Good (late) morning from a moist, windy, depressing and in my case sleepless Berlin!
Given the climate, a minimum of we nonetheless have Tuesday’s 5-1 win to delight in earlier than consideration slowly turns to the weekend journey to West Ham. We went into that almost all current worldwide break realizing we’d want issues to rapidly enhance on all fronts and the crew has already delivered handsomely within the two video games this week.
So far as the Champions League is worried, we’re now 5 video games into this eight-game league part and the desk is beginning to take form. The jumbled fixture record — some groups have ‘simpler’ video games left, others have monster clashes across the nook — trying on the desk and attempting to foretell how issues look isn’t straightforward however it’s getting simpler.
The win this week noticed us leapfrog Juventus, Man Metropolis, Aston Villa, Monaco and Sporting to place ourselves in seventh and within the driving seat for qualification with two residence video games left and our hardest trying fixtures behind us. In line with Opta, Arsenal now have a 69.6% probability of securing a prime eight end and heading into the final 16 instantly, crucially skipping the additional play-off spherical that groups who end between ninth and twenty fourth must play.
With residence video games towards Monaco and Dinamo Zagreb to come back earlier than rounding issues off with a visit to Girona, you’d must fancy the crew’s probabilities of choosing up all 9 factors from right here to maintain the great temper rolling.
Like quite a lot of you in all probability did, I had a watch on Liverpool’s win over Actual Madrid final evening. Honest play, truthfully, I believe that’s the most effective I’ve seen them play beneath Arne Slot. Clearly, soccer is as soccer does and Man Metropolis’s journey to Anfield on Sunday appears to be like like precisely the type of factor that can see Metropolis out of the blue rediscover themselves and perhaps do us a favour out of nowhere within the type of weird turning level soccer likes to ship. That or they’ll concede early and proceed to crumble. Truthfully, whichever approach that goes, somebody is dropping factors and we’d like to ensure we shut one or each gaps.
Liverpool misplaced Conor Bradley (who was spectacular) at right-back late on and Ibrahima Konate limped off too. It’ll be attention-grabbing to see how they do deal with accidents to key gamers if and once they do come. Throughout 17 Premier League and Champions League video games, Liverpool have Gravenberch, Van Dijk, Salah have been obtainable to start out all 17 and Konate is on 16. The squad must come into issues a bit extra ultimately.
Nonetheless, it’s all about specializing in ourselves and ensuring we hold profitable so we’re proper the place we should be when the groups above us do drop factors. That continues at West Ham on Saturday, the primary of 9 consecutive video games in London. We don’t depart the capital once more till 4 January, and that’s solely a visit to Brighton, after which once more till 25 January to face Wolves.
With all of the give attention to marginal good points these days, not having to journey far (or journey again) for video games needs to be useful, in addition to simply good for the gamers, who already spend a lot time on the street. Now it’s on them to make it depend and rack up the wins.
Clearly to try this we additionally must hold key gamers match, so it’ll be attention-grabbing to see what kind of crew is used on Saturday, seeing as we host Manchester United just a few days later and it seemed like Thomas Partey, Declan Rice and Gabriel Martinelli had been all spared a begin final weekend in order that they could possibly be raring to go in Lisbon. That type of rotation and use of the squad isn’t one thing we’ve actually seen from Mikel Arteta in his 251-game spell thus far in cost – even over the past two years, we’ve largely mounted our title challenges with a bunch of 12-13 trusted outfield gamers – however that is the primary time, even with Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu out, that you simply really feel just like the supervisor actually trusts a much bigger core group.
Anyway, I’m positive there shall be extra chat about what to do on the weekend over the subsequent couple of days. For now, simply hold basking within the glory of our final two video games; I would stick the highlights on once more now, truly.
Wishing everybody a nice day and a protected flight to Blogs as he makes his wonderful return from Lisbon! He’ll be again within the saddle on this explicit horse tomorrow.
