Arsenal Running Out Of Time For Arteta

Let me just start by saying I was all for Mikel Arteta getting the Arsenal job a year ago despite his inexperience. I had had enough of Unai Emery and it seemed clear and obvious that the players felt more or less the same way. I thought Arteta could come in and galvanise the players he had as well as hopefully adding some quality to the team/squad.

The signs were encouraging at first and he even managed to deliver an FA Cup against the odds in a pandemic interrupted season. There were some negatives too such as the exit from the Europa League at the round of 32 despite winning the away leg of our tie against Olympiakos. Our eighth placed finish in the Premier League was forgiven thanks to that FA Cup win which brought us Europa League football yet again.

Some of the issues in the squad seemed to have been very well addressed with the arrivals of Gabriel Magalhaes and Thomas Partey and I think those two players will be crucial if we are going to improve. Partey has played very little so far thanks to injuries he has picked up while Gabriel has been our best central defender and he’s our third highest scorer in the league too. There have been other problems though and Arteta’s handling of some of them has been questionable at best.

First up there has been the issue of Mesut Ozil and Arteta’s decision to completely exclude him from the team this season. He is being paid an absolute fortune by the club and to get no return for that investment seems incredible. If we were doing well and making chances maybe it wouldn’t be such a thorn in Arteta’s side, but to exclude a player of his ability when we are missing exactly what he offers beggars belief.

As well as leaving Ozil completely out of the picture Arteta chose to send Matteo Guendouzi out on loan for disciplinary reasons. Our midfield is struggling really badly at the moment and despite his age and relative inexperience Guendouzi has to be a better option than some of the players who are keeping their places week after week. Things seem to be going pretty well for him at Hertha Berlin and I can’t help but feel the manager has handled the situation badly.

It looks to me like he chose his battles against those two players to possibly assert his authority, but he may have overplayed his hand. By cutting the two of them off completely it’s hard to believe he hasn’t hampered the team and his first priority has to be to the team. Surely the two of them could have a part to play in changing our fortunes if they were available and they couldn’t do any worse than some of the dross we have been served up recently.

In the final years of Arsene Wenger it was clear we were fading slowly but surely, but at least we were trying to play good football and managing to do so quite often too. That football got worse under Emery and it has become even worse again under Arteta.

We are absolutely awful to watch at the moment and coupled with a run of results which would get almost any manager sacked it seems like the outcome for Arteta is almost inevitable. We don’t have a style of play to talk about and we’re far to easy to keep out for opponents. I honestly cannot fathom how he wants the team to play and I don’t think the players have a clue either.

Too many players are just strolling through games and yet those same players don’t seem to pay a price as they’re in the team time after time. The only Premier League game where we looked better than the opposition was in our opening day 3-0 win away to Fulham and we have only taken 11 points from the 13 games since then. We are hovering just above the relegation zone with the teams below slowly but surely making up ground.

The question is whether Arteta can turn things around and I quite honestly believe it is beyond him at this stage. In his year in charge we have not come from behind to win a game in the Premier League which is a damning stat for him and the team. It shows his inability to change things when they aren’t going our way, but I suppose it’s difficult to change things when those things don’t really have a system anyway.

Our next league game is against Chelsea and after that there are four games in a row which have become almost must win games for us. With no disrespect to Brighton, West Brom, Newcastle and Crystal Palace we should be targeting 12 points from those four games, but my confidence in the team winning any of them is incredibly low. There’s a very real possibility of Arsenal dropping into the bottom three if they can’t turn things around very quickly and I just cannot see how Arteta can remain in the job if we are in the relegation zone.

As always I really want Arsenal to win every single game they play, but I cannot ever remember my confidence in them doing so being so low in over 50 years of supporting the club. Sometimes it’s a little easier to accept a poor style of football if the results are delivered, but we have the very worst combination of awful football and even worse results at the moment and I can’t see any other way to change other than bringing in a new manager. I know a new manager doesn’t guarantee better football or results, but as bad as these players might be there is absolutely no way Arteta is getting the best out of them.

Maybe I’m wrong and Arteta will turn things around, but I doubt it and even if he does there’s the small matter of the football we’re playing. It seems such a long time ago when teams came to the Emirates defending for their lives with their goalkeeper invariably getting the man of the match award as they put life and limb on the line to repel Arsenal. Now they come to our ground and take the game to us as they know we don’t have the wherewithal to take the game to them.

As bad as it got under Emery I don’t think it was anywhere near as bad as it is now. I dread having to watch Arsenal play  as I get virtually no enjoyment from watching them and I wish every single game wasn’t live on TV. Of course there have been worse times, but right now it’s very difficult to remember when those times were.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Beat Bournemouth To Reach The FA Cup Fifth Round

Last night went pretty well for Arsenal all things considered as they won 2-1 away to Bournemouth to progress to the fifth round of the FA Cup. Mikel Arteta picked a mixture of youth and experience with Bukayo Saka, Matteo Guendouzi, Joe Willock, Eddie Nketiah, Emiliano Martinez and Gabriel Martinelli all getting a chance from the start. He also played the recovering Hector Bellerin who was the captain on the night as well as Shkodran Mustafi, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Granit Xhaka and Nicolas Pepe.

The young players approached the game as if they had something to prove as Arsenal went on the front foot from the very first minute. A great 22 pass move involving all 10 outfield players ended up with Saka blasting the ball past the Bournemouth keeper to give us the lead after only five minutes. Rather than sit on their laurels Arsenal continued to dominate despite being away from home and a second goal seemed almost inevitable.

That goal came 20 minutes later when Nketiah had the easy task of stroking the ball home after Arsenal played through the attempted Bournemouth press. It was that man Saka who set it up for him, but yet again it was another great team move from back to front. As the first half progressed Bournemouth gradually came out of their shell, but Martinez wasn’t called upon until shortly before the break and he was up to the task.

Bournemouth took a more agricultural approach after the break as they attempted to “put it up ‘em” and put the frighteners on this young Arsenal team. Enter Guendouzi who was simply having none of it as he got stuck in winning tackles and giving as good as he got. I don’t know if it’s Arteta’s influence which was showing in him last night, but whatever it was he was very impressive.

A word for Joe Willock too who I said yesterday might be the player in our midfield to break into the opposition box given the chance. His ability to carry the ball towards the Bournemouth defence was very impressive too and there is a real case for him to play in that role more often. With so many young players willing to give it their all when they get a chance the future certainly looks promising.

I haven’t forgotten Martinelli or Nketiah with the former putting in another great shift and the later doing what he does best and putting the ball in the back of the net. When they were backed up by a disciplined Xhaka the team had a great shape although Xhaka still managed a couple of his usual lapses. He’s being asked to play a deeper role than previously and he’s growing into it as well as regaining the respect of the fans after the incident against Palace earlier in the season.

Bournemouth came into the game a lot more after the break, but for all their huffing and puffing they rarely threatened the Arsenal goal. We were a little vulnerable on crosses as Martinez struggled to impose himself and he got away with a couple of poor punches from those crosses. There wasn’t a lot he could do about the Bournemouth goal when it did come, but at least it was late enough to cause us little bother for the rest of the game.

The goal came in the fifth of almost 11 added minutes at the end of the game and the main reason for all that added time was a very unfortunate injury to Mustafi. He was actually having a very good game on the night and I can’t remember him putting a foot wrong at any stage. The traveling fans were so impressed they were even singing his praises at one stage which is surely something we haven’t heard in a long time.

The injury to Mustafi only increases our need to add a central defender with Calum Chambers already out for the rest of the season and Rob Holding still looking like he has a way to go to get back to form after his injury. We have been linked with a couple of players and it looks like a deal might be on the cards before the transfer window closes on Friday night. If it happens I think it will probably be the only deal we do.

The draw for the fifth round was made before the game and we will face another trip to the south coast to play League One side Portsmouth in early March. We’re getting towards the business end of the FA Cup and a win against Portsmouth would put us through to the last eight if we can do it. I won’t quite say I can smell the sweet air of a Wembley final, but who knows where we might end up come May.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s Trip To Manchester United Previewed

The season has started reasonably well for Arsenal in terms of results even if the performances have been mostly far from convincing. They cruised to a 5-0 win at home to Nottingham Forest in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday night despite Unai Emery making 11 changes from the team that just about took the three points against Villa a couple of days earlier. It means we’ve had almost a week to prepare for this game after playing in the previous three games in the space of six days.

Other results over the weekend mean we will have to beat United tonight to keep our place in the top four and we will have to win by seven goals to overtake third placed Leicester. While seven goals might be a bit of a stretch our aim tonight has to be to take the three points. It’s not going to be easy when you look at our away form which has continued on from the second half of last season into this season. The manager has a few choices to make ahead of the game in both his personnel and the team formation. 

First up he has to decide if Kieran Tierney is up to keeping his place from Tuesday night which was his first game for us having joined us injured. Tierney is going to move ahead of Sead Kolasinac in the pecking order very soon, but I’m not certain it’s going to be in this game. Much could depend on the formation and our away games to date suggest we will play a back four which surely would point to Tierney, but I still think Kolasinac will get the nod for the moment.

He has a choice to make on the other side too with Ainsley Maitland-Niles back from suspension, but Calum Chambers gave himself every chance with his performances after Maitland-Niles was sent off against Villa and again against Forest. He played well in both games and he did enough to give the manager food for thought. Of course the position will belong to Hector Bellerin who also made his comeback in that game against Forest, but only from the bench and I imagine he will be eased back into the team.

We have been treated to a central defensive partnership of Sokratis Papastathopoulos and David Luiz in our last five league games and it’s one which really isn’t working. We have conceded 10 goals in those five games and Sokratis and Luiz look uncomfortable beside each other to say the least. Rob Holding also returned from injury on Tuesday night and it’s hard not to believe he’s the future of the centre of our defence.

Unfortunately I think we’ll see Sokratis and Luiz again tonight when either Holding or Chambers might be a better option with one of them. The return of those three players on Tuesday night certainly gives us plenty of options in defence and hopefully they will help us to improve our defending. To do that we need to get the midfield right too and cut out the individual errors which are so costly to us game after game.

As good as Matteo Guendouzi has been at driving us forward to get back into games in recent games he has also been part of the problem. His tendency to dwell on the ball and get caught in possession has cost us dearly at times and he still has a lot to learn about the defensive side of his game. Having said that I still want to see him in the side because he has the ability and desire we need to help us to move forward.  

I have no doubt Granit Xhaka will be in the team too seeming as he is now our captain and I can see the qualities he adds to the team, but his errors and lapses have caused us so much heartache and he’s at the stage in his career where he should know better. Like any other player in an Arsenal shirt he deserves our support, but it won’t stop me worrying about his ability to throw the game away all on his own. I suspect the third midfielder will be Dani Ceballos which would make sense, but it leaves no room for Lucas Torreira or Joe Willock in the team and that’s without even mentioning Mesut Ozil.

I hope it’s a midfield trio we go with and we play a wide man either side of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to give as many problems as possible to a very average United side. It’s been far too long since we won at Old Trafford in the league and tonight we have a real chance of doing so if we can get things right. Besides the struggles United are going through at the moment they also have some injury worries and very little in reserve to replace anyone who misses out.

Of course our away form hasn’t exactly been something to write home about and the 2-2 draw at Watford a couple of weeks ago was one of our worst displays in a very long time. If we play like that against United we will lose and we could lose heavily, but with the right approach they are there for the taking. A win for us would leave them in a lot of trouble already in the fight for a top four finish, but it would leave us right on schedule. Having said that I’d still gladly take a draw when you consider how bad we have been away from home and our chances of actually changing that. 

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Shambolic Defending Sees Arsenal Draw 2-2 At Watford

Arsenal went to Watford yesterday knowing a win would put them third in the table before they started their Europa League campaign in midweek. Unai Emery brought Mesut Ozil and Dani Ceballos in for the injured Alexandre Lacazette and Lucas Torreira who wasn’t injured, but they were the only changes from the 2-2 draw with Spurs. A trip to the team holding up the rest of the table offered us the perfect opportunity to get our second away win of the season.

While we didn’t exactly play well in the first half two goals from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had given us a seemingly comfortable lead. What occurred in the second half was shambolic at best and we were incredibly lucky to come away with a point in the end. The fact that we handed Watford their two goals on a plate made it even worse.

When you look at the stats for the game they make for very uncomfortable reading from an Arsenal perspective. Watford had 31 shots against us which is the most by any team ever against Arsenal in the Premier League era. Two thirds of those shots came in that second half which saw Watford have a shot almost every two minutes.

In five games this season we have handed the opposition five of the eight goals we have conceded on a plate. No other team conceded more goals from errors last season and we’re already well on our way to obliterating that total this season. We signed David Luiz to solve our central defensive issues and he has already gifted the opposition three goals in his four games and probably cost us three points in the process.

Anyone who couldn’t see the possibility of Luiz’s propensity for errors making out defence even worse than it was last season was looking at his arrival through rose tinted glasses. I said when we signed him that I honestly didn’t think he was a good fit, but we needed a central defender and we probably didn’t have very much to spend. You have to feel for Callum Chambers who played well in our first game against Newcastle, but has had to watch from the sidelines ever since.

You can’t completely blame the defence though as they didn’t get any protection from the players in front of them. Watford were given free reign to run at our defenders and they didn’t have a clue how to cope with it. Despite all of that Watford couldn’t find the back of the net until they capitalised on two ridiculous errors from us.

As bad as Luiz’s penalty they gave away was it had nothing to compare to the goal Sokratis Papastathopoulos gave away. The insistence on playing the ball out from the back is admirable, but there is no point in doing it if you haven’t got a clue how to do it. The casualness of his pass to Matteo Guendouzi was unbelievable and it made it far too easy for Watford to score.

The admission by Granit Xhaka afterwards that we were scared in the second half was almost unbelievable. These are supposed to be professional footballers and to think they were scared by the teamat the  foot of the table attacking them is quite incredible. Not only that, but it also gives every other team in the Premier League a template for how to play against us and how to get at us.

If it wasn’t for Aubameyang who knows where we would be and there were fans saying it made sense to sell him during the summer because of his age. He now has as many goals as we have gifted the opposition (5) in our first five games and the rest of the team have three between them. He’s going to have to score a lot more goals than he did last season if we’re going to have any chance of a top four finish.

For me it’s up to the manager to get the message across to the players as to how he wants the team to play and then to get them to put that plan into operation. I wish I knew how he wanted to play though because we don’t have a style of play and we’re dependent on players making something out of nothing rather than imposing ourselves on the game and the opposition. There’s a long way to go this season, but performances like the one against Watford fill me with fear rather than the optimism I want to feel.

The games are coming thick and fast now with a trip to Frankfurt on Thursday night followed by a home game against newly promoted Aston Villa. It’s a Carabao Cup game at home to Forest then and that’s followed by a League game away to United. It will be very interesting to see how all of those teams approach their games with us and whether we will be capable of dealing with any pressure they put on us.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s Trip To Watford Previewed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

A Bad Night For Arsenal In Rennes

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Arsenal staying in the Europa League as long as their chances of finishing in the top four are in the balance. It offers a route to the Champions League for next season and we have already spent two seasons away from Europe’s top table. There’s the financial rewards to consider too and of course players will be more inclined to sign for a team who can offer Champions League football.

Unai Emery only made four changes from the team which were more than a little unlucky to only draw away to Spurs last Saturday with Petr Cech, Lucas Torreira, Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang coming into the team. I thought he would have made more changes with the hugely important game against United coming up on Sunday, but the team selection showed his intent in this competition. It was certainly a strong enough side to do enough on the night to get a result and that’s exactly how things started off at least.

Alex Iwobi scored very early on when what was really a cross evaded everybody and went in at the far post. It was the start Arsenal wanted and they continued to make chances as the half progressed, but unfortunately Torreira, Aubameyang and Shkodran Mustafi didn’t take those chances before the game turned hugely in Rennes favour. I’m very fond of Sokratis Papastathopoulos and I thought both of his yellow cards were harsh, but he needed to be more careful after getting the first one.

I thought the second yellow was more of a fifty fifty between him and the Rennes player with their player then falling at just the right time to fool the referee. With Arsenal down to 10 men they had to consolidate and hold out until halftime, but they conceded from the resulting free kick. The first attempt was blocked, but when it came out to the taker again he blasted it through the remanents of the Arsenal wall to bring Rennes level. The Arsenal players in the wall didn’t cover themselves in glory as they shirked to avoid the nasty ball hitting them and Cech didn’t stand a chance in the Arsenal goal.

The tide had turned in Rennes favour, but at least we struggled through to half time in the hope the manager could give the players the instructions they needed to get out of the game with their chances of reaching the last eight intact. Bizarrely he didn’t make any substitutions though as he moved Henrikh Mkhitaryan to right back with Mustafi moving to the centre of the defence. I thought he would have taken Ozil off as he looked for a stout defensive performance from the 10 players he had left.

I’m a big fan of Ozil, but a backs to the wall defensive performance is not the ideal scenario for him. I can only assume the manager wanted to keep him on to try to keep possession and maybe help to nick another away goal. It almost worked a couple of times, but the chances Arsenal created in the second half were far outweighed by those created by Rennes. It didn’t take them too long to take the lead when a cross deflected off Nacho Monreal and looped over Cech with more than half an hour still to play.

Matteo Guendouzi had replaced Alex Iwobi before that goal, but it was a substitution which really didn’t work. He was caught in possession too often and I’ll discuss the part he played in their third goal shortly. He talked about always giving 150% before the game, but his lack of experience was there for all to see. I still think he’s going to be a great player, but he still has an awful lot to learn.

Sead Kolasinac and Aaron Ramsey came on for Ozil and Aubameyang and it looked like Arsenal would get away with a one goal defeat despite Rennes making some good chances. Granit Xhaka really should have been sent off too after making a ridiculous challenge when he was already on a yellow card, but we were on the good side of a bad refereeing decision for a change recently. With the game almost over Arsenal did what we seem to do best and pressed the self destruct button once again.

We pushed players forward for a throw in far in their half and when we lost possession we were caught awfully out of position. As Rennes broke with five on four Ramsey sprinted past Guendouzi to try to make up the difference, but he couldn’t get there in time to stop a free header at the far post putting Rennes 3-1 up. Ramsey made about 20 yards on Guendouzi in the space of 80 yards and Guendouzi certainly didn’t give “150%” when it was needed most.

The manager and the team completely failed to deal with going down to 10 men and his decisions were strange to say the least. It’s difficult when you look back at Arsenal teams who knew how to play with 10 men and actually went on to win games. The lack of leadership on the pitch and bench last night was not a pretty sight.

We’re still not quite out of the competition though, but we will have to be an awful lot better next Thursday night if we’re going to progress. We have another huge game before that on Sunday and many people are saying this will be the defining week of our season. Defeat against United on Sunday will certainly be a blow, but it won’t end our top four chances as long as we can bounce back and play well in our final eight league games.

Out biggest problem could be our away form as we’ll probably need to win four of our remaining five away games. We have only won twice in our last 11 away games in all competitions and those games were against League One side Blackpool and Premier League also-rans Huddersfield. I thought we had turned the corner against Spurs last Saturday, but last night proved me wrong once Sokratis got his marching orders.

As a football fan hope always springs eternal and I still think we can overcome Rennes on Thursday night. They are not great in defence and we can put them out as long as we can keep our defensive discipline while putting in a strong attacking performance. Our home form suggests it’s still quite possible, but that home form is about to face a huge test against a rejuvenated United on Sunday who just cannot stop winning games away from home.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s FA Cup Trip To Blackpool Previewed

Arsenal face a tricky FA Cup third round trip to Blackpool this evening. With fourth place in the Premier League their first priority and the Europa League in second place it leaves the FA Cup a distant third. It’s a competition we have won more than any other club though and we have won it three times in the last five seasons too.

I have no doubt Unai Emery will make a few changes from the team that struggled to find any rhythm against Fulham, but still managed to win 4-1. The festive schedule was very tough for every team and the players are bound to be tired so he has a chance to rest a few weary legs as well as giving some game time to those on the fringes. Our next league game isn’t until next week so there is plenty of time for players to regroup and regain their strength.

I imagine we will see Petr Cech in goal with Ainsley Maitland-Niles in defence and maybe even Zach Medley too. The rest of the defence will probably be made of more first choice players, but I would hope Laurent Koscielny is rested as he clearly needs a little more recovery time from his long injury lay off. We might see Carl Jenkinson too, but I have a feeling he doesn’t really feature in the manager’s plans.

In midfield both Mohamed Elneny and Matteo Guendouzi should feature and Aaron Ramsey must be a shoe-in seeming as he didn’t start against Fulham. If the reports are to be believed he has more or less signed a pre-contract agreement with Juventus and will join them on a free transfer in the summer. It has also been reported that he turned down a bigger offer from PSG and we turned down a cash offer from Juventus to take him immediately. I would be surprised if we turned down a good fee considering he will go for free in the summer, but our squad is very short at the moment and he certainly has a part to play for the rest of the season.

If all three of those players do play it doesn’t leave too much room for Bukayo Saka, Joe Willock, Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith-Rowe. All four of them would hope to play from the start today, but we might only see two of them with the others possibly coming off the bench. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alexandre Lacazette was in the team too as he might have a little more in the tank than others considering how often he has been substituted recently.

We beat Blackpool 2-1 at the Emirates a few months ago in the Carabao Cup and it won’t be too easy to repeat that on their patch. They’re a mid-table League One team and we can’t take them too lightly, but equally it’s a game we should win. There’s talk of a boycott by the home fans which means there might well be more Arsenal fans than Blackpool fans at the game which would be a little odd to say the least.

I imagine the manager will have a strong bench in case he needs to call on a few first teamers to rescue the game. Arsene Wenger made the mistake of giving himself no real options from the bench at this stage last season when we went out 4–2 away to Nottingham Forest. The FA Cup might not be our first priority, but I would be very surprised if the manager didn’t want to go as far as possible in a competition which has been out only route to silverware since 2004.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal’s Trip To Manchester United Previewed

After Sunday’s fantastic performance against Spurs it’s straight into the Lion’s Den tomorrow night when Arsenal play away to Manchester United. Unai Emery got his first win against one of the other top six teams in that game and he has the chance to make it back to back wins against other top six teams in this game. It’s never easy to go to Old Trafford, but United are a team in crisis at the moment and we have to think we can make things even worse for them.

The passion and commitment we showed against Spurs was commendable and we need more of the same tomorrow night. The manager yet again changed things around when he needed to and those changes proved crucial on the day. I said in my preview that he had to find a way to beat Spurs and his in game problem solving is looking very good at the moment.

That win put us into fourth place above Spurs and we’re eight points ahead of United going into this game. A top four finish won’t be easy for us this season with five teams opening a gap over the rest of the table, but we’re in a much better position than United. Not only have their results been poor, but they have played badly and they cannot stop conceding goals either. Added to that the turmoil in their dressing room and with the manager is casting a huge cloud over the club and it seems only a matter of time before Jose Mourinho is on his way.

Despite all of their problems we still have the perpensity to struggle away to United as we have done all too often in the past. If we allow them to play their game and dominate us we will find it hard and we have to attack them and put them under pressure from the start like we did against Spurs. They are there for the taking though and I genuinely think we can take them.

We are now unbeaten in 12 league games and have won four of our six away games with our only away defeat coming in our first away game at Chelsea. Only Spurs have scored more away goals and they have only got one more away goal despite playing three more away games than us. We have scored in all of our away games and haven’t failed to score since our opening game against City.

The boss is unlikely to make too many changes to the team that beat Spurs, but he will be forced to make at least one with Granit Xhaka suspended after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season on Sunday. Matteo Guendouzi is the most likely replacement for him, but they are very different players. As much as I like Guendouzi I think Xhaka is very important to the way we play, despite his errors, and we will miss him against United.

Thankfully we have Lucas Torreira in the team and he seems to get better and better with each game. We picked him up for an absolute bargain price in today’s market and somebody, somewhere in the club deserves a lot of credit for scouting him and signing him. If we’re going to beat United we have to control the midfield and Torreira’s role will be even more important with Xhaka out.

United’s defence has been poor this season and they have an awful lot of injury problems in that defence at the moment too. In Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang we have the top scorer in the Premier League and he is the man to take advantage of that dodgy United defence. Whether he plays up front with or without Alexandre Lacazette he is the player who can win us any game at the moment.

I haven’t mentioned Mesut Ozil so far and it seems he might have fallen foul of the manager. He’s by far our highest paid player and we really pushed the boat out to get him to sign a new contract earlier this year, but if the reports are to be believed he’s out of the team because the manager doesn’t think he can play the way he wants all of his players to play. He’s an incredibly talented player and it’s hard to believe he won’t find his way back into the team, but on the manager’s terms. Of course he might have an actual injury and that could be why he’s out of the team at the moment, but I doubt it.

It would be great if we could go to United and take the three points which might just be the final straw for Mourinho’s reign. Not much would make me happier than seeing an Arsenal victory at United getting him the bullet, but I’ll be more than happy if we just take the three points. I think we can most definitely do just that if we approach the game in the same manner that we approached Sunday’s game.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Go For Their Elevenses

Arsenal went to Sporting Lisbon last night looking for their eleventh win in a row in all competitions. This was the third game in their Europa League group and the other two games came during that run which meant we had a 100% record. Sporting had won their opening two games too which gave an added edge to the game with the winners becoming favourites to win the group.

The Europa League might be European football’s secondary competition, but Porto had only lost once at home in almost two years and the team that beat them was Barcelona. They were more than capable of giving a rotated Arsenal team a tough ride if we weren’t up to the task in hand. While winning wasn’t ultra important in the group the chance to keep our winning streak going was one we didn’t want to give up on.

Unai Emery made six changes to the starting 11 that came from behind to win 3-1 at home to Everton on Monday night. Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Mohamed Elneny, Aaron Ramsey, Matteo Guendouzi, Danny Welbeck and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang came into the team with Hector Bellerin, Shkodran Mustafi, Lucas Torreira, Mesut Ozil, Alex Iwobi and Alexandre Lacazette making way. Granit Xhaka continued in the left back role that he played in for the last 20 minutes on Monday night while Stephan Lichsteiner switched to right back as Rob Holding kept his place yet again. Xhaka switching to left back meant we saw a combination of Guendouzi and Elneny in midfield and it’s still a combination which fails to convince me.

Guendouzi is making so much progress since joining us in the summer that it’s a joy to watch him, but it’s hard to see where Elneny is going at the club. He’s not the most spectacular player and he looks a fair way short of the level of Guendouzi never mind Torreira. It can’t be easy for him and our squad needs the depth he offers, but I can’t see us controlling a game with him in the team.

The first half wasn’t much to write home about with very little happening at either end, but Arsenal picked up the pace after the break. They dominated that second half and that domination only increased when Torreira came on for Elneny around the hour mark. His ability to control a game and drive the team forward is a joy to watch and he looks more and more like the player we have needed for years with each passing game.

In that second half Aubameyang had a couple of one on ones with the keeper after we found good passes in behind them, but he couldn’t make either chance pay. The first was wide on the right of the goal and he probably should have gone for the far post, but went on the near side. He got in on the left the next time and had to go with his left foot which meant he couldn’t do an “Henry” into the far corner and the keeper made a good save from an attempted clip over him. Maybe he wasn’t as spectacular as he was when he came off the bench on Monday night, but then again he didn’t have Ozil to pull the strings.

When the goal came it was Welbeck who got it after he took advantage of a slip from the Sporting central defender to finish crisply through the keeper’s legs. He had an earlier effort disallowed after he was rather harshly adjudged to have push a defender before an excellent header back across the keeper in the top corner. He has only had a bit part to play with Aubameyang and Lacazette ahead of him, but he has done very well and has five goals already from his limited chances.

All in all it wasn’t exactly a game to write home about, but it was a job well done in a stadium where away teams simply don’t win. It’s kept our incredible winning streak going and can only help to strengthen the belief and confidence in the team as well as letting the first choice players know they need to keep looking over their shoulders with others looking to take their places in the team. As I said in my preview the game away to Palace on Sunday is far more important, but it’s nice to be going into that game on the back of 11 consecutive wins and a clean sheet too.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Arsenal Looking For 11 In A Row At Sporting

The wins keep coming for Arsenal with the 3-1 win against Leicester making it 10 in a row in all competitions. Goals have been pretty easy to come by too with a minimum of two per game since the opening game blank against City. Only City have scored more goals in the Premier League with Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang already getting 10 league games between them.

It’s been an enjoyable ride for the last 10 games and long may it continue, but it will of course come to an end at some stage. All 10 games were games we would have been expected to win, but we all know there’s quite often a big difference between expectations and reality. We may have rode our luck at times in some of those games, but it has been great to watch at times. We have some great attacking players at the club and it seems Unai Emery is coming closer to getting the best out of them as each game passes. 

Most of those attacking players won’t be on from the start tonight though as the manager rotates the team. So far that rotation has worked well with victories at home to Vorskla and away to Qarabag, but Sporting should be stronger opposition in this game. As it stands it looks like the group is between the two of us with six points to both teams after their opening two games.

As I’ve said before this stage of the Europa League is all about doing enough to qualify for the knockout stages without hampering our chances in the Premier League. The two wins under our belt have given us some breathing space and a defeat tonight wouldn’t really harm our chances. Of course I want the winning streak to continue and Arsenal to win every game they ever play, but three points on Sunday at Palace are more important than three points tonight. We have some tough league games coming up and the more points in the bag before those games the better.

I would imagine we will see Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Mohamed Elneny, Danny Welbeck, Aaron Ramsey, Matteo Guendouzi and Emile Smith-Rowe in from the start and possibly a couple of others too. Both Sokratis and Ramsey in particular will feel they should be in the first choice team and hopefully they will get the chance to impress tonight. Young Smith-Rowe has looked good when his chances have come along too and let’s hope he can continue his progress.

Yet again we will have a strong bench tonight in case the boss needs to change something during the game. One of the criticisms of Arsene Wenger before the end of his reign was the weakness of the bench when we played cup games. That was highlighted by our inability to bring in players to change the game when Forest put us out of the FA Cup in January. 

There’s still a lot to be done of course and the defence in particular seems to be learning very slowly. It’s not helped by the litany of defensive injuries we have had, but most of those players are very close to a return. It will be good to see Laurent Koscielny back in the team and hopefully he can adjust to the new manager’s style very quickly.

Sporting play in a much stronger league than either of our previous opponents and they’re just outside the top four in the Portuguese league. Like most teams from Portugal they know how to play football and they will ask questions of our defence tonight. Even with our team rotation we have the players to ask questions of them too and those players have performed well in the Europa League and Carabao Cup so far. Hopefully they can do enough again tonight to make it 11 wins in a row in all competitions.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.

Some Promising Signs As Arsenal Lose To Chelsea

I suppose we all expected the first two games in charge for Unai Emery to get off to a rough start and that’s exactly what has happened. The fixture list was far from kind to us with a home game against City and a trip to Chelsea to start the season as our new manager looks to change almost everything about the way we play. While the City result seemed almost inevitable the defeat against Chelsea on Saturday really could and probably should have been avoided.

The main response I have seen from Arsenal fans seems to be that we would have lost both of those games under Arsene Wenger too. We actually hadn’t lost our opening two league games since 1992 so Wenger certainly wasn’t around then and he did manage a point away to Chelsea early on last season if I remember correctly. Comparisons miss the point though because it was time for him to go and we have to build for the future under the new manager.

He made a couple of changes from the defeat against City with Nacho Monreal returning from injury to replace the injured Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Alex Iwobi coming in for Aaron Ramsey. The formation was the same as last week though and the game started in a similar fashion with Chelsea getting the upper hand and taking the game to us. 

The first fairly good chance fell to us when a cut back from the left was flashed wide by Mesut Ozil and we paid the price very quickly. Within a minute Chelsea were ahead when a simple ball in behind us put Marcus Alonso in and his ball across the goal was finished with ease by Pedro. It was too easy to get behind us because we played a high line without putting pressure on the ball and that is a recipe for disaster.

After that goal Chelsea dominated and we were lucky to be only one goal behind. Despite their domination we still managed to get into good positions to cut the ball back and it was from one of these that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang missed an absolute sitter. It was the sort of chance you would expect a player of his pedigree to put away, but he missed it and almost immediately we paid the price again.

Another simple ball over the top from a player who wasn’t closed down put Alvaro Morata in a one on one with Shkodran Mustafi and he turned him inside out before finishing with ease. Where Sokratis Papastathopoulos was during this is anyone’s guess, but he certainly wasn’t there to help his central defensive partner. At 2-0 down I feared the worst and Chelsea had already missed a couple of chances of their own at that stage too.

However Arsenal continued to get in behind Chelsea and cut that ball back and it was Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s turn to miss a great chance next from almost the exact same position as Aubameyang’s miss. The first Arsenal goal came from an attempted cut back from Iwobi which was blocked and fell to Mkhitaryan who drilled it home from the edge of the area. The Chelsea keeper probably should have done better, but Arsenal were back in the game and sensed the fear in Chelsea.

Not long after that we were level and it was Iwobi who scored this time from yet another cut back and in almost the exact same spot that Aubameyang and Mkhitaryan had missed from. There was another chance for Iwobi before the break from that exact same move again, but it wasn’t as clear cut as the ball bobbled badly. There was a near post miss from Aubameyang in there somewhere too and we could easily have gone in at the break two or three goals up despite not playing well for so much of the first half.

The manager changed things at the break with Lucas Torreira coming on for Granit Xhaka as Xhaka had struggled badly when Chelsea were on top. When we were on top Xhaka had performed better though and that’s something that has to be considered in games we are expected to dominate. The full backs also dropped a little deeper after the break and we struggled badly to make an attacking impact.

It looked like we might be content with the point we had and maybe hoped to hit Chelsea on the break. We didn’t have the possession in the right places to do that though and Mesut Ozil couldn’t make any real impact on the game. Ramsey came on for Ozil and Alexandre Lacazette replaced Iwobi, but we continued to look toothless in the second half.

Just as it looked like we might get a point we handed Chelsea another goal with Lacazette firstly giving the ball away and then putting in a half hearted attempt to tackle Eden Hazard. His cross was met by Alonso who had given Torreira the slip and he put it through Petr Cech’s legs from close range. We never really recovered from that goal and our only real attempt to pull it back was a long range effort from Ramsey which went just over the bar.

There were plenty of positives in the game, but our defending was just as bad if not worse than it has been for too long to remember now. At least we had much more threat in attack than we did last week and we created so many chances despite our playmaker not having a good game. A point would have been a fair return I think, but if you defend like we did against a top six side you rarely get anything from the game.

The new manager has pretty much got a free pass for the first two games because of the opposition, but that will end now. We’re one place above the bottom three with no points to our name and six points behind the early pacesetters after only two games. We quite simply have to start winning games and nothing short of three points in our next game will be acceptable.

Thankfully that game is at home to West Ham next Saturday and they lost at home to Bournemouth on Saturday after losing their first game 4-0 at Liverpool. We’ll get to welcome Jack Wilshere back to the Emirates in that game, but there can be no room for sentiment. We need to start clocking up the points in that game and in the seven games that follow before we play any of the top six clubs again.

There will be distractions in the meantime with the Europa League coming up soon and pesky international breaks too, but we have to concentrate on the most important job which is taking league points and trying to keep pace with the top four. It’s going to take a lot of hard work in training to get the team to a point where they can perform the way the manager wants them to perform and there will be a lot less chances to do so in training with all of the other distractions.I think we have to try to target 20 points from the next eight games and if we can get them we will be close to the top four.

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.

Arsenal Complete Their Transfers With Five Signings

With the World Cup over and football most certainly not coming home it’s time to look at Arsenal’s transfer dealings so far. Unai Emery has been quick to assess his squad and he has already brought in five players who he hopes will strengthen the team defensively. Given our defensive problems for a number of seasons now it’s an issue which had to be addressed and we can only hope he has brought in the personnel we so badly need.

Of course it’s going to take more than a few new players to change a team that conceded more goals from errors than any other Premier League team last season. We need a new mindset and determination from the players and that’s something the new manager has to get through to them from day one. We need the players to defend better as individuals and as a team too and that’s something that has to come from tactical nous and hard work on the training ground.

So far we have seen the arrivals of a goalkeeper, a right back, a central defender and two defensive midfielders. All of those arrivals are very promising, but I’m still not sure we have the actual quality needed in defence. It’s going to take an awful lot of work on the training ground to turn those players into a well marshalled unit, but it can be done.

The arrival of Bernd Leno must mean either Petr Cech or David Ospina will be on their way and there are rumours of Cech even heading back to Chelsea. Personally I think we can do better than both of them and I wasn’t impressed with either of them last season although it can’t be easy to play behind that Arsenal defence. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Leno claim the goalkeeper’s shirt for himself and maybe we might even sign another keeper if both Cech and Ospina decide to go elsewhere.

With Laurent Koscielny more than likely going to miss most of the season and Shkodran Mustafi possibly on his way out after some dreadful performances last season it’s the centre of our defence which needs the most work done on it. Neither Calum Chambers or Rob Holding are proven at the top level yet while both Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Konstantinos Mavropanos have little more than one Premier League game between them, but Sokratis is an experienced player at least.

Stephan Lichsteiner has been signed as cover for Hector Bellerin and he’s a defender with a great pedigree and he’s most definitely a winner. He’s exactly the sort of player we could do with in the squad and I’m looking forward to seeing him join up with the rest of the squad once he gets his much needed rest after his World Cup exploits with Switzerland. I can’t admit to having followed his career too closely, but I wonder if there’s any chance he might just be able to play as a central defender.

The right hand side of the defence looks strong with Lichsteiner and Bellerin to call on while the left hand side doesn’t look too weak either with both Nacho Monreal and Sead Kolasinac vying for a place. There has been some talk of Monreal going back to play in Spain, but Emery appears unwilling to let our best defender from last season go.

The most impressive work in the transfer window so far seems to have been in the defensive role in midfield with both Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi added to the squad. Torreira looks like he’ll step straight into the team and he looks like a very good addition while Guendouzi looks like he’s one for the future, but he will get to show us what he can do on occasions this season. 

We might not have added any attacking players to the squad yet and we might not add any at all, but the work we did in January will be very hard to beat. I can’t wait to see Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang playing from day one and I think he’s going to score an awful lot of goals for us. Henrikh Mkhitaryan is another player who really excites me and I think he gives us options in midfield and attack which we didn’t have before his arrival. 

The most important business for us this summer could be tying Aaron Ramsey down to a new contract and Emery seems confident he can do so. A fully fit Ramsey is a very important player for Arsenal and I hope he can be persuaded to extend his contract as soon as possible. If not I can only imagine he will have to be sold this summer and we will have to look to spend big to replace him. 

I still think we will add another attacking player and I hope it’s a wide player because we are lacking some genuine width in the squad. Reiss Nelson might get the chance on occasions to show what he can do, but he still has a lot to learn and we need someone who can give us that something we are currently missing on a regular basis. 

Pre season started off encouragingly with an 8-0 win against Boreham Wood last Saturday and it will continue over the next week or so in Singapore with games against Atletico Madrid and PSG before we play Chelsea in Dublin on the first of August. It’s a game I’m lucky enough to be going to as it’s only about 12 stops away from me on the train. I haven’t seen Arsenal play in Ireland since the early days of George Graham’s reign in the 80s and I’m really looking forward to seeing them play and I’m hoping for a very strong team with the season starting only nine days later.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.