Following the loss to PSV on Thursday, Mikel Arteta said it was time for a restart.
Taking nothing for granted, because Nottingham Forest showed last weekend against Liverpool that they are capable of causing problems for anyone, a home game against the bottom team in the league is about as kind as the schedule gets in the circumstances. how is.
There is no doubt that some of the effervescence has gone from our football in recent weeks, so today it will be interesting to see what kind of response we get from the team. There is not much to say about what kind of team the manager will choose. I hope Kieran Tierney plays left back instead of Takehiro Tomiyasu. I assume that if Oleksandr Zinchenko wasn’t fit enough for the bench in midweek, he isn’t fit enough to start today either. Apart from that, we are likely to see the return of Gabriel, Ben White, Thomas Partey, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus to the starting eleven after they started the game against PSV on the bench.
Last week’s draw with Southampton felt bad because we dropped points, but also because we missed good chances to win the game. Gabriel Jesus has not scored since the North London derby on October 1, and is missing a goal. Arteta says:
We need goals and we need them from our strikers, that’s for sure, to win games and give us bigger margins. That streak of goalless goals has to end so that we are in a position to win more games.
The focus is on number 9, but Gabriel Martinelli has only scored one goal in his last 11 appearances, and Bukayo Saka and Granit Xhaka have taken over the scoring lately, so let’s hope our Brazilians shoot today.
The challenge will be dismantling a team that is likely to come in and feel deep, which can often be frustrating and difficult. Forest had 25% possession at home to Liverpool last week, but managed the most shots on goal (7 apiece), so they have some threat on the counterattack. There were signs of Arsenal vulnerability in that regard against PSV, but with the aforementioned players returning to the starting line-up, we shouldn’t be exposed as easily as we were in Eindhoven.
With a local crowd, a point to prove, and a desire to find our best again, you’d expect this to be the type of game we can master quickly. Fast starts have been a feature of this season, so let’s hope we can show what we’re made of and grab the three points we need to get back to the top of the Premier League.
As always, we’ll have live blog coverage for you, and all the post-game reactions, stats, player ratings, and more on Arseblog News.
See you later for the game.
