Good day everyone! Hope you’ve had a good week so far, I know I have as the optimism train continues.
This weekend is the FA cup and it comes at a really good time as far as I am concerned. If you look at the league then you’ll realize that our form has been dismal. Fine margins eh? If we’d won against Chelsea then the run would have looked so much better, but as it stands our last win came from this very competition, the FA cup. Since then we’ve had the frustrating 3-3 draw with Liverpool, the 0-0 with Stoke and the 0-1 loss to Chelsea. So it would be nice also for the players to come back and have this to play in a competition that they know the hang of. We’re twice defending champions so that’s great for us and a win will be a big boost for everyone. We’re due a run of wins at this point and once we get past this 4 game period in the league (Southampton, Bournemouth, Leicester and United) we have a relatively okay run till Man City away which is the penultimate game of the season.
In terms of team news, it seems we have Alexis back (Yatta!), Coquelin (Yatta!) and Rosicky (YATTA! YATTA! YATTA!). That’s amazing news. Unfortunately it’s too soon for Welbeck, but i’ll take this.
The match against Burnley is also a chance to rotate a bit and maybe test team dynamics. It’s clear to a blind man that our midfield needs work. Flamini and Ramsey aren’t a great match, so maybe we’ll see a different combination. I know we tried the Ramsey/Coquelin axis on opening day and it didn’t work, but maybe it just needs time to gel. Then there’s Ramsey/Elneny or maybe even Elneny/Coquelin. That would be intriguing as it’ll chuck Ramsey back on the wings. The midfielder has stated clearly that he prefers the middle and as a player I imagine he was okay with Cazorla being there because Cazorla is Cazorla, I wonder if he’d be as understanding if he was shunted to the wings because of Elneny.
Not saying Elneny is no good, just that they are still probably figuring him out and players have egos and it’s one thing to be in the team because the coach selected you and it’s quite another to be in the team because your team mates want you there, so that’s something to consider.
I think it’ll be an interesting dynamic either way and it remains to be see what happens. I guess we’ll see Ospina in goal and Gabriel should return due to Per’s red card (not like Gabriel won’t have played anyway). The only other change i’d like to see is someone come in for Bellerin. He has played so much football this season and i’m scared for him. I look at Jack Wilshere who is an awesome player but who broke into the team really early and probably played too much football and is patially suffering from that till today.
Not to say it’s Arsene’s fault, but we can’t pretend that Wilshere’s recurring injury isn’t in part due to all tat football he played when he was younger and I would hate for the same to befall Bellerin. We’ll see as things unfold, i’d love us to win the match of course and i’ll be back later to talk about what I hope is a lovely win.
Till later
