Hey guys! A good evening to you all. So on my last article i said this past interlull was the last one.
I apologize, i lied…
Not on purpose of course, but there you have it. We have another rubbish interlull next month and THAT will be the last one…Honest!
But we play Hull on Saturday (Woohoo!) and we have a run of fixtures that are potentially manageable and we really should be looking to win. But then comes the news that we would be without Koscielny for the weekend game.
I assume this is because of his tendinitis (chronic they called it) and we already know that we would be without Chambers who has picked up five yellow cards already this season. So we’re looking at a potential back line against Hull that looks like this:
Bellerin—– Mertesacker—– Monreal—– Gibbs
Now i like Bellerin and i think Monreal is a capable defender but let’s not pretend that this is in anyway an ideal situation or something we’ll have wanted to see. It once more highlights the absurdity of not getting in a defender during the summer months. If we had a Manolas or some other defender we’ll all be feeling a little bit more confident right now.
When you consider that we’ll either be lining up without a single defender on the bench or we’ll have the likes of Hayden or Ajayi on the bench (this isn’t bashing them, i feel they are great youngsters). That’s not good enough for a club of our stature and one hoping to have any title winning aspirations.
There’s also the worry of what an unstable backline could do to us.
Most of our defensive solidity last season was down to a settled back five that rarely changed. We went into almost every game with the expectation of seeing Szczesney, Kos, Mert, Sagna and Gibbs. This hardly changed and the goalkeeper stated that this and a greater understanding between the defenders was the reason for our solid defense . So this little mix and match game we’re playing is hardly ideal.
When you also take into consideration how much we’ve been conceding from set pieces this season and then you now have Monreal who isn’t the strongest in the air in the side against a team who scared the shit out of us from set pieces in the FA cup final, you get where my worries are coming from.
Well with all that being said, i’m still quietly confident of a win. We have the better personnel. There’s also the news that Rosicky should be okay and Walcott and Gnabry are in training and Ramsey should be back next week so it’s not all bad. There’s certainly some good in there and i know a lot of people are salivating over a potential Walcott, Sanchez, Welbeck partnership. Don’t worry i anticipate with you all.
In other news, the AGM held today, so it will be interesting to find out the titbits that come out from that. I wonder if there were any hard hitting questions or if it was all tame and stuff. Anyway, we’ll find out more later.
Till then take it easy
Ciao!
