Currently we’re only a point off fourth place in the Premier League with 12 games to go and the smart money saying United will run away with that final Champions League place. Their performance in their home defeat against PSG on Tuesday night can surely give us some confidence that we have a chance of finishing ahead of them. It remains to be seen how they deal with their first defeat under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and just maybe their first slip will have an effect on them.
With no Premier League game this weekend Unai Emery can play the strongest team possible in the hope of gaining an advantage in the away leg. He’s had to travel without a few of his best players, but we still have a strong enough squad to cause BATE a lot more problems than they can cause us. We played them twice in the group stages of this competition last season and we put 10 goals past them in those two games.
Our manager has a fantastic record in the Europa League and if anyone can find a way to get us to the final he can do it. I can’t say we’ve been impressive recently, with the odd exception, but the manager has a chance to show his calibre in this competition. If we can get a good lead in the first leg we can rest a few players next week for the second leg ahead of our league game against Southampton a few days later.
He’ll have to plan without Aaron Ramsey and Mesut Ozil in the first leg due to “injuries” while it’s too soon for Sokratis Papastathopoulos as he recovers from injury. Granit Xhaka is back in the squad though as he has recovered from the knock that kept him out of the last couple of games while top scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang returns from illness. We might also get to see Denis Suarez make his first start since signing on loan from Barcelona.
I hope to see a fairly attacking line up and it would be nice if the team had a little more balance than it has done far too often recently. With both Ozil and Ramsey at home we have to look to Henrikh Mkhitaryan or possibly Suarez for creativity with the two wide players/wing backs doing their bit going forward too. Ainsley Maitland-Niles is likely to play on the right and it’s no coincidence that our two wide players got the two assists in the win at Huddersfield last week.
Arsenal may have struggled away from home in the league this season, but they haven’t conceded an away goal in the Europa League yet. I would say BATE would be comparable to the three teams who finished behind Arsenal in their group if a little better than all but Porto. They will remember conceding four goals at home to Arsenal last season and then conceding another six at the Emirates.
Added to that they haven’t played a competitive game in two months and all the signs add up to Arsenal winning and winning well. Of course the manager said they played well in only losing 1-0 at home to Chelsea in the group stages this season, but surely if we can impose ourselves on them the game is ours for the taking. Hopefully we can do just that this evening and look forward to a place in the last 16 which follows quickly on the heels of this round.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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