It’s been an enjoyable ride for the last 10 games and long may it continue, but it will of course come to an end at some stage. All 10 games were games we would have been expected to win, but we all know there’s quite often a big difference between expectations and reality. We may have rode our luck at times in some of those games, but it has been great to watch at times. We have some great attacking players at the club and it seems Unai Emery is coming closer to getting the best out of them as each game passes.
Most of those attacking players won’t be on from the start tonight though as the manager rotates the team. So far that rotation has worked well with victories at home to Vorskla and away to Qarabag, but Sporting should be stronger opposition in this game. As it stands it looks like the group is between the two of us with six points to both teams after their opening two games.
As I’ve said before this stage of the Europa League is all about doing enough to qualify for the knockout stages without hampering our chances in the Premier League. The two wins under our belt have given us some breathing space and a defeat tonight wouldn’t really harm our chances. Of course I want the winning streak to continue and Arsenal to win every game they ever play, but three points on Sunday at Palace are more important than three points tonight. We have some tough league games coming up and the more points in the bag before those games the better.
I would imagine we will see Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Mohamed Elneny, Danny Welbeck, Aaron Ramsey, Matteo Guendouzi and Emile Smith-Rowe in from the start and possibly a couple of others too. Both Sokratis and Ramsey in particular will feel they should be in the first choice team and hopefully they will get the chance to impress tonight. Young Smith-Rowe has looked good when his chances have come along too and let’s hope he can continue his progress.
Yet again we will have a strong bench tonight in case the boss needs to change something during the game. One of the criticisms of Arsene Wenger before the end of his reign was the weakness of the bench when we played cup games. That was highlighted by our inability to bring in players to change the game when Forest put us out of the FA Cup in January.
There’s still a lot to be done of course and the defence in particular seems to be learning very slowly. It’s not helped by the litany of defensive injuries we have had, but most of those players are very close to a return. It will be good to see Laurent Koscielny back in the team and hopefully he can adjust to the new manager’s style very quickly.
Sporting play in a much stronger league than either of our previous opponents and they’re just outside the top four in the Portuguese league. Like most teams from Portugal they know how to play football and they will ask questions of our defence tonight. Even with our team rotation we have the players to ask questions of them too and those players have performed well in the Europa League and Carabao Cup so far. Hopefully they can do enough again tonight to make it 11 wins in a row in all competitions.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment