Our biggest problems have been away from home though and we have actually won our last six home league games with only the top two teams in the Premier League taking more points at home than us. We’re playing against a team who are ranked so far below us that our defeat away to them last week was almost laughable, but we have the chance to at least make some amends for it this evening. The prize is a place in the last 16 of the Europa League and the chance to progress with the ultimate goal being winning the final and the Champions League place that goes with it.
The hope before last weeks game was to get a good lead over there and rest a few players this evening ahead of a Premier League game against Southampton on Sunday. That hope is well gone and Unai Emery has to play his strongest team possible to make sure we progress. He has a few decisions to make ahead of the game, but he will have to plan without Alexandre Lacazette after his red card in the first leg ruled him out of today’s game.
With Lacazette missing it means Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will surely lead the line and I think playing one striker suits us better than playing two. There’s no point in playing two strikers if there’s no one to pull the strings behind them and that’s something we sorely missed in the away leg with Mesut Ozil and Aaron Ramsey missing for whatever reasons you choose to believe. They’re both available tonight as is Henrikh Mkhitaryan and I hope for two of those three to start.
In defence Sokratis Papastathopoulos is available again too and I think we’re a little better at the back with him in the team. That doesn’t mean we’re actually any good at the back, but he is less error prone than Shkodran Mustafi at least. A lot of our attacking intent comes from our wing backs and in that respect we are missing Hector Bellerin with Ainsley Maitland-Niles not up to his level when it comes to getting forward while Sead Kolasinac does create plenty of chances, but the defensive side of his game is suspect to say the least.
To be fair it’s probably not going to be all about who’s out there today though because a half decent Arsenal team should stroll through this game with the right commitment, tactics and attitude. Those performances have been few and far between this season, but the wins against Spurs and Chelsea and the draw with Chelsea were all surely templates for how we could and should play. A performance approaching any of those games should see us get the better of BATE with at least a few goals to spare and maybe then we can worry about possibly drawing a good team in the last 16.
Earlier this season we found it hard to function in the first half of any game, but far better second half performances came to our rescue time after time. The manager was given the credit for tweaking the team and tactics to influence those games, but there were those who asked why he couldn’t get it right before the game considering his reputation for doing his homework in advance. Rather than managing to do so it appears he has somehow done the opposite and our second half performances are now worse than our first half ones.
The second halves against City, Huddersfield and BATE were all abysmal and we created virtually nothing after first halves that were at least a little promising. All of those games were away from home though and the league results have held up at home even if we lost in cup competitions to both Spurs and United. We need to find one of those home league performances tonight and we need to do it for 90 minutes and not just one half of the game.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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