Arsenal v Spurs: NLD Preview

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about Arsenal, but with a huge game against Spurs today I felt the rare urge to do so. It’s been far from a perfect start to the season for Arsenal, but they have won their last two games by the same 1-0 scoreline. Prior to those games they had lost three in a row and they failed to score in those games while conceding nine goals.

Of course there were excuses of players missing and the transfer window still being open, but it’s difficult to justify those first three games. Things have improved defensively since then, but we’re still very much goal shy with two goals in five games. The perfect time to overcome our goalscoring issues would be today against Spurs of course.

Spurs aren’t exactly having a great time of it either with back to back 3-0 defeats after briefly topping the table with 1-0 wins in each of their first three games. As it stands Arsenal can actually go ahead of Spurs if they win by two goals, but then again we have only scored two goals in our first five games. I would be happy with any win and I think there’s every chance Arsenal can take the three points.

We have to be careful of how Spurs play with Nuno Espírito Santo now in charge considering Wolves beat us at home and away last season. I think Wolves actually played better football than Spurs under him and their main tactic is more than likely going to be trying to hit us on the break. We have to be careful not to over commit which of course would stifle us in attack, but it’s a balance Mikel Arteta has to get right.

The time Thomas Partey got in the Carabao Cup against Wimbledon on Wednesday night will hopefully have done him and us some good because he is going to have to play a very important part if we’re going to win. Arteta has a couple of decisions to make ahead of the game with both Aaron Ramsdale and Bernd Leno anxious to start in goal while he also has to decide who plays in the middle with Partey. Personally I’d prefer to see Albert Sambi Lokonga, but I would be very surprised if we didn’t see the return of Granit Xhaka after his three game ban for the red card against City.

Amazing as it sounds we could actually go with five points of the Premier League leaders Liverpool if we win this game which would be no mean feat for a team which had the worst record of any team in the Premier League era after three games. Of course we have to win to accomplish that feat and it’s not going to be an easy task. The performance of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is going to be important for us and I still think we need to see an awful lot more from him than we have so far this season.

The purchase of Martin Odegaard could be the creative spark we are missing, but I still think there’s not enough pace or urgency to our attacking game. I don’t know if that’s what the manager has called for, but if we’re going to continue to climb the table we need to up the tempo. I can’t think of a better time to do just that than against that lot this afternoon and to go ahead of them in the table with an impressive attacking display. Here’s hoping that’s exactly what we get.

That’s it for now.

See you next time.