Five Things I Learnt From Arsenal’s Pre-season

Oreva_The_Great
July 28, 2015

The Emirates cup like we all know ended some two days ago and we won it for the first time in 5 years. That also marked the end of a blissful pre-season for Arsenal in which we scored 14 goals, conceded 1 and won two trophies.

Al roads lead to Wembley now for the community shield this Sunday against Chelsea and as preparations go on, I decided to share with y’all a few things I was able to observe from the Emirates Cup and our Pre-season as a whole.

Here they are:-

Arteta Is Past It: – You might be wondering if you just read that well and I say to you, yes you did. I said Mikel Arteta our captain has lost it is past it. Watching him this pre-season and it was easy for me to come up with this conclusion. Some might say he has been out injured and all, yes but I believe age isn’t being fair to the Spanish man also. Watching the game against Wolfsburg and boy was his presence not felt. He might prove me wrong as the season starts tho but this is my stand for now.[gap height=”20″]
Coquelin Is Improving: – I see you going ‘’of course he has’’ to this one and yes, of course he has. Watching Coq this pre-season and I noticed he added long range passing to his game. He was trying them last season and most times lost the ball or gave a wrong pass but from the few times he tried this last few games, I was WOW’ed. The top Dm’s in this world all have that long passing ability, Pirlo, Alonso, Matic even Song back then. He perfects this and our strikers could benefit a lot from his passes.[gap height=”20″]
Akpom Isn’t Fully Ready:- We all watched this young man score a hattrick in that game against Singapore and were awed. Some said he would make a good back up, Uncle Giroud said Akpom would make for good competition with him*insult*, others said we don’t need to sign a new striker, some others said he should go on loan. Watching that same Akpom after his hattrick and it was a different person entirely, one who was trying too hard to replicate the performance that made him get those goals and that was his undoing. Holding the ball too much, shooting when he should have passed, all in the bid to get a goal. If you are reading this fam, you still need to learn ‘The Arsenal Way’ and for the records Arsene Wenger doesn’t like stingy players.[gap height=”20″]
Jeff Reine-Adelaide Is A Baller:- So I became uncle yesterday and watching Jeff play, I just wish my nephew decides he wants to be a footballer and Wenger somehow spots him and signs him up. Dreams yh?? Speaking of JRA tho, I went all ‘Wenger has gone to carry all these French boys again ba?’ when he was signed earlier this summer but the dude sure impressed me and all of us when he got his chance to play even giving the assist for the Walcott goal against Wolfburg on Sunday. Some improvement to his game and that guy is gonna be a world class player. He kinda makes me wonder what I was doing at 17.[gap height=”20″]
The Team Looks Ready: – In my opinion, this has to be one of the best pre-seasons we have had in a while not just because we won all the games we played but because of the way the team looked. Everyone played with real drive, even the youngsters played as though they were fighting for a space in the first team. The whole team just seemed really coordinated and with Petr Cech in goal, I was more relaxed about that defence and we could see him shouting orders at the players not like the way Flamini does tho while doing his part and making them saves.