Morning all.
Actual soccer is again this afternoon, and we’ve a difficult sport away at Bournemouth. The workforce information from Mikel Arteta was ‘vaguely constructive’, if I can put it like that. He performed down the seriousness of Bukayo Saka’s drawback, and primarily based on what he mentioned in his press convention, I absolutely count on him to start out in a while.
He was just a little extra cautious on Gabriel Martinelli although, utilizing the phrase ‘danger’ when speaking about his scenario, however with Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling and Leandro Trossard, we’ve choices any supervisor wish to change him on the left hand facet. It sounds to me like Kai Havertz can be accessible, and on among the defensive worries like Ben White, Jurrien Timber, and Oleksandr Zinchenko, he mentioned:
We’re getting stronger with the numbers, particularly in our proper facet, however hopefully we’ve some constructive information immediately and we’ve some gamers again for tomorrow.
So, I believe one in every of White or Timber will begin at proper again, which provides the supervisor a number of choices in midfield. Select your trio from Thomas Partey, Declan Rice, Jorginho, and Mikel Merino who should be pushing for a begin after some good aggressive minutes for Spain through the Interlull. It’s good to have these choices, and good not to have the ability to fully predict what workforce he’s going to select for immediately’s sport.
The schedule is jam-packed now, with seven video games to play in 21 days, so there may be going to be rotation. A participant who doesn’t begin tonight may simply get the nod for the midweek Champions League sport, and hopefully that aggressive edge will current in our efficiency immediately.
Bournemouth haven’t had an excellent begin to the season, however there’s no method Arteta will enable his gamers to underestimate immediately’s opposition. They give the impression of being much better beneath Andoni Iraola than they did beforehand, they’ve harmful gamers in large areas so our full-backs can be examined, and on a good pitch they’re greater than able to inflicting issues for us – or anyone else. Arteta says:
They’re very effectively coached and they’re tremendous intense, actually aggressive and a transparent concept as to how they wish to do it. They need to have had completely different outcomes in my view, particularly in opposition to the massive groups and away from residence. They’re going to be an enormous problem and we’ll must be at our greatest tomorrow.
Whereas taking nothing with no consideration immediately, I do assume a clear sheet can be helpful. Clearly successful the sport is the first goal, however we’ve conceded 5 objectives in our final 3 Premier League video games. It’s not a large drawback, however I think the supervisor and his defenders would get pleasure from placing that ‘proper’ immediately. As I mentioned, it’s a secondary challenge so long as we get three factors, however with a difficult run of away video games on this block of fixtures, changing into extra defensively parsimonious can be a great factor.
As ever, you possibly can be a part of us for dwell weblog protection, in addition to all of the post-game stuff like report, scores, response and extra over on Arseblog Information. We additionally take a look at the sport and potential workforce choice in a bit extra depth in our preview podcast over on Patreon, which is obtainable proper now.
For now, get pleasure from your Saturday and I’ll catch you later for the sport.
