With the news of Manchester City’s two season ban from European football that top five place has become an awful lot more important. Despite Chelsea struggling for quite a while now they still look odds on to finish fourth, but City’s problems should mean the team who finish fifth take their place in the Champions League next season. City will of course appeal the decision and fifth place might fade into insignificance again, but for the moment at least our hopes can be raised.
As it stands we have eight points to make up on Sheffield United who currently hold fifth spot, but we have a game in hand. Our next three fixtures provide us with that opportunity to take nine points and the table will look an awful lot better if we can do just that. Considering our current run of results it’s far from an easy task, but considering the opponents it’s certainly not one that’s beyond us either.
After Newcastle today it’s Everton and West Ham at home in our next two league games and neither of them are much to be afraid of either. Everton have improved under their new manager, but West Ham are in real trouble and could find themselves in the Championship next season. First things first though and the need to beat Newcastle cannot be understated.
We have made plenty of progress since Mikel Arteta took the reins, but too many of our games have ended in draws and it’s time to turn those draws into wins. We have only won four of our 12 home games so far this season and even more worryingly only one of our last eight. There was a time not so long ago when teams feared coming to the Emirates and we beat the majority of Premier League teams without having to even perform at our best.
The defensive improvement under Arteta has been absolutely great, but it has been partly at the expense of our attack. It will take a while for him to find the right balance between them in the team, but from what he has said recently it looks like he’s more than well aware of the situation. I expect him to give the players a little more attacking leeway today and hopefully it will be enough to unlock a very defensive Newcastle team. Despite their defensive set up they have only kept one clean sheet away from home and only Villa have conceded more goals on the road.
Arteta has a few decisions to make in his team selection today and the first of them surely has to be whether to persist with Alexandre Lacazette or not. He hasn’t scored in his last eight league games, but all of his goals have come at home and the manager has stated how he sees him as a vital part of the way he wants the team to play. Like quite a few other fans I would like to see an attacking trio of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with Nicolas Pepe on one side of him and Gabriel Martinelli on the other side.
That trio offers us the pace and goal threat which I think we need so badly, but I’m not so sure we’ll see it. Who supplies the ammunition for them is another thing and as much as I like Mesut Ozil it’s hard to argue with the stats which show he just isn’t the player he used to be. Maybe a home game against Newcastle might be the perfect game for him to perform, but there’s a very real prospect of him warming the bench yet again today.
We have missed Aaron Ramsey’s ability to arrive late in the box and score the goals this team is so badly missing and we didn’t manage to replace him when he went on his merry way last summer. Joe Willock has shown glimpses of a player who might be able to fill that role, but he’s certainly far from the finished article. We don’t have the midfielders to add to our goals tally that we had in previous seasons and it’s really hurting our results.
In our seven league games under Arteta we have only scored eight goals and while we have only conceded seven goals in those games it’s still a pretty poor return. Arteta has addressed the defensive issues to a certain degree and now it’s time to address the attacking issues. With the right team today we can at least start to bring some joy back to a season that has been almost bereft of it since the opening day.
As poor as our results have been we have been no worse than any of the other teams chasing fifth place and an improvement from us could be enough to make fifth place ours. To have drawn more than half of our 25 league games is quite incredible and surely we’re due a few wins starting with Newcastle today and followed by a run of six games where the three points are ours for the taking.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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