Wednesday 18 September 2019

Arsenal’s Trip to Eintracht Frankfurt Previewed

After a performance to forget at Watford on Sunday Arsenal get their Europa League campaign up and running away to Eintracht Frankfurt tomorrow night. Last season we lost the final against Chelsea in June and we were knocked out in the semi finals by Atletico Madrid the previous season. It’s a competition we will automatically be one of the favourites to win and so we should be.

Of course we’re only playing in the Europa League because of our failure to qualify for the Champions League for the third season in a row. Our goal for this season has to be a top four finish and the Champions League football it brings with the Europa League only an after thought. The Europa League winners do qualify for the Champions League, but we saw what happened last season when that became our only route to the Champions League.

Unai Emery might well be tempted to play a fairly strong team in Frankfurt to get our campaign off to a good start in what will probably be our hardest game in the group. It would be a huge shock if Arsenal didn’t qualify from the group, but they won’t want to start the group off with a defeat. As a result I think we won’t see as many youngsters and fringe players as we might have expected.

The players who didn’t start on Sunday will probably expect to play and I imagine Callum Chambers, Lucas Torreira, Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson and Emiliano Martinez will all be in the team. We could also see the return of Rob Holding from his long term injury, but I think he might get a late run from the bench which might see Shkodran Mustafi on from the start. We already know both Mesut Ozil and Sokratis Papastathopoulos have been rested which surely means they will both play at home to Villa on Sunday.

I can’t see what options the manager has on the left and right sides of the defence with Sead Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles more or less having to play. If we do have Torreira and Willock in midfield it’s a matter of who plays with them and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dani Ceballos get the nod. Hopefully the weather in Frankfurt will be more to his liking than the tropical climate in Watford on Sunday.

With Nelson probably playing on the left of the attack we might possibly see Nicolas Pepe or Gabriel Martinelli through the middle with whoever doesn’t play centrally then playing on the right. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is the only striker available at the moment, but surely he can’t be risked from the start against Frankfurt. If he’s needed he might make an appearance off the bench, but hopefully that won’t be the case.

Frankfurt have won two and lost two of their league games so far this season and they will be no pushover. They are our toughest opponent in the group and they will have been given massive encouragement by our performance on Sunday. Watford showed them how to play against us and I will be surprised if they don’t try to put us under the same sort of pressure.

Huge questions were asked of the players and the manager after that performance and this is their first chance to answer the criticism. We are giving our opponents far too many chances to shoot against us and the manager has to find a way to stop it. Playing against Arsenal is far too easy far too often for opponents and that’s something which simply has to change.

I’m not so sure we will beat Frankfurt, but I do think we will make the knockout stages with relative ease. Neither Standard Liege or Vitoria should cause us too much trouble and our biggest issue could be the problems we cause for ourselves. Hopefully we can get a good result and put in a performance which can help to build some confidence after Sunday’s abysmal display.



That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

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