The manager has a few choices to make when it comes to picking his team after things didn’t really go as planned last week. Some of the players have come in for criticism more than others, but it can’t have been easy for Granit Xhaka in particular to step straight into the team so soon after returning from World Cup duty and to be expected to be as proficient as some of the others. He lasted less than an hour as did Aaron Ramsey who was only returning after missing the last two pre-season games through injury.
It’s fair to say the whole team struggled with the new style at times and particularly with the attempts to play the ball out from the back. There’s an awful lot of work to be done on that part of our game and it’s all happening far too slowly and predictably at the moment. Maybe the inclusion of Lucas Torreira from the start will make a difference against Chelsea and it certainly looks like the manager thinks he’s ready to start.
Assuming he plays it’s a matter of whether he replaces Xhaka or Matteo Guendouzi and I suspect it will be Guendouzi despite his performance last week. Guendouzi might have made mistakes and lost possession on a few occasions, but he never shied away from the ball and was probably the only player who we could say that about last week. Despite this I think Xhaka is probably going to get the nod having had another week to get used to the way the team has to play.
There are decisions to be made elsewhere too with the left back spot a real problem. Hopefully Nacho Monreal can recover in time to play with both Sead Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles injured and Stephan Lichsteiner having had to fill in there last week after Maitland-Niles went off injured. Lichsteiner did better than Maitland-Niles when he came on last week, but it’s difficult for a player to play out of position and particularly against the better teams in the league.
Our central defensive partnership still needs a lot of work too, but our real problem there seems to be the personnel available. I’m far from convinced by Sokratis so far and Shkodran Mustafi slipped back into his old habits before the end of last week’s game after showing promising signs early on. With Laurent Koscielny a long term injury we are limited in our options and it could continue to be a problem position for the rest of the season. When we played Chelsea in a pre-season game in Dublin a few weeks ago Antonio Rudiger used his height to score from a corner and he almost got a second goal from another corner and we have to be aware of his threat.
Petr Cech has struggled with his part in our new way of playing and he very nearly scored an own goal as a direct result last week. He’s not overly comfortable passing the ball out from the back and I’m not sure it’s something he will get the hang of at his age. Surely Bernd Leno was bought to play just that way and it would make sense to get him into the team as soon as possible and give us a more solid passing base at the back. To be fair to Cech he made some good saves last week and that part of his game looks better than last season. If we’re building for the future you would have to imagine the time for Leno to get his chance has to come soon.
If Lichsteiner doesn’t play at left back he could come in on the right for Hector Bellerin who wasn’t exactly at the races either. It would be unfair to apportion too much blame to Bellerin when so many others were just as bad and he didn’t get too much help from those around him at crucial times too. I would be very surprised if Bellerin didn’t start and I can’t see how leaving him out would benefit us in the long term. All of the players have to learn how to play that ball out the way the manager wants it to be done and there would be nothing to be gained in leaving Bellerin out.
Further forward I thought Alexandre Lacazette did well when he came on last week and it’s going to be hard to leave him on the bench again. The problem is who would be left out for him and I think he probably will start on the bench again. Ramsey, Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan all struggled last week and perhaps the work they had to do closing others down meant they were a little jaded or thought a little slower when they did get the ball. For me we quite simply have to play Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as he is a goal scorer supreme and we need him to put away chances if we can manage to make some.
Chelsea looked good in beating Huddersfield 3-0 away from home last week, but Huddersfield are not Arsenal and they’re definitely not City. They lost the Community Shield to City the previous week and they don’t look an awful lot better than us at the moment. They are better in defence though and the return of Eden Hazard is bound to cause us a few problems as he has done in the past.
We shut up shop away to Chelsea last season and came away with a scoreless draw and a similar result wouldn’t be the worst result. It’s important for the new manager to get some points on the board and a point away to Chelsea is an acceptable result for any team in the Premier League. I think we have the firepower to beat them or at least score a few goals, but it’s a matter of whether we can keep them out at our end.
If things don’t go our way he can at least tell himself we have had a very tough start to the season and the next eight games are all against teams who finished outside the top six last season. Two games in against the champions from the last two seasons is too early to make any judgements, but they will come thick and fast by the 3rd of November when we play Liverpool if we haven’t racked up plenty of points in the previous eight games. Even then it will be far too early to make a judgment in what we are led to believe is a long term project, but we all know how quickly judgements are made and how quickly managers can lose the backing of those in charge at any club or of the fans too.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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