Morning all, a fast Saturday round-up for you.
Forward of Crystal Palace tomorrow, we await an damage replace on William Saliba who went off with a again downside. Sadly, Mikel Arteta stated Takehiro Tomiyasu’s damage appears critical, so it’s a double whammy in that sense. Underneath regular circumstances, if Saliba bought injured you can transfer Ben White again into the centre-half place, and Tomi may play proper again, however that appears impossible now.
What issues me is how innocuous wanting it was. He slipped a technique, then the opposite, which appeared to stretch out his knee, and it’s so typically the case {that a} participant can decide up a major problem when it doesn’t appear like very a lot occurred. I can’t inform you how a lot I winced when Manuel Ugarte got here steaming via Bukayo Saka late within the sport, however after the Uruguayan was despatched off, Saka was okay. Tomiyasu had a little bit of a slip and I reckon we’d not see him for some time.
From an opposition perspective, the information that broke yesterday morning in regards to the dismissal of Patrick Vieira instilled in all Arsenal followers one other dose of our biggest concern. Not mega-scorpions. Not Maroon5 overlaying North London Ceaselessly. However the brand new supervisor bounce. The one factor is that they don’t have a brand new supervisor but, and it could be a case that they flip to an ex-manager, Roy Hodgson, to handle the tip of the season. How bouncy is Roy lately?
Tomorrow it’ll be Paddy McCarthy, to this point boss of the U21s, who will take cost on a caretaker foundation. Patrick was sacked on St Patrick’s day and changed by Paddy. Whether or not he can present the brand new supervisor bounce, we’ll have to attend and see. For Vieira, it’s a little bit of a disgrace as a result of if you take a look at the fixtures Palace have within the subsequent couple of months, they’re all much more winnable on paper than a lot of the ones they’ve performed not too long ago, however clearly the board misplaced religion, and at most soccer golf equipment when that occurs there’s just one final result.
Anyway, extra on the Palace sport tomorrow. Yesterday, the draw for the Europa League was made, and had we made it previous Sporting, we’d have confronted Juventus within the quarter-finals. These video games would have taken place April thirteenth and twentieth, that means our schedule would have been:
Sunday ninth: Liverpool away.
Thursday thirteenth: Juventus away.
Sunday sixteenth: West Ham away
Thursday twentieth: Juventus residence
And our sport subsequent in opposition to Southampton which is scheduled for Friday twenty first would, I assume, have been moved to the Sunday twenty third. On Wednesday twenty sixth, we play Man Metropolis away. Make it via in opposition to Juventus, and we’d face the winners of the Sevilla/Man Utd tie. For the sake of argument, let’s think about United went via. That might give us:
Could sixth: Newcastle away
Could eleventh: Man Utd 1st leg
Could 14th: Brighton residence
Could 18th: Man Utd 2nd leg
After all you would possibly suppose that may be a schedule to relish, and that’s honest sufficient. Large golf equipment needs to be concerned in massive video games on the enterprise finish of the season. That’s what we’re aspiring to. It’s additionally value mentioning that not being concerned doesn’t assure something both. We nonetheless have some very tough video games, and we’re going to should be at our greatest to get what we’d like from them.
Within the preview for the Sporting sport, I wrote about how in some methods it was a approach of testing the depth of our squad and its capacity to compete on two fronts. I don’t suppose we performed notably properly on Thursday, however I feel a few of the criticism has been a bit excessive. On one other night time a type of extra-time possibilities goes in, their keeper will not be as impressed, and we’re having a unique dialog this morning. However, the fact is that we’re out, we didn’t do sufficient in opposition to an honest Sporting facet, and perhaps that tells us we’ve a bit extra to do by way of squad constructing earlier than we may be as aggressive as we would like.
On that foundation, and if you take a look at a few of the Premier League fixtures we’ve to cope with, it’s not too tough for me to compartmentalise our Europa League exit within the context of this season. Like I stated, there aren’t any ensures, however that further time between video games we now have for preparation, recuperation, organisation, and all the remaining, may properly be a bonus if we benefit from it.
Let’s see.
Proper, I’ll go away it there for now. We’ll have a Patreon preview podcast for you later right this moment, chatting with Lewis as standard and Dan from HLTCO I’m recording {that a} bit later once I get to London, and it ought to drop round late afternoon.
For now, have an excellent one!
