The hectic schedule continues today with a trip to Southampton, a course that was painful to visit last season, and has been a difficult track for us in the past on more than one occasion.
That said, today’s squad should be markedly different from last April which started Cedric and Nuno Tavares in the full-back positions, with Albert Sambi Lokonga in midfield and Eddie Nketiah making his first Premier League start of the campaign. This time Mikel Arteta can choose between Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu at right back and, depending on fitness, Kieran Tierney and Oleksandr Zinchenko at left back. If the Ukraine international isn’t available, I hope it’s Tierney instead of Tomi, who wasn’t at his best last week (although that’s true of just about everyone).
Beyond that, I think the team more or less picks itself, barring any injury issues we’re not aware of. Gabriel Jesus and Bukayo Saka started in the middle of the week, and I think these are the players the coach is talking about when he talks about the demands of playing every three days. Gabriel Martinelli came off the bench Thursday and should be ready again for this one.
Speaking of Jesus, he has obviously been very important to us this season, but his game seems to need a goal at the moment. He didn’t quite fall in love with him in the middle of the week even though he had 5 goal attempts, and today would be a very opportune day to get back on the scoreboard. The game against PSV was won with a goal from midfield, but overall I think our three strikers are going to be decisive in the Premier League this season, he leads that line, so let’s cross our fingers.
Last week’s 1-0 win over Leeds was probably our worst performance of the season and, without going into too much detail, I think part of the problem was coming up against a team that had a week off to train and prepare. while traveling to and from Norway with basically no time between games for proper preparation. We still should have been able to improve, but it felt a bit like the perfect storm of playing poorly and facing an opponent who only had a little more from a physical perspective. Today, it is not exactly the same. Southampton also played in the middle of the week, and although we played PSV, I don’t expect that to be so important today.
The manager referenced last season in his pre-game press conference, saying:
Well, obviously there was an experience that was painful because of the way the game turned out and the consequences of it. We know where the danger is with his team.
Still, we started this season at Selhurst Park, a course that has been more of a problem than St Mary’s, and came away with all three points. I believe that if we tap into our potential today, we are capable of doing the same. Hopefully last week at Elland Road was just an anomaly, a problem in our performance levels that we fixed. If we do that, we have to be sure we can add another victory to our collection.
There is not much more to say about this one. Kickoff is at 2pm, and then we’ll bring you live blog coverage, as well as all the usual bits on Arseblog News.
See you later for the game.
