Greetings this Friday morning
I’m truly excited today for a number of reasons…
Ah let’s leave that.
I’ve never been more nonplussed about a defeat than I was on Wednesday night. I wasn’t angry, not even a little bit. I would have loved us to throw up a surprise and maybe draw or something, but then as goal after goal went in, I just nodded and said “Not our night”.
It was funny really.
But I WILL care about the result on Sunday when we ‘welcome’ the tiny Totts over to the Emirates and I can only hope that the players are fired up.
The situation in Europe is out of our hands now, ever since our Matchday one defeat to Zagreb whatever lingering hopes we had that maybe this could be our year in Europe were dashed. The defeat to Olympiacos just reaffirmed it for us. We now need to win against Zagreb, hope that Bayern beat Olympiacos and then take on the unenviable task of beating Olymipiacos away from home by two clear goals. So…difficult.
The same cannot be said of the Premier League though. After a bad start with that defeat to West Ham, we have somehow cobbled up some form and find ourselves joint top with Manchester City. You look at Chelsea’s meltdown (Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!) and Manchester United’s inconsistency and you really have to think; Could this really be our year? It’s too early to say that I know, but we certainly have to aim for it. We battled Liverpool to a stalemate on a day we weren’t too good, we blitzed Manchester United and were thwarted by Chelsea arguably because of the red card to Gabriel. Coupled with our performances in big games in recent times, you begin to think that maybe this team can indeed handle it.
So with that in mind, this game takes on a lot of importance. It’s a game we really need to win to keep up the pace with Manchester City. In terms of team news, the early report is that Bellerin is out and Koscielny has a shot but is a doubt. We seem to be down to a skeletal workforce now, but there’s a silver lining; after this game is an interlull and after that we could get as many as four players back (Ramsey, Ox, Theo Walcott and Hector Bellerin). We don’t know this for sure but that’s what we’ve been told so far, so if we can survive Tottenham and get a good result there would be some rest for some players and ample time for recovery for others.
From our team it looks like only Giroud, Alexis, Cech and Cazorla might see themselves on international duty…and maybe Joel. The point is, this is one of those few times when the interlull could be beneficial for us. If Ozil is truly being rested for the interlull, then Jogi Low is automatically my favourite person in the whole wide world.
Fingers crossed we can muster the sort of performance that will win us the game on Sunday, it’ll do us a world of good.
Till later
