Good morning to all.
It is interesting to note that there is a full week of Premier League action this week, spread over three days, and we were supposed to play Man City at home. However, due to postponements surrounding the queen’s death, that game has been put on hold for now and we will play PSV in the Europa League instead.
I don’t know if there is ever a good time to play Man City, but I wonder if, after we had our worst performance of the season at Elland Road, while Liverpool have just beaten them and they will be itching from there, is there a good time NOT to play them. Our momentum is obviously good at the moment, and with a mixture of resilience and good fortune we managed to get all three points against Leeds. That said, we seemed a bit leggy, which is completely understandable by the way, as we traveled to Norway and had little time to rest/prepare for a match against a team that had a week off.
Perhaps this game to be played sometime in the new year could be better. It’s impossible to say for sure, of course, but my gut feeling is that I’m kind of glad we’re not playing them tomorrow. No one knows for sure what will happen after the World Cup and what impact the tournament will have on teams as players return and face an unprecedented mid-season break, but there is also the January window to consider.
We know that Mikel Arteta wanted ‘more firepower’ before the summer window closed, but the midfielder’s injuries changed the priorities. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to add the team there either. However, when the season goes on hiatus for 6 weeks on November 12, there’s plenty of time for Coach and Edu (and everyone else) to lay the groundwork for a deal or two in January.
Last season January looked like this:
IN
*Tumbleweed*
OUTSIDE
Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang, Calum Chambers, Sead Kolasinac, Pablo Mari, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Flo Balogun.
Not wanting to scratch old wounds or anything, is it any wonder we ran out of steam at the end of the campaign? For me it was not really a question of quality, but of quantity. The players were empty, some had been injured and we fell short in key positions.
If learning from things that went wrong is part of the process, then hopefully we’ll add the team in January, and ideally that won’t be a ‘Oh, let’s see who’s at the end of the window’ situation. . This team has worked very hard to be where they are now and hopefully by the time the World Cup comes around we will still be in a good position.
That’s an opportunity we can’t ignore, and as much as the January transfer window is tough at times, I think this one is going to be a little bit different because of that mid-season break and the kind of focus it allows clubs to have to make offers when normally the game schedule is the priority. Which means, maybe by the time the Man City game is rescheduled in the new year, we’ll have a slightly bigger and deeper team, and that will be good not only because we have to play them.
If all goes well, we could be involved in four competitions when football resumes, and right now I think it’s fair to say we’re feeling the strain, just a little bit, dealing with two. Even if you put the FA Cup and EFL Cup to one side, the Europa League knockout matches become more important and increasingly difficult as the level of opposition rises towards the end of the competition.
So it makes sense to me that we get stronger, but obviously that’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it.
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Elsewhere, congratulations to Beth Mead, who finished second in the Ballon d’Or, which was won by Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas. On the other hand, Bukayo Saka finished eighth in the Kopa Trophy, which is awarded to the best player in the world under the age of 21. Barcelona’s Gavi won it, and while he’s certainly a good player, I’m surprised there’s a bit of a continental bias to these individual players. awards The Premier League could be considered the biggest league in the world, but I still think there is a perception that the technical quality elsewhere is higher.
But then again, individual awards in football are always a bit strange, and I was never able to take them seriously when Thierry Henry was beaten for the Ballon d’Or by a literal scarecrow.
Well, that’s all for this morning. We on Patreon round up the weekend’s Premier League action on The 30. We’ll be back tomorrow with more here.
