technical issues there, as well as all the post-game coverage on Arseblog News.
Until then, have a great Saturday folks.
