It’s hard to see what any manager can do about individual errors and I think we would have won the game until Bernd Leno’s error handed them an equaliser. He will surely be able to drill them into the better defending which would have stopped Chelsea getting their late winner. Shkodran Mustafi simply had to make sure Tammy Abraham couldn’t get the chance to start the break which led to the goal and he should have taken a yellow card for the team to stop him. It’s a tactic which City used all the time when Arteta was their second in command and I have no doubt he will instill it into the Arsenal players if he hasn’t done so already.
Our position in the Premier League is not good and on our current form we’re getting closer to the bottom three with each game. We have only won once in our last 12 league games and we haven’t won in our last six at home. In recent seasons when we struggled so badly away from home it was our home form which saw us through, but we can’t even rely on that any more.
I honestly think Arteta will make a difference in the long term, but he actually needs to change results quickly too. As bad as the Europa League might be compared to the Champions League it’s an awful lot better than no European football at all which seems a very real possibility at the moment. As bad as we are though we’re still not too far off the other teams chasing fifth place and fourth place is not dead and buried yet considering Chelsea’s current run of results.
We need something to change and maybe just for something small to break in our favour to turn things around. I thought it was going to happen against Chelsea, but we shot ourselves in the foot and I just hope it can happen against United tonight. They’re currently in fifth place with seven points to spare over us, but a win for us tonight would cut that gap to a mere four points.
It’s hard to see where our next win is coming from, but a win might just kickstart a revival. Four wins in a row is the thing of dreams at the moment, but if we could win our next four league games our position would improve greatly. With no team showing any real consistency outside the top three it’s not impossible to believe we can shoot up the table with just a slight upturn in our performances.
Arteta has big problems for tonight though with so many defensive injuries and he’s going to struggle to put out a strong defence. There aren’t too many issues in other positions, but given how poor we have defended this season it’s very worrying. He does have a decision or two to make in other positions too.
Our midfield is offering virtually no return in terms of goals and the burden of our goalscoring is almost solely on the shoulders of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. I think Nicolas Pepe might be one of the few players besides Aubameyang who can add some goals, but he just can’t get a game. I don’t know why Arteta won’t pick him, but both Freddie Ljungberg and Unai Emery didn’t see fit to include our record signing either.
If we can somehow pull something out for tonight I think it will give us the impetus we need, but it’s a big ask for players who have almost forgotten how to win. I’d love to get one over on them on a day when Spurs lost and Chelsea only drew in games they were expected to win. The league table would look an awful lot better for us tonight if we can put a fairly average United team to the sword.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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