Good (late) morning from a moist, windy, depressing and in my case sleepless Berlin!
Given the climate, not less than we nonetheless have Tuesday’s 5-1 win to indulge in earlier than consideration slowly turns to the weekend journey to West Ham. We went into that the majority latest worldwide break realizing we’d want issues to rapidly enhance on all fronts and the staff has already delivered handsomely within the two video games this week.
So far as the Champions League is anxious, we’re now 5 video games into this eight-game league section and the desk is beginning to take form. The jumbled fixture listing — some groups have ‘simpler’ video games left, others have monster clashes across the nook — trying on the desk and making an attempt to foretell how issues look isn’t simple however it’s getting simpler.
The win this week noticed us leapfrog Juventus, Man Metropolis, Aston Villa, Monaco and Sporting to place ourselves in seventh and within the driving seat for qualification with two house video games left and our hardest trying fixtures behind us. In response to Opta, Arsenal now have a 69.6% probability of securing a prime eight end and heading into the final 16 straight, crucially skipping the additional play-off spherical that groups who end between ninth and twenty fourth must play.
With house video games towards Monaco and Dinamo Zagreb to return earlier than rounding issues off with a visit to Girona, you’d should fancy the staff’s possibilities of choosing up all 9 factors from right here to maintain the great temper rolling.
Like a number of you most likely did, I had a watch on Liverpool’s win over Actual Madrid final evening. Truthful play, actually, I believe that’s the very best I’ve seen them play below Arne Slot. Clearly, soccer is as soccer does and Man Metropolis’s journey to Anfield on Sunday seems to be like precisely the form of factor that may see Metropolis out of the blue rediscover themselves and possibly do us a favour out of nowhere within the form of weird turning level soccer likes to ship. That or they’ll concede early and proceed to crumble. Truthfully, whichever means that goes, somebody is dropping factors and we want to ensure we shut one or each gaps.
Liverpool misplaced Conor Bradley (who was spectacular) at right-back late on and Ibrahima Konate limped off too. It’ll be attention-grabbing to see how they do deal with accidents to key gamers if and after they do come. Throughout 17 Premier League and Champions League video games, Liverpool have Gravenberch, Van Dijk, Salah have been obtainable to begin all 17 and Konate is on 16. The squad must come into issues a bit extra finally.
Nonetheless, it’s all about specializing in ourselves and ensuring we maintain profitable so we’re proper the place we should be when the groups above us do drop factors. That continues at West Ham on Saturday, the primary of 9 consecutive video games in London. We don’t go away the capital once more till 4 January, and that’s solely a visit to Brighton, after which once more till 25 January to face Wolves.
With all of the deal with marginal good points these days, not having to journey far (or journey again) for video games needs to be useful, in addition to simply good for the gamers, who already spend a lot time on the highway. Now it’s on them to make it depend and rack up the wins.
Clearly to try this we additionally must maintain key gamers match, so it’ll be attention-grabbing to see what kind of staff is used on Saturday, seeing as we host Manchester United just a few days later and it appeared like Thomas Partey, Declan Rice and Gabriel Martinelli have been all spared a begin final weekend so that they may very well be raring to go in Lisbon. That form of rotation and use of the squad isn’t one thing we’ve actually seen from Mikel Arteta in his 251-game spell to this point in cost – even over the past two years, we’ve principally mounted our title challenges with a bunch of 12-13 trusted outfield gamers – however that is the primary time, even with Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu out, that you simply really feel just like the supervisor actually trusts a much bigger core group.
Anyway, I’m positive there shall be extra chat about what to do on the weekend over the subsequent couple of days. For now, simply maintain basking within the glory of our final two video games; I’d stick the highlights on once more now, really.
Wishing everybody a pleasing day and a protected flight to Blogs as he makes his superb return from Lisbon! He’ll be again within the saddle on this specific horse tomorrow.
