Tomorrow.
This afternoon Liverpool will play at home in the third round of the FA Cup, and I strongly suspect that Mikel Arteta will present something resembling his strongest team later on. The ideal is that at this point in the tournament you get a relatively friendly draw, perhaps a lower league team, which allows you to rotate and give minutes to some players who need them.
I could still do that of course, but with a break between this game and our next league match (assuming today’s fixture doesn’t end in a stalemate as a replay would take place in that space), I think it will go with More or less the same team that played against Fulham. One or two changes wouldn’t surprise me, though. At left back there are doubts about the availability of Oleksandr Zinchenko. If he is fit, he will play; Otherwise, without Takehiro Tomiyasu, there will only be Jakub Kiwior. As I wrote during the week, it might be better to make the full-back role a little more “traditional” if he has to play.
In his press conference prior to this, Arteta said:
I don’t want to force players to do things they’re not comfortable with. That is the first principle that we have to apply and apply everywhere.
I don’t think he looked comfortable playing the midfield role against Fulham, so let’s see what happens. In midfield, I wonder if we’ll see Jorginho come in, meaning both Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard are playing higher up the pitch than they have been of late. If not, I guess it would be Kai Havertz in the same configuration as Craven Cottage, because beyond that, what is there? Leandro Trossard is not that guy and Emile Smith Rowe seems like a forgotten man at the moment.
Up front, Gabriel Jesus should return for Eddie Nketiah and while I don’t see any change at full-back, Trossard on the left in front of Gabriel Martinelli is a possibility, albeit a slight one. There is also the question of whether or not there is a change of objective; Traditionally you would see Aaron Ramsdale come in for David Raya, but I have no idea if that is in Arteta’s thinking or not.
I know the FA Cup is a competition that some fans don’t really connect with, and while it can be argued that we have more important things to do this season, there is nothing we can do but take this game as seriously as any other. This is a realistic chance to get trophies, there are only four trophies each season and we should definitely try to go all the way in this one. Not only because of what winning means in itself, but also because of how it could benefit a team that will have confidence in that success.
Arteta says:
There is a great history between this competition and our club. We have a great opportunity to start again and have a beautiful journey.
As for Liverpool, we might be lucky to face them without Mohamed Salah, who is in AFCON, but they still have plenty of firepower and they will really try today. We did well against them at Anfield for the most part, but there is something more unpredictable about the cup, and it will be interesting to see if we get caught up in a cup tie from start to finish, or if we can control things a little. little more than they would like. Regardless, I think we have a team capable of beating them, especially at home, and hopefully it’s the start of a solid cup run this season.
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See you later.
