Properly of us, right here we go once more.
It’s Wolves at house to kick off the brand new season, and on paper I suppose you might say there are most likely harder video games we may have had. Which is to take nothing without any consideration by the way in which, however house at 3pm on the primary Saturday of the season is strictly the place you need to be.
When it comes to workforce information, Jurrien Timber is obtainable after a foot damage stored him out of our final couple of friendlies, and past that it’s solely Takehiro Tomiyasu, Kieran Tierney and possibly Fabio Vieira who aren’t out there. That provides Mikel Arteta lots to select from, and there are a couple of questions on who would possibly play and the place.
I feel Oleksandr Zinchenko will begin at left-back as we ease Riccardo Calafiori into life within the Premier League, with the remainder of the defence (and keeper) selecting themselves. In midfield, I’d be very tempted to play a trio of Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard, with Gabriel Jesus up entrance, however I think the supervisor would possibly add Thomas Partey to the combo, with Havertz beginning additional ahead quite than Jesus.
We all know he’s going to play Bukayo Saka on the appropriate, and simply based mostly on what we’ve seen in pre-season, Leandro Trossard simply seems to be just a little bit forward of Gabriel Martinelli, so I wouldn’t be stunned to see him begin. Whether it is Havertz because the 9, that’s a relationship that labored properly for us all through final season, and it leaves us with the 2 Brazilians (amongst others) on the bench ought to we’d like one thing a bit totally different as the sport goes on. Whoever he chooses although, now we have a robust first XI, with some glorious choices on the bench.
One of many huge questions on this season is how we do higher than we did final outing? It’s attainable we would have to enhance once more to win the league, and that was one thing Arteta addressed in his press convention. He revealed the motivation of his gamers, saying:
On the final day [of last season], we had a gathering along with all of the membership gamers and so they had been coming to me and saying: ‘We’re going to do it subsequent yr, we’re going to be higher, we would like extra.’ And while you see that you simply settle for they’re those driving that ambition in order that’s all the time attainable.
And spoke of his personal emotions going into this new marketing campaign:
Once more, very excited! It’s such as you’re attempting to climb the very best mountain. It’s probably the most troublesome league on this planet and you are feeling surrounded by lots of people who’ve the identical ambition each single day to attain it. We’re definitely going to strive.
Wolves might be a good check, definitely no walkovers, and Gary O’Neil has had a full pre-season this time round to arrange his aspect. They are going to be with out Pedro Neto, in fact, who has been hoodwinked into transferring to a membership the place they’ve extra gamers than a cigarette manufacturing unit, however we will’t take something without any consideration. They nonetheless have some menace on the attacking finish of the pitch, and the very fact they’ll simply come and have a go provides them a freedom and lack of stress we undoubtedly don’t.
That mentioned, if we will click on the way in which we all know we will, then we will trigger any workforce on this league issues. Set-pieces acquired us our win over Lyon final week, however we most likely simply should be a bit extra environment friendly with the alternatives we make from open play. There was just a bit little bit of pre-season in a few of our play, and hopefully that little bit of additional sharpness might be current in our play immediately. A gap day win would assist settle nerves, in a season the place expectations are going to be larger than ever, so let’s hold fingers crossed that need and motivation to go higher than final season is mirrored within the efficiency and the end result.
For extra on this recreation, you may hearken to our preview podcast over on Patreon proper now. The Arseblog dwell weblog returns as properly, so for those who can’t see the sport, we’ll have as much as the second dwell textual content commentary, plus all of the post-game stuff (report, participant scores and so forth) over on Arseblog Information.
Proper, let’s depart it there for now. Welcome again to these of you who take the summer time off, and are available on you reds!
