Good (late) morning from a moist, windy, depressing and in my case sleepless Berlin!
Given the climate, not less than 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 latest worldwide break realizing we’d want issues to rapidly enhance on all fronts and the workforce has already delivered handsomely within the two video games this week.
So far as the Champions League is anxious, we’re now 5 video games into this eight-game league section 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 — wanting on the desk and attempting to foretell how issues look isn’t simple nevertheless 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 wanting fixtures behind us. In line with Opta, Arsenal now have a 69.6% probability of securing a high 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 should play.
With residence video games in opposition to Monaco and Dinamo Zagreb to come back earlier than rounding issues off with a visit to Girona, you’d must fancy the workforce’s probabilities of choosing up all 9 factors from right here to maintain the nice temper rolling.
Like a variety of you most likely did, I had a watch on Liverpool’s win over Actual Madrid final night time. Truthful play, truthfully, I believe that’s the very best I’ve seen them play beneath Arne Slot. Clearly, soccer is as soccer does and Man Metropolis’s journey to Anfield on Sunday seems like precisely the kind of factor that can see Metropolis immediately rediscover themselves and perhaps do us a favour out of nowhere within the kind of weird turning level soccer likes to ship. That or they’ll concede early and proceed to crumble. Truthfully, whichever manner that goes, somebody is dropping factors and we’d like to verify 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 fascinating to see how they do deal with accidents to key gamers if and after they do come. Throughout 17 Premier League and Champions League video games, Liverpool have Gravenberch, Van Dijk, Salah have been out there to start out all 17 and Konate is on 16. The squad should come into issues a bit extra finally.
Nonetheless, it’s all about specializing in ourselves and ensuring we maintain profitable so we’re proper the place we have to 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 go away 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 rely and rack up the wins.
Clearly to do this we additionally must maintain key gamers match, so it’ll be fascinating to see what kind of workforce is used on Saturday, seeing as we host Manchester United a number of days later and it seemed like Thomas Partey, Declan Rice and Gabriel Martinelli have been all spared a begin final weekend so that they may very well be raring to go in Lisbon. That kind of rotation and use of the squad isn’t one thing we’ve actually seen from Mikel Arteta in his 251-game spell up to now in cost – even during the last two years, we’ve principally mounted our title challenges with a gaggle 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 really trusts an even bigger core group.
Anyway, I’m certain there will likely be extra chat about what to do on the weekend over the subsequent couple of days. For now, simply maintain basking within the glory of our final two video games; I would stick the highlights on once more now, really.
Wishing everybody a nice day and a secure flight to Blogs as he makes his wonderful return from Lisbon! He’ll be again within the saddle on this specific horse tomorrow.
