It’s Bournemouth away as we speak within the Premier League, and based mostly on what he stated in his press convention yesterday, Mikel Arteta has some harm points to take care of.
After the sport towards Brentford on Wednesday, he talked about having 7 gamers again at London Colney due to health points. We knew that Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Thomas Partey, Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard, and Jurrien Timber made up six of these, so who was the mysterious quantity seven? In his presser, he talked about that William Saliba and Fabio Vieira each had knocks which prevented them from taking part in within the EFL Cup recreation, in order that’s truly eight!
On-line chatter means that Rice, Saliba and Saka are a part of the squad as we speak, however with Man Metropolis on the horizon, which may issue into the staff choice resolution as we speak. Let’s not neglect there’s a midweek Champions League recreation towards Lens too, so the supervisor has some pondering to do. Does he danger gamers as we speak and probably worsen one thing, or does he belief in his squad after they went away to a tough place on Wednesday to beat a robust Brentford aspect.
It looks like a kind of the place there’s all the time going to be an argument for the alternative. If he’s cautious with huge gamers like Rice, Saliba and Saka, and the sport doesn’t go our manner, folks will surprise why they have been there in the event that they weren’t prepared to start out and perhaps there are questions on not taking the opposition significantly sufficient. If he begins one or all of them and there’s an harm, he’ll be accused of not taking care of the gamers correctly.
That problem of participant welfare was one thing he was requested about within the second a part of his press convention. The calls for on high degree footballers are so excessive, between membership and worldwide commitments, there’s barely any downtime, and it led this week to Vincent Kompany suggesting there must be a cap of what number of video games a participant can play in a season.
Arteta’s response:
One thing needs to be mentioned significantly about the place we’re taking the sport, the publicity of the gamers and the way we’re going to permit it. As a result of, as properly, if we’re not going to vary that, then we’re going to have larger squads. If you happen to’re going to have larger squads, we’d like larger assets. And you must enable groups and squads and supply the monetary assets as properly to have squads of 30 gamers.
As a result of on the finish it’s a manner of limiting a participant to play 50 or 60 video games, having a squad of 20 or having a squad of 30. It’s a special sport. We already made some modifications with the 5 subs. Now if anyone tells you, no, tomorrow is just three subs, we might all be shocked, we’re not used to it. So, there’s something that needs to be modified as a result of at that degree is inconceivable to keep up.
All I can say about as we speak’s staff is that the gamers who got here in towards Brentford demonstrated we’ve a deep squad now that’s able to dealing with out eight first staff gamers as we noticed. That ought to give Arteta some reassurance that if he’s a bit cautious, they’ll nonetheless produce what we’d like as we speak towards Bournemouth. We additionally should acknowledge that his choices might be made with far higher data than is accessible to us concerning the extent of the accidents and the way the gamers themselves are feeling.
I feel there might be some apparent modifications, with the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus and Martin Odegaard coming again in, and I do hope the Brazilian performs up high. If Martinelli and Trossard stay out, and Reiss Nelson can’t get a begin after his good show through the week, then there’s one thing improper. He couldn’t have achieved extra to point out the supervisor he is able to play, not least with the massive defensive shift he put in on high of the purpose that gained the sport.
So, let’s see what occurs, and who is accessible. As ever, we’ll have reside weblog protection, in addition to all of the post-game stuff on Arseblog Information.
Within the meantime, there’s a preview podcast on Patreon to cross among the time, and I’ll catch you in a while for the sport.
Come on Arsenal!
