Road To Nowhere For Arsenal

With qualification for the last 32 of the Europa League already in the bag Arsenal face the long trek to play FC Vorskla in the Ukraine tomorrow night. Due to the current political climate and the introduction of Martial Law in some parts of the Ukraine the game has been moved from Vorskla to Kiev and even then it’s not certain to go ahead. It’s a crazy situation and who knows what the outcome will be if the game doesn’t go ahead.

With not too much to play for and topping the group a certainty if we win our final game at home to Qarabag Unai Emery has opted to rest most of his first choice players. The only players from Sunday’s starting 11 against Bournemouth who have made the trip are Rob Holding and Henrikh Mkhitaryan and I can only assume they will be in the team. It looks like Holding is the one player who the manager has decided he needs in every single game.

Petr Cech should return to the team with Bernd Leno still at home while Stephan Lichsteiner and Karl Jenkinson should both be in the defence too. In midfield we should see Matteo Guendouzi paired with Mohamed Elneny while I assume Aaron Ramsey will play too. With Danny Welbeck injured it looks like Eddie Nketiah might get the chance to show what he can do from the start.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Emile Smith-Rowe as the final player in the attack which only leaves a central defensive partner for Holding to find. If Ainsley Maitland-Niles can be snuck into the team somewhere that would finalise the lineup and it’s possible he could play in midfield with Elneny dropping back to play in defence. I don’t pretend to know enough about any of the other youngsters in the squad to predict which of them might play, but I’m sure we’ll see one or two at some stage.

Up to now the manager has had a pretty strong bench in our Europa League and Carabao Cup games, but he will have no such luxury in this game. If things are going awry he won’t have any cavalry to call on and he will have to hope the players he has brought can get the job done. With Premier League games against Spurs and United coming up in the next week the manager has to cut his cloth to suit his measure.

We were too strong for Vorskla in the game at the Emirates, but a couple of late goals from them made it look a lot better for them than the final 4-2 scoreline. Vorskla still have a slight chance of qualifying from the group, but only a win will do for them at this stage and even then they would have to win away to Sporting in their final group game. It’s a highly unlikely scenario, but I have no doubt they will give it a go and of course they would like to get one over on Arsenal.

It’s really all about getting this game out of the way for Arsenal and moving on to the important business of Spurs and United. A win would be great, but avoiding defeat would be perfectly acceptable too given the travel and the squad we have brought. The most important thing is that the first choice players will have had plenty of time to prepare for Sunday and hopefully that will pay off.

We are unbeaten in 17 games though and it would be great to continue that run ahead of two huge games for us. All good things must come to an end though and if we have to sacrifice that unbeaten run for the sake of being ready to face United and Spurs then so be it. I have a feeling that run won’t come to an end though and we will get at least a draw from the game.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Second Time Around For Arsenal At Chelsea

Arsenal’s first competitive game under Unai Emery didn’t go too well last week when they lost 2-0 at home to Manchester City. It was a result that was to be expected I suppose against a City team who broke so many records in running away with the Premier League last season and it was certainly no worse than Arsenal did against them in the three games they played last season. There were encouraging signs in that game, but it will take time for the manager to get the players used to the style of football he wants to play.

The manager has a few choices to make when it comes to picking his team after things didn’t really go as planned last week. Some of the players have come in for criticism more than others, but it can’t have been easy for Granit Xhaka in particular to step straight into the team so soon after returning from World Cup duty and to be expected to be as proficient as some of the others. He lasted less than an hour as did Aaron Ramsey who was only returning after missing the last two pre-season games through injury.

It’s fair to say the whole team struggled with the new style at times and particularly with the attempts to play the ball out from the back. There’s an awful lot of work to be done on that part of our game and it’s all happening far too slowly and predictably at the moment. Maybe the inclusion of Lucas Torreira from the start will make a difference against Chelsea and it certainly looks like the manager thinks he’s ready to start.

Assuming he plays it’s a matter of whether he replaces Xhaka or Matteo Guendouzi and I suspect it will be Guendouzi despite his performance last week. Guendouzi might have made mistakes and lost possession on a few occasions, but he never shied away from the ball and was probably the only player who we could say that about last week. Despite this I think Xhaka is probably going to get the nod having had another week to get used to the way the team has to play.

There are decisions to be made elsewhere too with the left back spot a real problem. Hopefully Nacho Monreal can recover in time to play with both Sead Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles injured and Stephan Lichsteiner having had to fill in there last week after Maitland-Niles went off injured. Lichsteiner did better than Maitland-Niles when he came on last week, but it’s difficult for a player to play out of position and particularly against the better teams in the league.

Our central defensive partnership still needs a lot of work too, but our real problem there seems to be the personnel available. I’m far from convinced by Sokratis so far and Shkodran Mustafi slipped back into his old habits before the end of last week’s game after showing promising signs early on. With Laurent Koscielny a long term injury we are limited in our options and it could continue to be a problem position for the rest of the season. When we played Chelsea in a pre-season game in Dublin a few weeks ago Antonio Rudiger used his height to score from a corner and he almost got a second goal from another corner and we have to be aware of his threat.

Petr Cech has struggled with his part in our new way of playing and he very nearly scored an own goal as a direct result  last week. He’s not overly comfortable passing the ball out from the back and I’m not sure it’s something he will get the hang of at his age. Surely Bernd Leno was bought to play just that way and it would make sense to get him into the team as soon as possible and give us a more solid passing base at the back. To be fair to Cech he made some good saves last week and that part of his game looks better than last season. If we’re building for the future you would have to imagine the time for Leno to get his chance has to come soon.

If Lichsteiner doesn’t play at left back he could come in on the right for Hector Bellerin who wasn’t exactly at the races either. It would be unfair to apportion too much blame to Bellerin when so many others were just as bad and he didn’t get too much help from those around him at crucial times too. I would be very surprised if Bellerin didn’t start and I can’t see how leaving him out would benefit us in the long term. All of the players have to learn how to play that ball out the way the manager wants it to be done and there would be nothing to be gained in leaving Bellerin out.

Further forward I thought Alexandre Lacazette did well when he came on last week and it’s going to be hard to leave him on the bench again. The problem is who would be left out for him and I think he probably will start on the bench again. Ramsey, Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan all struggled last week and perhaps the work they had to do closing others down meant they were a little jaded or thought a little slower when they did get the ball. For me we quite simply have to play Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as he is a goal scorer supreme and we need him to put away chances if we can manage to make some. 

Chelsea looked good in beating Huddersfield 3-0 away from home last week, but Huddersfield are not Arsenal and they’re definitely not City. They lost the Community Shield to City the previous week and they don’t look an awful lot better than us at the moment. They are better in defence though and the return of Eden Hazard is bound to cause us a few problems as he has done in the past.

We shut up shop away to Chelsea last season and came away with a scoreless draw and a similar result wouldn’t be the worst result. It’s important for the new manager to get some points on the board and a point away to Chelsea is an acceptable result for any team in the Premier League. I think we have the firepower to beat them or at least score a few goals, but it’s a matter of whether we can keep them out at our end.

If things don’t go our way he can at least tell himself we have had a very tough start to the season and the next eight games are all against teams who finished outside the top six last season. Two games in against the champions from the last two seasons is too early to make any judgements, but they will come thick and fast by the 3rd of November when we play Liverpool if we haven’t racked up plenty of points in the previous eight games. Even then it will be far too early to make a judgment in what we are led to believe is a long term project, but we all know how quickly judgements are made and how quickly managers can lose the backing of those in charge at any club or of the fans too.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Win Out In Dublin

It had been a very long time since Arsenal played in Ireland, but they put that to rights on Wednesday  night when they played against Chelsea in the Aviva Stadium. It was the penultimate pre season game so the team were stepping up their preparations for their opening game at home to City in nine days. Unai Emery picked a team which will probably be very close to the one which starts that game against the reigning Premier League champions.

For my part I rushed home from work, grabbed some food and had a quick shower before hopping on a train with my youngest son who is 22. He bought the ticket for me along with his sister for Fathers Day and 30 minutes later we shuffled into Slattery’s in Beggars Bush for a couple of quick drinks before the game. Usually when I pop over to London to watch Arsenal I meet up with friends in our regular watering hole, but there’s no regular watering hole in Dublin. It meant I didn’t actually meet up with any of the people I hoped to, but I had good company in my son anyway.

We got to the stadium about 20 minutes before kick off which is unusual for me, but then again it’s not often Arsenal come to Dublin and I didn’t want to miss a thing. We had great seats in the lower East Stand and I had a bird’s eye view of the Arsenal players warming up. The stadium wasn’t completely full, but the official attendance of just over 46,000 in a stadium that takes 50,000 seemed just about right.

You can’t read too much into the game itself as pre season games are exercises in building fitness as much as anything else. The manager did wait until the hour mark before making his first substitution which is unusual for a pre season game which is what makes me think the team that started could well be the one that faces City. There are plenty of other players who are just back from World Cup duty to add to the squad, but lack of fitness could prevent them from playing next week.

Aaron Ramsey was named in the starting 11, but he picked up an injury in the warm up and didn’t play a part in the game. His contract situation still hasn’t been sorted and the manager admitted afterwards that he didn’t know what was happening with Ramsey. If we can’t tie him down to a new contract there’s a very real chance he will leave on a free transfer next summer and that’s something we can’t allow to happen. With the transfer window closing in a week we’re quickly running out of time in which we could realistically sell him and buy a replacement.

Back to the game itself and it’s obvious the manager wants us to play out from the back with Petr Cech getting more touches in that game than he has possibly ever got in an Arsenal shirt. It didn’t always work out with Chelsea pressing us and turning us over a little too often for my liking. It’s something we will have to work on and it’s obviously going to have a few setbacks on the way.

We pressed Chelsea too and while their defence dealt with it better than ours, we did have some joy pressing their midfield. I thought Matteo Guendouzi was very impressive in our midfield and was always on hand to take the ball from the defenders and try to link up with the players ahead of him. He was caught in possession a few times and made a few wrong choices, but overall he really looks like one for the future and maybe even the present too.

Chelsea took the lead after Antonio Rudiger rose above our defence to head home a corner and our defending left a lot to be desired. He almost did the exact same thing early in the second half from another corner, but his header went wide with the Arsenal players looking helplessly on. There’s still a lot of work to be done on our defence and it doesn’t look like the failings of last season and previous seasons have been cured quite yet.

Mesut Ozil played the whole game despite not being back as long as many of the other players. He was behind almost everything good we did in the game and it was a magnificent reverse pass from him which put Reiss Nelson in the space he needed to set up Alexandre Lacazette for a tap in to equalise with virtually the last kick of the game. As I’ve said previously the manager needs to get the best out of Ozil if we are going to have any chance of having a good season.

Lacazette had to make do with a place on the bench, but he took his chance when he came on even if he should have equalised from a one on one with the keeper a little earlier. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang played from the start and he could have had a couple of goals too. It will be interesting to see if the manager can accommodate both of them in the team at the same time.

When that late equaliser went in plenty of people had already left which I found a little odd. Why wait over 30 years for Arsenal to come to Ireland and then leave early to get a drop on others for public transport. Some of them came back for the penalty shoot out, but those who left could most definitely hear the huge roar when Arsenal got their goal. I would say the crowd was at least two to one in favour of Arsenal it was certainly a lot bigger than the crowds they got when they visited in the 1980s.

The penalty shootout was very entertaining and I was impressed with Arsenal scoring all six of their penalties. With the players we had left on the pitch at the end of the game I was struggling to find five players I could trust to take the penalties, but I needn’t have worried judging by the standard of Arsenal’s penalties. It came down to Alex Iwobi to convert the winning penalty after Chelsea missed their sixth penalty and he duly obliged much to the delight of the majority of those in the stadium.

Cech saved that sixth penalty to set us up for the win and I thought he was our best player on the night. He saved a penalty from Alvaro Morata during the game as well as saving three times when faced with Chelsea players one on one. Maybe the arrival of Bernd Leno has given Cech the push he needs to find the form of a few years ago.

All in all it was a very enjoyable night watching “the greatest team the world has ever seen” win, even if they left the equaliser late and the win was only on penalties. It was good to spend some time with my son before he heads off around Europe on his Interrail adventure for the next few weeks. The only disappointment was not finding the time to catch up with my many other Arsenal friends.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Which Arsenal Players Are On Their Way Out

Unai Emery has already brought five new players into the Arsenal squad this summer and he’s going to have to offload a few of the players he has to cover at least some of their transfer fees and wages as well as keeping the squad at a workable size. Of course Jack Wilshere has already left to join West Ham as he decided the new manager wasn’t going to give him as much game time as he wanted. We didn’t get a fee for Wilshere though as he was at the end of his contract and I would imagine any new purchases will have to be funded by players leaving.

We also saw the departure of Jeff Reine-Adelaide to Angers today, but he can hardly be considered a loss from the first team squad. He was a player with a lot of promise a few seasons ago, but we rarely got to see what he could do mainly because of a series of injuries. It’s hard to know how he will fare, but you have to at least wish him well for the future.

If the rumours are to be believed there are a few more players who the manager considers to be surplus to requirements and he is currently listening to offers for some of them. With so many defensive players already arriving it would surely be safe to assume we will be seeing the back of one or two of the defenders we have. Shkodran Mustafi had a fairly torrid time last season and the influx of central defenders could well see him on his way, but the ongoing injury to Laurent Koscielny might mean he stays put.

There has also been plenty of talk of Nacho Monreal retuning to Spain, but the manager seems reluctant to sell a player who was our most consistent defender last season. If Sead Kolasinac can make the left back berth his own it could see the departure of Monreal, but I think we will keep him for this season at least. Besides those two I can’t see any other possibilities for defenders leaving and I would even be surprised if either of them were sold.

The arrival of Bernd Leno has left us top heavy with goalkeepers though and I would be surprised if we didn’t sell at least one of them. Petr Cech has been linked with a return to Chelsea, but they opted to sign Rob Green instead while David Ospina is as always being linked with most of the clubs in Turkey. I think we need to sell at least one of them and given the choice I would opt to sell Ospina before Cech.

Of course the contract negotiations with Aaron Ramsey are still ongoing and getting him to extend his contract could be our best piece of business this summer. With the transfer window closing in two weeks we need to tie him down as quickly as possible or we will have to spend big to replace him in the current market. We just cannot allow him to run his contract down like both Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil did last season.

With Granit Xhaka due back from his World Cup duties soon there has been some speculation that he might be surplus to requirements. It’s something I can’t see myself and I would be very surprised if he isn’t a big part in Emery’s plans for now and the future too. He has his detractors and he hasn’t always been at his best for us, but I think he’s a player with an awful lot to offer.

Lucas Perez is yet another player who’s future could be uncertain, but the early signs are the boss is prepared to give him a chance. He was certainly persona non grata last season, but the new regime seems prepared to let him prove his worth. The sales of Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott in January and the possible sale of Danny Welbeck must surely keep a place open for another attacking player in the squad and Perez could be that player.

Welbeck is probably the last player who the boss is looking at offloading this summer and it wouldn’t surprise if he was sold. I don’t think he’s quite up to the level we want to play at and it would make sense to cash in on one of the rare occasions when he is actually fit. We’ll probably have to wait for him to come back from his World Cup duties before anything happens, but he certainly has to be a candidate for the exit door in the next two weeks.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s Trip To Atletico Madrid Previewed

Arsenal’s season and Arsene Wenger’s last season in charge of them all comes down to tonight’s game away to Atletico Madrid. That could change with the right result tonight which would see the team win their way through to the Europa League Final. The prize for winning the Europa League is a place in next season’s Champions League and it would also give Wenger his first European trophy.

The first leg didn’t go exactly as planned last week when we could only draw 1-1 at home to an Atletico team who played almost all of the game with 10 men. A 1-0 win wouldn’t have been the worst result, but we really should have taken at least a two or three goal lead into tonight’s second leg. The late goal we conceded has left us teetering on the brink of defeat and we have to go to Madrid and get a result.

As it stands Atletico are on the way to the final with that away goal in the bank and we will be out if we don’t score tonight. We have to avoid defeat as well as scoring to either qualify for the final or at least bring the game into extra time. That’s a hard task for a team with our away record this season, but that record has been in the Premier League and we have actually traveled very well in the Europa League.

We went to AC Milan in the last 16 knowing they hadn’t conceded a goal in a long time, but we ended that run on the night and we have to end a similar run for Atletico tonight. They haven’t conceded a home goal since January and we will need to take a step up to be the first team to score away to them in nearly four months. While it is a huge task I certainly don’t think it’s one that is completely beyond this team.

I expect a very similar team to the first leg with the possible inclusion of Henrikh Mkhitaryan who returned from injury on Sunday as a team of fringe players and youngsters were a little unlucky to lose 2-1 at United. Both Hector Bellerin and Granit Xhaka played in that game, but the rest of the expected team for tonight sat it out with the exception of Nacho Monreal and Danny Welbeck who both came off the bench. David Ospina picked up a knock in that game and it could mean we see Petr Cech get the nod tonight. As I’ve said previously I don’t see too much between them and we really need a new keeper for next season.

If Mkhitaryan comes in (and I really hope he does) it will be for either Welbeck or Jack Wilshere and I suspect it could be the later. Welbeck offers more of a goal threat and we have to score tonight or we are out. Mkhitaryan can take some of the pressure off Mesut Ozil with his ability to commit players and that might just free up Ozil to create chances that others can hopefully take.

We targeted them on crosses last week and that’s where our goal came from. They have conceded a fair proportion of their goals in the Europa League from crosses and I imagine we will try to prod that weakness again tonight. Hopefully we will be a little better at taking the chances that come our way.

I could take a long time listing the statistics that are against us tonight between our away record, their home record and our recent trips to Spain, but there’s no real point in doing so. We need the players to treat this game as a one off or a Cup Final I suppose and go for the result they need as if their lives depended on it. If they’re going to bid farewell to the manager with a trophy they have to get the result required tonight or it’s finished.

No doubt Atletico will target our defensive frailties and we have to stand strong against the likes of Antonio Griezmann and Diego Costa. On the face of it that’s a huge task, but we would have succeeded in that task last week except for one communal slip. If the players concentrate from first to last minute and believe in themselves anything is possible.

We have players who can hurt any team even though it seems like it’s us fans they have become fond of hurting in recent seasons and this season in particular. As a fan you need belief in your team though and I always approach a game genuinely believing we can win it. Tonight is no different, but let’s just hope that belief isn’t shattered.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal v Southampton Preview

After the highs of the 4-1 win against CSKA Moscow on Thursday night it’s back to Premier League action for Arsenal today when they play at home to Southampton. With sixth place looking more and more certain with each passing week it’s not easy to get up For Premier League games, but that’s just what we have to do today. I’ve a very busy day ahead of me so my preview is going to have to be short.

I suppose the big question today is who will and who won’t play with Thursday’s trip to Moscow foremost in our thoughts. The Europa League is the priority from here on in and we just need to amass enough points to keep Burnley at bay. Three points against a struggling Southampton team today would go a long way to tightening our grip on that sixth spot.

Normally I don’t have too much of a problem with Southampton, but the appointment of Mark Hughes as their manager gives the game an extra edge and I would be perfectly happy to see them relegated now. They’re on a bad run at the moment and any sort of a decent team we put out today should be able to put them away.

If we can make chances for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang then I think we will get the goals required and hopefully goal shy Southampton won’t cause our leaky defence too many problems. Arsene Wenger has rested Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny and Alexandre Lacazette and rightly so, but I hope a team with Ozil and the injured Henrikh Mkhitaryan can dominate and make the chances to win the game. Any sort of win will do I suppose.

Arsenal v CSKA Moscow: Europa League Quarter Final First Leg

With the rest of the season a write off at this stage Arsenal at least have a chance to make it to a European Final this season. The Europa League might be the second class trophy of European football, but winning it would be a big thing for Arsenal. Besides the nice shiny trophy the winner also qualifies for next season’s Champions League and it’s the only way Arsenal can make it back to the top table for next season.

Arsene Wenger has almost a full strength squad to choose from with the exception of the injured Santi Cazorla (remember him) and the ineligible Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Petr Cech is available again after missing Sunday’s win against Stoke with an injury and there’s even a chance he might play despite David Ospina being the “cup goalkeeper”. We should also see Laurent Koscielny and Granit Xhaka come back into the team after both of them were rested against Stoke although Xhaka did come on in the later stages.

I would expect to see a back four (which more or less picks itself from the manager’s perspective at least) as the experiment with three central defenders now seems dead more than a year after it saved our season last season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a midfield trio of Xhaka, Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere with Wilshere in an advanced role. That would leave Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan either side of hopefully Alexandre Lacazette who we have been told has recovered enough from his injury to start.

I’m not so sure Wilshere is the ideal player to play as I can’t say I’ve been impressed with him in the last couple of months, but I would be surprised if he didn’t play. It might not be the worst idea to play Mohamed Elneny alongside Xhaka and let Ramsey play a more attacking role as the chances are he’s going to push forward anyway and he offers a lot more in the attacking third than Wilshere. With both Ozil and Mkhitaryan in the team I’m not sure Wilshere has a place to fill and both of them certainly offer a lot more end product too.

I’m not sure Lacazette will start as he has only had 15 minutes since he returned from his injury and there is every chance Danny Welbeck will get the nod. I’m not a fan of Welbeck and a less than fully match fit Lacazette is a better option in my opinion. Welbeck may well have been the player who managed to see us home in the home game against Milan, but I just cannot see his value to the team.

We are on a pretty good run of results at the moment with four consecutive wins and 11 goals scored in those games and only one conceded. On the face of it that’s quite impressive, but anyone who has watched us knows we have not been exactly impressive in most of those games. I would say the away win against Milan was probably the exception, but I struggle to see how we can win the Europa League playing as we are at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I want us to win every game we ever play, but for me the team is broken and it won’t take too much to bring it out again. The arrivals of Aubameyang and Mkhitaryan have certainly improved us in an attacking sense, but nothing has been done to change how badly we defend as a team and as individual players too. If we come up against a team who know how to defend and close their opponents down we will be in trouble and Atletico Madrid are standing in the way of any team who wants to win the Europa League this season.

CSKA will be no pushover either, but we are favourites to progress and rightly so when you look at the players we have. It’s how those players play as a team and how it seems the manager is incapable of inspiring them to excel or coach them to cope against the best sides (or any side away from home this season). I have long ago given up hope of him turning things around and I think the only way forward is for him to leave.

He’s going nowhere though and I still want the team to do the best they can with him in charge. I’d gladly take the glory of a Europa League win even though there’s every possibility it could prolong the manager’s time at the club. That might sound a little strange, but surely it’s not as strange as some fans who seem to want us to lose to hasten his departure.

I think we need to get at least a two goal start from the home leg as a trip to Moscow next week is one that should give us some cause for concern. We have a pretty poor record in European games in Moscow and I wouldn’t like to be going there needing to get a result. I’m not going to dare to predict an outcome, but like always when Arsenal play I honestly think beforehand that they will win despite any or all evidence to the contrary.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s Trip To Ostersund Previewed

With our hopes of a top four finish this season almost finished it’s time for Arsenal to get back to Europa League action with a trip to Sweden in the first leg of their last 32 tie. The Europa League has become an awful lot more important now with the top four almost gone as the winner gains qualification for next season’s Champions League. As it stands it’s definitely our best route to Europe’s premier club competition for next season despite some very good teams standing in our way.

On the face of it we are huge favourites to progress over two legs and even to win this evening. The trouble comes when you look at our away form this season and our inability to overcome any sort of meaningful challenge on the road. When a game starts to go agsinst us away from home we seem unable to find any answers and change the game.

Arsene Wenger seems to realise the importance of the Europa League at this stage in our season and we won’t see a team of reserves and fringe players as we did in the group games. We should see our strongest team today with no game this weekend and it would be ideal if we could put the tie to bed today considering what next week holds. We have the return leg this day week and a Carabao Cup Final date with City only three days later. It would be great to be able to rest some players ahead of that game, but the Europa League is a more important competition.

New boy Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang isn’t eligible today and Alexandre Lacazette has undergone knee surgery which will keep him out for up to six weeks. It looks like the only real option up front is Danny Welbeck with Eddie Nketiah a possibility from the bench too. I’ve never been overly impressed by Welbeck, but he has the chance in these two games to show what he can do after his most recent return from injury. 

If the manager is going to play a strong team he will still be tempted to play David Ospina in goal. As over the hill as Petr Cech might be I still think he is far superior to Ospina, but I would be tempted to sub Ospina in if any tie goes to penalties considering it is going on seven years since Cech saved one I believe. I think we will see Ospina in goal tonight though and I just hope he remembers to stand in front of his line rather than behind it as he so often does. 

I think we might have the ideal opportunity today to reintroduce Sead Kolasinac to the team and maybe even play Ainsley Maitland-Niles in his preferred midfield role too. Ostersund have had a meteoric rise through the leagues in Sweden, but they will have to do something very special to live with us as long as we keep our heads and play the right way. We have only two European trophies to our name and it would be far from bad to give ourselves a chance of adding to that tally.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Wembley Beckons For Arsenal

While fourth place for Arsenal in the Premier League this season might look like a long shot at the moment their chances could take a real turn for the better at their second home later today. Spurs have had to play their home games at Wembley this season as their stadium is redeveloped and it means that’s where we’ll play them in our “away” league game. Wembley hasn’t been quite the fortress for them that White Hart Lane was last season and it has been a home from home for Arsenal.

We have won the FA Cup there three times in the last four seasons and we had to win the semi finals to get to those finals too. Added to that there were Community Shield victories and I’m struggling to remember the last time Arsenal lost a game at Wembley. Quite a lot of our players have very fond memories of Wembley and hopefully those fond memories will continue today.

We haven’t been good away from home this season though with only three wins from our 13 games so far and we’ll have to reverse that form to get anything from the game. On the other hand our home record is second only to table topping City and it’s difficult to believe the sharp contrast between our home and away records. I have to believe that away form is down to belief and confidence or lack thereof and it’s within our playing ability to reverse the trend.

If we’re going to get the result we need so much will depend on our approach to the game and the tactics we deploy on the day. If we can defend in depth and hit them on the break we have every chance of getting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in behind them and that’s probably our best route to victory. The other option is to press them high and force mistakes, but I think that would leave us very open at the back.

We need to be clever and incisive when we have the ball and that’s something we just haven’t done away from home often enough this season. The performance at home to Everton last week was so promising that it’s given us enough hope to believe the players just might be able to do it away from home too. The additions of Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan seem to have had an effect on the team and just maybe the departure of Alexis Sanchez has lifted a weight from the collective shoulders of the players.

The performance of Aaron Ramsey last week was a huge boost too and it’s difficult to believe we didn’t miss him when he was out injured. He’s very fond of a goal at Wembley and he could be the man to win us the game if he can get into some of the positions he got into last week. I think he has to play and the big question could be who accompanies him in midfield with Granit Xhaka probably more likely to get the nod than Jack Wilshere.

The other big question is the formation Arsene Wenger chooses as he has opted for a back four at home recently, but three central defenders might offer us more stability. I think we need Petr Cech to recover from the knock he took last week because David Ospina does not fill me with confidence when he plays. These are questions the manager has to ponder ahead of what’s probably our biggest game of the season so far.

If he can get it right and we can win the game the top four becomes a possibility, but a defeat would surely end those hopes with 11 league games still to go. The defensive performance at Chelsea might offer the template we need today, but that performance was at a price as we sacrificed a lot of our attacking options and the players picked today might not all have the defensive discipline of those who played against Chelsea. I would be very surprised if we kept a clean sheet today and that means we will have to score at least twice if we’re going to win. 

We have a two week gap to our next domestic game after today as we’re out of the FA Cup and our next game is the Carabao Cup Final which is also at Wembley. There’s the small matter of the home and away legs of the last 32 of the Europa League to play before that cup final though and that could end up being our best chance of making next season’s Champions League. Hopefully that won’t be the case though and we can take the three points and bragging rights against Spurs today.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Clueless Arsenal Somehow Draw 3-3 With Liverpool

If ever one single game summed up where a team or a club are then it was last night’s 3-3 draw for Arsenal with Liverpool. The team’s confidence was shot going into the game after losing 3-1 at home to United a few weeks ago and they hadn’t played well since then. Last night was something different though because it wasn’t just a case of playing badly they were an awful lot worse than that.

The display in the first half was absolutely awful and I’m struggling to remember the last time I saw Arsenal play so badly. We didn’t create a chance of note in that first half and it was only a mixture of luck and poor Liverpool finishing that kept the score to only 1-0 to them at the break. I hoped for better in the second half, but I had very little confidence of seeing it.

Arsene Wenger went with the same team that struggled to beat Newcastle 1-0 last Saturday which meant Young Ainsley Maitland-Niles continued at right back in a back four as we seem to have finally discarded the experiment with three central defenders. To be honest we never really played three central defenders as Nacho Monreal is a left back. Maybe that’s part of our defensive issues as too many players are being asked to play positions that are alien to them far too often.

Liverpool targeted AMN in that first half in particular and it was his positioning which let him down. It was too easy for players to find space behind him, but you would have to ask what help he was getting from the senior players in the side. They missed a couple of chances on that side before he was finally caught out and Phillippe Coutinho scored with a header to put them 1-0 up.

Mohamed Salah might be the top scorer in the Premier League, but it was his wayward finishing which kept us in the game as he missed two good chances to increase the lead. The ease at which Liverpool opened us was frightening and their ability to terrorise our defence on the break was scary. We offered virtually nothing at the other end in return despite playing against a team who have constantly shown they have no idea how to defend either.

I thought the second half started a little better, but that soon changed when a deflected Salah shot found it’s way past Petr Cech and I genuinely feared the worst at that stage. In a bizarre turn of events we found ourselves ahead within five minutes though as we finally realised the way to beat Liverpool was to attack them. Alexis Sanchez started it with a close range header and he was quickly followed by a pile driver from Granit Xhaka which Simon Mignolet should have saved. Just before those five minutes were up the turnaround was complete when a neat Mesut Ozil finish put us ahead to my surprise and I would imagine Liverpool’s too.

At that stage anything could have happened and Liverpool looked more than a little shocked, but they gradually played their way back into the game. We continued to push forward and they continued to catch us on the break with an equaliser becoming inevitable as the minutes passed. It was Roberto Firmino who delivered the equaliser, but Cech should have done an awful lot better after he got a strong hand to the shot.

The better chances after that fell to Liverpool, but at least we offered some threat and we were a lot better than we were in the first half. I can’t say I was unhappy with the result because I still can’t work out how we managed to get a point from a game where we were completely outplayed for all but five minutes. It leaves us only one point behind Liverpool and them in fourth place, but in truth any team who defends like we did last night won’t finish in the top four.

It’s not very fair to pick individual players out, but both Xhaka and Alex Iwobi were awful in that first half in particular. Added to that we had Laurent Koscielny yet again doing his best to hand goals to the opposition and it’s become a very regular occurrence for him this season. If it wasn’t for the recovery speed of Hector Bellerin in particular at times we would have conceded an awful lot more goals.

I can’t believe a team who practices defending could have defended as badly as we did last night which leads me to conclude we don’t actually practice our defending. The players don’t seem to know what positions to take up, how to track a runner or how to pass to their team mates for that matter. I’d love to be told how wrong I am, but if someone is responsible for that defensive coaching they should be looking for another job by now.

We’ve two tricky away games coming up at Palace and West Brom given our away form this season we should be very concerned about those games. We lost away to both of those teams last season in two of our worst performances of the whole season and there’s a sense of deja vu going into these games. If we can’t improve on how we’re playing at the moment our chances in those games are anyone’s guess and we play at hone to third placed Chelsea after those two games.

Last night’s point was better than we did at home to Liverpool last season, but I thought the performance was even worse. Jurgen Klopp seems to be able to get his team to score goals against us for fun and we don’t seem to have an answer for it. We can blame the players as much as we like, but so much of the blame has to lie with the man who bought those players and who coaches them and picks the team.

It looks to me like the manager is no longer capable of improving players and players quickly become worse than when we sign them. Sead Kolasinac was the best left back in the Bundesliga last season and he can’t get in ahead of AMN now while Xhaka looked like the midfielder we were missing when we signed him, but he most certainly isn’t that now. You have to ask what is going so badly wrong at the club that not one single player is playing to their full abilities or living up to their potential.

The only conclusion for me is the manager and the decision to extend his contract last summer was a mistake. It gave him a chance to leave on a relative high and I don’t know if he will get a chance like that again. We’re stuck with him until at least the end of next season though and I can only see things getting even worse between now and then. 

Defend him as some might it’s impossible to look past the fact that they are his players playing the way he has told them to play and it is going horribly wrong far too often. His team selections and transfer activity are baffling at times and it’s hard to see how there is any plan for progression or improvement. A new man might send us in the wrong direction, but I think that’s a chance we just have to take at this stage because it just is not working under Arsene Wenger.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Pathetic Arsenal Collapse At Liverpool

Things went from bad to worse for Arsenal yesterday when they lost their second game of the season away to Liverpool. Whatever can be said about the defeat at Stoke last week and how big refereeing decisions went against us there can be no such excuses offered yesterday. Arsenal were awful from first minute to last and didn't muster a single attempt on target for the first time in three years.

I thought the team selection at Stoke was all wrong and we were treated to more of the same yesterday. New signings Alexander Lacazette and Sead Kolasinac were left on the bench with Laurent Koscielny and Alexis Sanchez making their first appearances of the season after suspension and injury respectively kept them out of the team until now. The defence was where Arsene Wenger decided to make his strange selections yet again.

Rob Holding came back into the team after being left out of the squad last week while Shkodran Mustafi dropped to the bench. There are rumors of an impending departure for Mustafi and maybe that's why he was on the bench, but to be honest who knows. Holding was part of the central defensive trio along with Koscielny and Nacho Monreal with the really strange decisions in the wing back roles again.

With the manager unable to decide who should play at right wing back he opted for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Hector Bellerin was played on the left. Never mind that we bought the player voted the best left back in the Bundesliga last season and still haven't given him a chance to show why he won that accolade. Neither Bellerin or Chamberlain should be played on the left, but it seems the manager is the only person unable to see it.

With no central midfielders added to the squad this summer there wasn't much choice in that area and it meant Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey were paired together again. It's a pairing that might possibly work at home to weaker teams, but away to Liverpool it was a recipe for disaster. Ramsey plays too far forward and Xhaka is giving too many goals away right now and both of them lived up to those expectations yet again.

I'm still struggling to understand how Danny Welbeck was chosen ahead of our record signing Lacazette. Welbeck will give you loads of energy and make plenty of runs, but his finishing just isn't up to standard. When the first chance of the game came his way early on he fluffed his lines and it was probably Arsenal's best chance of the game.

Things got decidedly worse for Arsenal very soon after that miss when another lazy Xhaka pass was intercepted and Liverpool went ahead. With Ramsey and Chamberlain a long way off and not even looking at the ball we were caught out of position. A quick cross came in from our left and Frimino was completely unmarked as he headed home.

We should have already been one down by then, but Petr Cech made a good save and he was probably our best player on the day. It's not a good day for the team when they lose 4-0 and their goalkeeper is their best player. It looked like we might make it to half time only one goal down, but in true Arsenal style we let in another goal five minutes before the break.

The second goal came from yet another turnover and that seems to be the pattern for so many of the goals we concede at the moment. We lost the ball on the edge of their box and within 10 seconds we were two behind as Sadio Mane scored from the edge of our box without a single tackle being made as Liverpool went forward. We reached the break lucky to be only two down and the manager had a huge amount of work to do to try to get us back into the game. He brought Francis Coquelin on for Ramsey, but it didn't make any difference at all.

Yet again their next goal came from a turnover and this time it was an Arsenal corner. The ball was cleared by Liverpool and Bellerin was the last man back 20 yards inside their half. His poor touch let Mohamed Salah in and he ran from his own half and finished with ease past Cech. At 3-0 the game was only going one way and it was a matter of how many Liverpool would get at that stage.

The fourth goal came from Daniel Sturridge with a little more than 10 minutes to go and for once it wasn't the immediate result of a turnover. It was still very poor from Arsenal, but at least they had to work just a little bit for the goal for a change. Thankfully it was the last goal of the day and we just had to wait for the final whistle to end the torture.

Where do you start to analyse what happened and how long would that analysis take. For a start the team selection was all wrong and it's obvious that the manager has no real belief in playing three central defenders. As soon as we need to chase a game he switches to a back four, but surely if he believed in the new formation he would stick to it. His continued insistence on playing players out of position and playing some players while better ones are sitting on the bench is inexplicable. 

He went to Liverpool yesterday and played right into their hands from the very first minute. Liverpool knew we would try to come at them and they sat and waited to pick us off on the break or from quick turnovers of our mistakes. It was all too predictable and yet the only man who never considered that it might happen or knew it would was our manager.

For me the blame lies squarely with him and while the players also have to shoulder some responsibility they are his players going out there and playing his tactics. He's the man charged with preparing them for the game and getting them ready mentally, physically and technically, but he admitted afterwards that they weren't ready in any of those aspects. He has to take responsibility for such an abject performance from a team he thinks can challenge for the title.

He got the perfect opportunity to leave on a high after our record breaking FA Cup exploits last season even if he didn't bring Champions League football for once. A new man could have rebuilt without the pressure of Europe's top competition and he would have left plenty of fond memories even if the last 10 years were nowhere near the first 10. What we're left with now is a team who genuinely look like they couldn't be bothered playing for him again while he has two years left on his contract and we all know he never walks away from a contract.

There's no time to bring anyone else in and the players a new manager might want with only 72 hours left in the transfer window. We can't get rid of the players that are no longer needed and far too many of our players are running their contracts down so they can leave for nothing at the end of this season or next. It's an absolute shambles and we have no choice but to watch the man who's in charge continue with his policies which just are not working.

In any other walk of life failure to learn from your mistakes would mean the end, but at Arsenal there are no consequences for the manager or the players. We are habitually handed thrashings and yet we are still told the club were unable to find anyone better to manage the team. I find that unacceptable and I still think we could at least make a go of the Europa League this season, but not with Arsene Wenger in charge.

That doesn't mean I'm going to abuse the man on social media or spend all of my time slating him. I will continue to support the club I have always supported for the last 47 years and nothing will change that, but I genuinely believe we will not move forward until there is a change in management. The next two years could be a long time or maybe I'm completely wrong and he will get it right again, but that scenario is looking less and less likely with every single game.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Transfers Update

With the new season getting nearer and nearer it finally looks like we could be getting the sort of transfer activity which has been promised since last season ended. So far we have seen the arrivals of both Alexandre Lacazette and Sead Kolasinac with Wojciech Szczesny eventually departing to Juventus. I'm very happy with the arrivals of both Lacazette and Kolasinac, but I can't say I was overly happy to see Szczesny go.

He's done very well in his two years on loan at Roma and I honestly think he is at least an equal to Petr Cech and certainly better than any other options we have besides Cech. Maybe his bridges were burned along with that cigarette in the showers at Southampton, but I can't help feeling we might have made a mistake. Time will tell I suppose and playing understudy to Gianluigi Buffon at Juventus certainly won't make him a worse goalkeeper.


He's the only real departure of any note so far even if it does appear there are plenty more lining up at the exit door. It seems there is no place for Lucas Perez, Carl Jenkinson, Mathieu Debuchy, Jack Wilshere, Calum Chambers, Kieran Gibbs and maybe even a few more before the transfer deadline day. I would have thought David Ospina would be one of those on his way, but the sale of Szczesny has to make that fairly unlikely now.

The future of Alexis Sanchez is still uncertain, but the club seem to be determined to keep him even if it means losing him for nothing this time next year. I hope it doesn't come to that and he can be talked into a new contract, but if he can't I have to agree that it's better to keep him at the club for one final season despite what it might do to the bank balance in a year. He is the best player we have and if we are to make any impression next season we need to keep him and see how he can team up with Lacazette and Mesut Ozil.

There are plenty of rumours of the impending departures of Gibbs, Chambers, Perez and Jenkinson, but it might not be so easy to shift Debuchy or Wilshere. They're all on very good contracts at Arsenal and any team looking to buy them will have to think twice about matching their wages. We could be faced with a few of them not finding clubs because the money just isn't there to pay them.

We need to get their wages off the books though so we can pay that bit extra to the likes of Ozil and maybe Sanchez and the money we get for them would of course go nicely towards any upcoming purchases. The two players most likely to come at the moment seem to be Thomas Lemar and William Carvalho with the team/squad needing strengthening in their positions and both players possibly available. If we could add them to what we have already I think we could be almost optimistic about next season and it's been a while since I felt like that going into a new season with Arsenal.

It's also quite possible that we could lose Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain before the window closes as he doesn't seem eager to sign a new contract with only a year left to run on his current deal. It's a bit like the Alexis situation except Chamberlain isn't quite as valuable to us and we have never really found his true position in the team in his seven years at the club. He's a player who can be so good sometimes and the opposite too often too, but I still think he has a role to play in the long season ahead.

Much has been made of the need to sell Theo Walcott as he doesn't fit into our new formation, but playing with wing backs is hardly set in stone and I think we need to keep him too. He scored 19 goals last season and frustrate us as he might at times it won't be easy to replace those goals. Like Olivier Giroud he still has something to offer and I don't think we should be too quick to offload either of them. I would be surprised if Arsene Wenger thinks differently, but you never know what he might do if the right offer comes in.

With the new season comes a new season of "Fantasy Premier League" and as usual my "Ever Arsenal" league is up and running and there's €50 to the winner from my pocket unless a generous sponsor wants to step in and offer prizes galore. There's been well over a thousand teams in my league for the last few seasons and judging by the early uptake there will be again this season. If you haven't played before you can sign up here and join my league after you have set your team up by using the league code 57957-16522. For those who have been in the league before you will automatically rejoin once you set your team up and you can also find an auto link on my Twitter feed.

I'm also running my Predictions League again this season and you can find the link to join here and join my mini league with the code tq3c5. It's on the Talksport site and anyone good enough to predict all 10 scorelines correctly in a week can win £1,000,000 from them, but taking part in my mini league is obviously a lot more prestigious. I'll be updating the league here every week along with my usual fantasy tips and predictions.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal v Chelsea: FA Cup Final Preview

With the Premier League season ending in disappointment for Arsenal, despite winning their last five games, they still have a chance of some silverware when they take on Chelsea in the FA Cup Final this evening. It was the first time under Arsene Wenger that they had failed to finish in the top four and they set a Premier League record for the most points of any team finishing fifth. On the surface it looks like things aren't as bad as some would have you believe with that points haul, a cup final today and a blip in their Champions League qualification record.

However that's only scratching the surface of what has happened at Arsenal over the last few years and in this season in particular. The club is being run in a manner which defies belief at times with nobody seemingly responsible for a team which has proven season after season that it just cannot progress under the manager. His influence at the club is so vast that he controls almost every aspect of it and when it all goes wrong the blame has to lay with him.

Of course Stan Kroenke had to take his share of the blame too as his complete lack of ambition as an owner has led to the standards which are so unacceptable. It's no surprise that all of his other sports franchises are in a similar position when it comes to delivering everything except the one thing which seems to matter most to him. If he was to sell his shares in Arsenal he would make an enormous profit, but he seems to have no interest in doing so or in the team actually winning anything either.

The fans of the manager will tell you he has us in our third cup final in four seasons and we have the chance of winning the cup for the third time out of four. They will point to our points haul and tell you how close we came to a top four finish, but that hides so much of the truth. We were told that the club had exited from the tight financial restrictions of the stadium building years, but we have actually become less competitive than we were in those years.

We exited the Champions League at the round of 16 for the seventh season in a row and we suffered an embarrassing record 10-2 aggregate defeat to Bayern Munich. Once we hit our first bump in our league campaign we crumbled for months and only recovered when it was too late as we have done so often in the past 10 years. We have reached the FA Cup final, but the luck of the draw played a part with home games against non league clubs in the fifth and sixth rounds.

I don't mean to be all doom and gloom on the day of the cup final, but it's hard to see our season any other way. Our squad is in turmoil ahead of the opening of the transfer window with our two best players going into the last year of their contracts and there is nothing we can do to keep them if they choose to go. Even the manager's contract is up this summer and we still don't know if he will be our manager or not next season.

It's time to look at today's game though and the chance to put some cheer into a season which has delivered so little of it. As an added incentive we have the chance to win the cup for the 13th time which is one more than any other club has won it and we can stop Chelsea from doing the double too. They might have strolled to their league victory, but I still think they're a team who can be made to suffer on their day.

It was only after Arsenal beat them 3-0 that they switched to the formation which won them the league and Arsenal have now adopted that approach too. Antonio Conte has a lot more belief in the formation though and our manager is a lot more likely to switch to a flat back four if things aren't going our way. It's the players who will make up the defensive part of that formation which are causing the most concern for Arsenal ahead of the game. 

It seems Petr Cech has picked up a knock and David Ospina will play in goal which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Ospina has been our FA Cup and Champions League keeper this season, but Cech's recent form should have made him the choice for today and I can only hope he is actually injured rather than reverting to the ridiculous tactic of playing Ospina in cup games. There is a trophy to play for today and sentiment cannot play any part in the team selection. I would be very surprised if Ospina was at Arsenal next season and playing or not today would hardly be what he bases any decision to leave on.

We have our injury and suspension worries elsewhere too with Laurent Koscielny out after his rash tackle last week got him a red card and he lost his midweek appeal. Gabriel Paulista went off injured in that win against Everton too and he will play no part today either. There are concerns over both Shkodran Mustafi and Kieran Gibbs too and it seems they will both have late tests before the game.

Right now it looks like our central defensive trio will be Rob Holding, Per Mertesacker and Nacho Monreal and that has to be a little worrying up against the piece of scum that is Diego Costa. If Mustafi makes it we will probably see Mertesacker drop out as he has hardly kicked a ball this season through injury. If Gibbs isn't up to it then we could either see Mertesacker back in and Monreal go to left wing back or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain play on that side.

There's a lot of ifs and buts there, but Chamberlain playing on that side would mean Hector Bellerin would play on the right and it would solve one selection problem for the manager. Outside of the defensive unit there aren't too many worries for the manager, but the wing backs ability to make something happen in the attacking part of the pitch is crucial and he needs to get them right. He also needs to make sure they are up to their defensive duties because Chelsea know how to utilise this formation to it's best.

The rest of the team almost picks itself with the only real headache being who plays as the central striker and I would prefer Danny Welbeck over Olivier Giroud because he offers the pace which can hurt Chelsea. Giroud has proved to be a real asset off the bench so many times this season and he might just be needed in that role today. Despite the perception that we struggle to score goals we have already managed 119 goals this season and that's more than any other season under Wenger.

I don't want Alexis Sanchez to leave this summer, but if he wants out there's little we can do to stop him. If he is to leave surely it would be fitting if he helped us to a trophy in his last game and he's the player most likely to cause Chelsea problems. I have a feeling he will get on the scoresheet today and I just hope it's the goal that makes the difference.

We're going to need the referee to be strong to keep up with the antics we know we will get from Costa and it's about time the officials actually caught up with him during a game. Granit Xhaka has to curb his urge to kick anything that goes past him and both him and Aaron Ramsey have to form a shield for what could be a makeshift defence. If everybody does their job from first minute to last we can win the game, but we will have to do just that. I'm not exactly optimistic about the game, but somehow or other I can't see Chelsea with the trophy and I just hope I'm right.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal v West Ham United Preview

Arsenal aren't exactly playing well at the moment and they have only won once in their last six league games. During that time they were humiliated in the Champions against Bayern Munich, but they have made it to the semi finals of the FA Cup. They still have a chance of winning a trophy at least, but their biggest priority has to be trying to finish in the top four.

The draw with City on Sunday didn't really help their cause, but it was infinitely better than losing to one of the teams they're attempting to overhaul. They have seven points to make up on City, but they do have a game in hand while they have two games in hand on Liverpool with eight points to make up. Neither of those gaps are too much with 10 games still to play, but Arsenal will have to play an awful lot better if they are to have any chance of qualifying for the Champions League yet again.

Their upturn has to start now and they won't get too many better chances than against a West Ham team who have lost their last four games. They're letting in a lot of goals at the moment too with 10 conceded in those four defeats and they haven't kept a clean sheet in nine games. They lost 5-1 at home to Arsenal in December and only Swansea and Hull have conceded more goals than them.

Of course Arsenal haven't exactly covered themselves in defensive glory recently either and the manner of the goals they have been conceding leaves a lot to be desired. They showed character to come from behind twice against City on Sunday, but they were so fragile at the back that it was almost scary. It's hard to believe that there is any defensive coaching at all, but there has to be even if what they're being taught just isn't sinking in.

I captained just about every team I ever played for and my job was always to constantly remind every player of their job and to make sure they did it. It's hard to believe there was anyone telling Hector Bellerin exactly where he should be for City's first goal and almost every single Arsenal player stood and watched as City scored their second goal. Rather than acting to prevent City players getting the space to make and score the goal the Arsenal players only reacted after the events.

Arsene Wenger has often said he has a team of captains, but for me he needs one player out there screaming at the rest of the players from first minute to last. When Laurent Koscielny went off injured at half time against City nobody took over the captain's armband or the role either. Underestimating the role of a captain is a serious mistake by the manager in my opinion and I think it's one of the reasons we keep making the same mistakes game after game. It's hard to see who the captain will be against West Ham as we don't exactly have candidates queueing up for the job. Even at that the worst defensive lapses against City came when we had a captain on the pitch so it's clear that the captain's role certainly isn't organising the players.

As bad as West Ham have been recently I still think Andy Carroll can cause us problems as he has done all too often in the past. West Brom showed our defensive frailty in the air and Carroll will relish the chance to get among the Arsenal defenders. The chances of Arsenal keeping a clean sheet are slim and I only hope they can score enough goals to win the game.

As bad as our defence has been we haven't exactly excelled in attack recently either, but we only need to score two goals to reach the 100 mark in all competitions this season. It's not a bad return for a team who have struggled to find any consistency and didn't sign the striker they so badly needed last summer. Alexis Sanchez made the central striking his role with some great performances, but his reward seems to be a shift to the left side where he cannot influence the game as much.

He's got to be the first name on the team sheet for every game no matter how his contract negotiations might be going for next season. He's certainly not the only player who will enter the last year of his contract this summer with 11 others in the same situation. It's unbelievable to think a club that is being run properly would allow 12 players' contracts to run down to the point where all the bargaining chips are in those players hands.

That's what we're faced with at Arsenal though and the chances are the best of those players will be sold below their market value if they go into the final year of their contract while those we cannot sell will either see out their contracts or get a substantial increase in wages. Again you have to ask the questions about the running of the club and who is ultimately responsible for the shambles we are descending into.

With some supporters marching at every game to protest against the manager and banners for and against him unfurled in the stadium it has become a hostile environment for the players and the fans too. Despite all of the protests I am still firmly of the belief that there are very few fans who would like to see the manager sacked, but I also think the majority at this stage think he should decide to call it quits at the end of this season and make the announcement now. I think the best way the club can move forward is with a new man at the helm, but it could of course all go wrong.

I think we have to take that chance now as fear of the future cannot be cited as a reason not to change. If the manager is going to be fondly remembered by fans in years to come I think a decision by him to leave rather than facing the bullet is the way to go. I have little faith in the powers that be at the club to do so though and I fear we will face into next season with no Champions League football, an incomplete squad (yet again) and an even more fractured fan base. It's not a pleasant prospect, but it seems the most likely scenario at this stage.

As for West Ham tonight it's a game we should win despite our current mess and three points would be a welcome boost ahead of a tricky trip to a rejuvenated Palace on Monday night. We have to start winning games again and we have some tough games to go against United, Everton and Spurs among others which could decide our fate this season. If the players are to rebuild their confidence then three points tonight are an absolute must.

So many players are playing with little or no confidence and so unsure of their roles that it's hard to see how it will change though. Gabriel Paulista will come in for the injured Laurent Koscielny and there is a possibility David Ospina might miss out with injury which could see Emiliano Martinez come in as Petr Cech is still doubtful too. I would like to see Mohamed Elneny replace Francis Coquelin as I just don't think Coquelin is good enough on the ball and it's like we're carrying a player when we are in possession. He makes plenty of tackles, but is too prone to an early booking which means he has to curb his game and he becomes even more ineffectual.

For me Alexis has to be redeployed in the central striking role where he was so effective earlier in the season. You don't move your best player out of their best position and one where they can influence the game the most to accommodate others to the detriment of the team, but apparently that's just what we're doing now. If we play Alexis centrally I think he can do what he did to West Ham in the reverse fixture when he got three goals and an assist.

I'd love to say I'm confident of a win tonight, but nothing about the current situation fills me with confidence. Of course I have seen the team in a much worse state in my 47 years supporting them, but we weren't one of the richest clubs in the world then and it was a much more level playing field for other teams. Things have to improve and they have to improve quickly starting with three points tonight and maybe even a good performance too if we're lucky.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal v Manchester City Preview

Time is of the essence for me today so I'll try to make this preview as quick as possible. To be honest it's not exactly easy to write about Arsenal at the moment despite the club giving us so much raw material. So much has been said that there's not too much I can add to it without boring everybody to tears.

Our form is at probably it's lowest point under Arsene Wenger and his position is under more pressure than it has ever been in nearly 21 years at the club. We have fallen alarmingly behind the top four with four defeats in five games and we need to arrest that slide immediately or there will be no Champions League football next season. As bad as we have been in the knock out stages of the Champions League it would be a huge blow for the club to miss out on qualification. 

As it stands we are seven points behind City with a game in hand and could close that gap to four points with a victory today. Liverpool are nine points ahead of us and we have three games in hand on them which makes them catchable. I can't see us catching Chelsea or Spurs and it doesn't really matter whether we catch United or not if we don't overhaul either City or Liverpool too.

Chelsea's defeat at home to Palace yesterday has given City a chink of light and they play at home to Chelsea on Wednesday night. They have to beat us today if they are to have any hope of getting back in the title race and that might give Arsenal the opportunity they need to get at City. We find it so hard to break down team's who sit tight and try to hit us on the break or from set pieces, but surely City have to come to play today.

Earlier this season or in seasons gone by that might have been a good thing for Arsenal, but this season we are the ones who have struggled against teams who play an open game against us. It's not too easy to criticise an attack which has scored 96 goals in all competitions, but we have most definitely let in too many goals this season. We have been poor in defence this season and that includes the goalkeepers and the midfield too with the whole team failing to defend properly as a unit.

I have been critical of Petr Cech this season, but he's still a better option than David Ospina and I would probably prefer to see Wojciech Szczesny back at the club next season or a new keeper coming in. Ospina will play today with Cech still injured and it worries me when he plays. He's a good shot stopper, but his distribution can be far too risky, he's poor on corners and he has an annoying habit of standing behind his line.

There aren't too many other players missing though with Santi Cazorla the most notable absentee and Lucas Perez out too. I don't think Perez has got the opportunities his performances have deserved and it would be no surprise to see him leave in the summer. As for today I would hope to see a front three of Alexis Sanchez, Danny Welbeck and Theo Walcott with us trying to use their combined pace to stretch a City defence who have been as bad as our's quite often this season.

The biggest decision for the manager could be what players play in midfield and I think the Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny combination could be the way to go. In front of them I think we just have to play Mesut Ozil despite his current lack of form as he is the man who can unlock the City defence in a split second given the chance. We need to get him some good possession in good positions first though and that's something we haven't done much of recently.

City are in good form at the moment and they have some very good players in their team, but they are vulnerable too. They have won 10 and lost four games on the road and they have scored more away goals than any other team. Their away defeats have come against some of the better teams and that has to give Arsenal some hope today.

Arsenal's problem at home has been their lack of goals and they have actually scored more goals away from home than at home. They will probably need to score two or three goals today if they are going to win as I can't see them keeping a clean sheet. Their chances will ultimately depend on the attitude of the players and that's something which has to improve dramatically.

The manager told us his decision on his future would be known by now, but still we have no word and it's very difficult to believe it's not affecting the team. A great performance today would show those players are behind him no matter what the decision is, but more of what we have seen recently is what us fans fear most. It's a game I'm really not looking forward to and it could easily end up like "car crash TV", but as always I won't be able to drag myself away from it.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal's FA Cup Trip To Preston Previewed

It's FA Cup action today for Arsenal with a trip to Preston in the evening game live on TV. The midweek 3-3 draw at Bournemouth is still fresh in our minds and to be honest it's not easy to put a game like that behind you. You can look at it two ways as either a point gained after trailing 3-0 or two points dropped against a team we really should have beaten on paper at least.

The first 65 minutes from Arsenal was abysmal and we were probably lucky to be only three goals down at that stage, but the comeback was great and the point could prove to be important at the end of the season. As I said before the game Bournemouth are no pushovers, but we did nothing to take advantage of their defensive frailties until we were three down. They were the ones to take advantage of our defensive problems with Arsenal handing them the first two goals on a plate.

Hector Bellerin went AWOL for the first goal, but he wasn't helped by Aaron Ramsey not wanting to do the defensive part of the game either. Bellerin managed to get back though and then he was beaten far too easily as was Petr Cech for that goal and the third one too. In fact Cech didn't cover himself in glory for his attempts to save the penalty either as has been the way with the many penalties Arsenal have conceded this season.

I was a little worried when we signed Cech that his best days were behind him and I'm even more worried now. David Ospina will get a chance in the FA Cup today and it might just be time for Ospina to make the goalkeeper's shirt his own. His shot stopping is vastly superior to Cech's for me at the moment, but I do worry about his abilities on crosses.

The second goal Bournemouth scored was almost worse from Arsenal with Granit Xhaka inexplicably pushing their player over in the box when there was no real danger. He had done well to get back after Arsenal lost possession outside the Bournemouth area, but it's impossible to understand why he pushed the player over. I was delighted when we signed Xhaka and he can be very good most of the time, but it looks like he lacks a football brain. His ability to make stupid decisions is next to none and he has to work harder to cut those stupid mistakes out of his game.

If the foul by Xhaka was a penalty then the push on Bellerin which led to the third goal was a free to Arsenal without a doubt, but the referee didn't give it and again Cech didn't cover himself in glory.

I may have gone into that game a little too much considering it was four days ago, but as I said it's a tough one to get out of my head. We should have won, could have lost and ended up with an unlikely point in true Arsenal style. That point dropped us to fifth in the league, but we actually closed the gap to Chelsea at the top to a mere eight points.

The question is are we truly chasing Chelsea or is our actual goal to finish in the top four yet again. It's going to be a very tight finish with six teams battling it out for those four places and any two teams could miss out. I really can't see us winning the league considering our awful form against the rest of the top six for many years now and our ability to implode just when it matters most.

With all that in mind the FA Cup becomes a little more important because the league is such a stretch and the Champions League is definitely beyond us. We were knocked out at home to Watford last season at a time when our league challenge was imploding, but we won the trophy in the previous two seasons. No team has won more FA Cups than Arsenal and no manager has won more than Arsene Wenger. 

I have no doubt Preston will give us a tough test today and try to take advantage of any defensive slips that we are so fond of at the moment. Even with our current injury problems and Alexis Sanchez having a much needed rest we should still be too good for a team who sit in the middle of the table a league below us. I'm not taking Preston for granted, but once Arsenal don't either I think they will win.

Hopefully they can advance to the next round and put the cup aside for a while so they can concentrate on the league. They have three games coming up that they should and most definitely have to win before a trip to Chelsea early next month. Nine points from those games is a must and with so many of the teams around us playing each other we will move up the table if we win those three games.

If we can go to Chelsea in good form and with most of our injured players back then maybe a performance like the one in the 3-0 win at home to them earlier this season might just be what we need, but it's a huge ask from players who have failed when the chips are down time after time.

I'm still of the belief that last season was our chance to win the league with all the other big clubs failing at once, but we blew it despite leading in early January. We are the only team in the current top six to have less points than this time last season and some of them have an awful lot more points. If we couldn't win it when they all fell by the wayside then what chance do we really have this season with all of them performing so much better.

I'll leave you on that depressing note with the Preston game up shortly and the hopes of a 13th FA Cup win for the club getting under way for this season. I think the boss will play the strongest team he has with the exception of Alexis as he knows this could very quickly be our only route to a trophy this season. Let's hope we beat them and the players and manager can change enough to improve our fortunes from here on in.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal's Trip To PSG Previewed

Arsenal just about managed to beat Southampton on Saturday, but I'm still not quite sure how they did it. It was a far from impressive display and they got out of jail right at the death with a somewhat lucky penalty. They won though and took three very important points to move them up to seventh in the Premier League table.

It was a pretty strong Arsenal team too, but there were a few noteable absentees. With the trip to PSG in mind Arsene Wenger left Granit Xhaka and Olivier Giroud on the bench while Alexis Sanchez didn't start as he was back quite late from international duty in South America. I expect all three of them to start against PSG as Arsene Wenger looks to play his strongest team possible.

There is a suggestion that David Ospina will get the nod ahead of Petr Cech as he did in some of the group games last season. It's a risky move which backfired badly at home to Olympiacis, but to be fair to Ospina he is a good keeper and Cech has made his fair share of mistakes since joining Arsenal too. None of those mistakes have been as obvious as the one Ospina made in that game, but there is a suggestion he is struggling with long range efforts.

There could be other changes too with the possibility of Mohamed Elneny coming in for Santi Cazorla to add some more strength in front of the defence alongside Xhaka. Santi has played very well so far and has probably been our best attacking player to this point, but a player who can offer more defensively might be a better option for this game. I'd like to see how Xhaka and Elneny perform together and we might just get a chance to see that combination in this game.

I suppose there's a possibility of Theo Walcott missing out too as he hasn't exactly been overly impressive so far this season. If Giroud plays centrally then Alexis will come in on the left or right and we could see Lucas Perez retain his place, but shift to a wide role. I think Walcott will get the nod ahead of both of them though while Alex Iwobi is unlikely to play from the start too.

There are plenty of other options available with the possibility of Mesut Ozil or Cazorla moving to the wide role and the other one of those two playing behind the striker to accomodate both players. I think Ozil will play his usual role though and Cazorla will be the man to miss out. It's good that we have so many options and hopefully the players can find more understanding than they did on Saturday as the season progresses.

PSG have the French league tied up at almost a stroll and the real challenge for them is in the Champions League. It's the trophy their mega rich owners desire more than any other, but it's not easy to win as Arsenal are well aware. They might not be on top of their domestic league right now, but I have no doubt they will be before too long and until the season ends too.

On the face of it Arsenal's group is none too difficult and it should be a fight between them and PSG for first place. While Basel and Ludogorets cannot be written off, Arsenal should be able to finish ahead of both of them as long as they don't treat them as lightly as they did the so called also rans in their group last season. They managed to get out of that group last season despite themselves and hopefully they will do things a lot better this season.

It's been far too long since Arsenal made it past the last 16 of the Champions League and the best way to do that is to win their group. If they can stay on top of their games against Basel and Ludogorets then the group should come down to the results home and away against PSG. A win away to them would be the ideal way to get off the mark in the group, but I'd happily take a point from this game.

The team still haven't put in a 90 minute performance in their four games to date, but now is the time for them to do just that. This will be their toughest game so far and a good result could be just what the team needs to get them going.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Fail To Learn Their Lessons Again

Here we are again one game into the new season and Arsenal find themselves in the middle of another crisis. They lost their opening game 4-3 at home to Liverpool despite scoring the first goal and the team yet again seemed anything but ready for the opening game. In an all too familiar scenario we were told by Arsene Wenger that the team were ready and able for the big kick only for him to change his story after the game.

Everybody knew when the season started and for him not to have the team ready for that kick off is inexcusable. It's not as if it's a one off either as Arsenal have only won once in the last seven seasons on the opening day. Is he so unable to read the form and fitness of his players that he genuinely got it so badly wrong in believing they were ready.

Of course he wasn't helped by the absences of Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud who should be available very soon. The real problems came in defence where the absence of Koscielny was added to by the recent injuries to both Per Mertesacker and Gabriel Paulista. The inexperience of both Calum Chambers and Rob Holding was cruelly exposed by Liverpool and we should never have reached a position where those two were our central defensive pairing on the opening day.

It started so well for Arsenal with Theo Walcott giving them the lead just after the half hour mark despite missing a penalty only a minute earlier. As half time approached Arsenal seemed in command, but Holding gave away a needless free kick and Phillippe Coutinho made him pay a heavy price with a great finish. There were questions to answer for Petr Cech who might have done better and his inability to keep out long range efforts has to be a worry.

The second half was a completely different story with Liverpool going for the jugular from the start and Arsenal going 4-1 down soon after the hour mark. To make matters worse Arsenal lost both Alex Iwobi and Aaron Ramsey to injuries, but their replacements did their part in trying to get something from the game. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain scored the next goal with Santi Cazorla making it and the third Arsenal goal too. There were still 15 minutes left to play at that stage, but Liverpool managed to steady the ship and Arsenal never really looked like equalising.

Looking back the team was so far off what is needed to beat another so called title contender that the result wasn't a surprise. As well as the shortcomings in defence the inclusion of Alexis Sanchez at centre forward didn't work and he has never looked comfortable when he has been asked to play in that position. To play Walcott on the right went against everything the manager had told us about Walcott only a few days earlier and it was almost impossible to believe.

If he had belief in his only two fit central defenders to play despite their age then why didn't he choose his only fit centre forward in Chuba Akpom or even Walcott. Alexis is wasted in that role and he has so much more to offer the team on either the right or left of the attack. There was no proper balance to the attack even if they did manage to score three goals against a Liverpool defence who were just as bad as our defence.

The difference between the teams on the day for me was Liverpool had so much more to offer going forward. Even without Daniel Sturridge they looked like they could score at any time while Arsenal were too easy to stop. The return of Ozil and Giroud will improve Arsenal going forward, but a top class centre forward is desperately needed and it looks like we have no hope of getting one.

I was also more than a little surprised to see Granit Xhaka on the bench after we spent something like £35 million on him in May. Surely the midfield combination should be him and Mohamed Elneny as they can both do the defensive work needed and have far more going forward than Francis Coquelin. Even when Xhaka came on it was for Elneny when the team needed to find more in attack. After spending so much money on Xhaka does he still need to prove himself before he can cement a place in the team.

We play again next weekend when we go to Leicester and it doesn't look like the central defensive options will change by then. Does that mean we will see the same pairing as we did on Sunday and if so will we continue to suffer as they continue to learn their trade. Leicester haven't started the defence of their title too well either, but they will most certainly try to target our defence on Saturday.

The simple solution to strengthening the team has to be to get the job done early and give new players time to gel before the season starts. The arrival of Xhaka led us to believe things might be different this season, but the inactivity since then has been all too familiar. Money cannot be a problem with the money available to the club and it's impossible not to believe Arsenal just won't pay the going rate even if that rate is currently incredibly high.

It looks like we'll be scrambling around in the dying embers of the transfer window trying to pick any bargains or players other clubs don't want. How that fits in with any club's "transfer policy" is something I can't understand, but I don't doubt that it's what we will end up with. It doesn't mean we won't challenge for trophies this season, but it definitely means we won't give ourselves the best possible chance of doing so.

Finally for today there's still time to join my Fantasy League and my Predictions League for the new season. There's a €50 prize for the fantasy league and it's open to anyone to join.

To join my fantasy league go to the official site and set up your team after entering your details. Once you've set up your team go to the league's option and join a private league. The code for my league (Ever Arsenal league) is 64693-22498 and there's already well over 500 teams in it.

For my predictions league go to the official site and make your forecasts for the first set of games (you can change them later if you want) and then go to the mini leagues option. Go to the join a mini league option (invitation code) and use the code for my league 64693-215432 to sign up. After that you can join in the fun of predicting every single game in the upcoming season.

That's it for today.

See you tomorrow.