Sunday 15 September 2019

Arsenal’s Trip To Watford Previewed

With the first of far too many pesky international breaks out of the way it’s back to Premier League football for Arsenal as they travel to Watford this afternoon. After yesterday’s results a win today would move us up to third place behind second placed City on goal difference and possibly level on points with Everton depending on how they do against Bournemouth in the early game. The table is already starting to take shape and it looks like Everton and Leicester will be the two teams looking to break into the top six from last season.

Arsenal came from 2-0 down at home to Spurs in their last game to take a point and that was a very important result for them. After losing 3-1 at Anfield the previous week they couldn’t afford to lose to another team chasing a top four place. A draw might not have been what we wanted prior to the game, but at 2-0 down I was more than happy not to lose.

Unai Emery will be without the services of Alexandre Lacazette who is out for approximately a month with an ankle injury. Lacazette‘s absence leaves the squad a little light of strikers with a lot of games coming up in the next month. It does mean that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will play in his favourite position in all of our league games, but we will most certainly miss Lacazette.

The manager has a few decisions to make ahead of the game with Lacazette’s place to be filled as well as what midfield lineup to choose. With Aubameyang through the middle of the attack we might see Reiss Nelson play on the right while Nicolas Pepe will be on the right. Pepe is slowly settling into the team and I think we’re going to see the best of him very soon.

After his performance against Spurs Matteo Guendouzi has to be nailed on to play in the midfield while Granit Xhaka will more than likely start too despite the ridiculous penalty he gave away in that game. I know he is extremely error prone and those errors are very often costly, but he appears to be one of the first names on the team sheet once he’s fit. If those two are nailed on it leaves one of Dani Ceballos, Joe Willock and Lucas Torreira to choose from which isn’t easy on the other two. 

The boss could always opt for a different formation I suppose, but I doubt it. He could even decide to bring in a fit again Mesut Ozil to the team, but I would be very surprised if he gets any further than the bench at the start of the game at least. We have an abundance of options in midfield at the moment and our defence could be following quite soon.

I imagine we will see the same back four as we did against Spurs, but we have a trio of players on the way back from injuries who will be looking to get into the team. Hector Bellerin, Rob Holding and Kieran Tierney are all part of the long term plans for our defence and the sooner we have them available the better. There are plenty of games coming up for those returning players to blood themselves in between the Europa League and the Carabao Cup. 

Watford are stuck on the bottom of the table with only one point from their first four games and that came in their last game away to Newcastle. Their poor start cost Javi Gracia his job and Quique Sanchez Flores has taken over the reins again. Hopefully they won’t get the traditional new manager “boost” and we can add to their woes by taking the three points.

I have no doubt they will try to get about us and put the boot in where they can in an attempt to unsettle us. We had an awful record away from home last season and we let in far too many goals for our own good. They will look to play on that defensive vulnerability if they can and we need to stay strong and repel them.

It’s all about taking the three points today and while it would be great to put in a performance to remember too it’s the points that matter. We won our first away game at Newcastle despite a pretty poor display and we were well beaten at Liverpool in our last away game. If this season is going to be any better than last season then we have to improve our away performances and results too.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

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