Arsenal travel to the West Midlands to take on Bruno Lage’s Wolves side at Molineux on Thursday night. The Gunners, looking to bounce back to winning ways, following a hugely disappointing January, will hopefully be refreshed following ten days of warm weather training over in Dubai. Lucky for some! Due to our elimination from the FA Cup, it will have been eighteen days since Arsenal last kicked a ball in anger by the time kick off comes around. We find ourselves in the potentially advantageous position of having only league games to contend with from now until the end of the season.
Despite not having been in action of late, Arteta’s side have been in the news a lot due to the busyness of our departure lounge over the course of the transfer window. Most notably, the club captain, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang, to Barcelona. Many questions have arisen regarding Arteta’s side’s squad depth going into the final 17 games of the season, particularly in the striker department. The only recognised strikers at his disposal are Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah. Those two players have a grand total of three premier league goals between them this season, all from the Frenchman although Nketiah does have five goals to his name, albeit mostly against lower league opposition in the Carabao Cup. Of course, Gabriel Martinelli can also play down the middle, so he is another option, but we are scraping the barrel a bit in that area of the pitch.
In terms of the opposition, our recent record against Wolves leaves a lot to be desired. Since their return to the topflight in 2018, we have just one win against them in six meetings. That came in this fixture two seasons ago when Bukayo Saka’s first Premier League goal and a late Lacazette strike gave us a 2-0 victory during Project Restart behind closed doors. But other than that, there have been two draws and three defeats. Wolves did the double over us last season (who didn’t?) with both games being particularly bleak for differing reasons. We went down 2-1 at the Emirates but the game was overshadowed by a horrific head collision between Raul Jiménez and David Luiz. The Mexican striker was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured skull which left many fearing for his career and more importantly, his life. Thankfully, he was able to make a full recovery and has been a key part of Wolves’ success this season. It also brought about the long overdue need for concussion substitutes which have been successfully introduced. The return fixture at Molineux saw a repeat of the same score line but in very different circumstances. Arsenal outplayed Wolves in the first forty-five minutes and led 1-0 going into first half stoppage time before referee Craig Pawson gave David Luiz a straight red card for the offence of breathing loudly in a built-up area during the hours of darkness. Wolves then inevitably won the game 2-1 thanks to their numerical advantage but the officiating sparked outrage in the realms of Arsenal Twitter which is a dark place even at the best of times. Hopefully we can finally get one over on the Midlanders on Thursday evening.
Wolves have been a fantastic addition to the league since their promotion three and a half years ago, with their fast-flowing entertaining style of play drawing plaudits from far and wide. They enjoyed consecutive seventh place finishes and incredibly managed to qualify for the Europa League in their first season back which I don’t believe had been done before, at least not in the Premier League era. They proceeded to storm their way to the quarter finals before losing to eventual winners, Sevilla. In fact, they would have qualified for another season, but our FA Cup triumph meant that we took their spot in the competition. Looking back in hindsight, we would have probably been better off offering them our spot in Europe given what happened the season after, but UEFA probably have some reason why you can’t do that, like integrity, or something. It is noteworthy perhaps that their rules don’t include playing finals in Europe. Worth looking into in case we qualify for that ridiculous Conference League competition. Beggars can’t be choosers of course but I don’t think I would be alone in saying, I would rather stick my hand in a blender then watch our second-string side plug away on a sand pit against Bate Borisov at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. I digress.
Under Bruno Lage, Wolves have been much more solid and harder to break down and perhaps less exciting to watch than they have been in years gone by, but they still sit healthily, in eighth place on 34 points. In fact, a win would see them overtake us in the table. I think we’ve seen this film multiple times before. They have however allowed Adama Traore to go on loan to Barcelona in a move many expect to become permanent which is good news as far as Kieran Tierney is concerned. The Spanish winger seemed set to go to Spurs, but he rejected them presumably because they’re not very good. And I suppose there is the fact that Barcelona is nicer than Tottenham. As are most places. I think it was Angel di Maria who remarked, “It always hurts when you are doing well and then you hear you might be going to Tottenham”. Not hard to see where he was coming from there.
In terms of the starting line up this is personally what I’d like to see:
Ramsdale
Tomiyasu (if available), White, Gabriel, Tierney
Partey, Sambi
Odegaard
Saka, Smith Rowe
Martinelli
I would love to see a 433 formation with a Partey and Sambi pivot with Odegaard pulling the strings in the play maker role. Also, I hope Martinelli gets a go down the middle since the other two strikers are clearly not part of Arteta’s long-term project. Personally, I think he will opt for Xhaka to come back into the side if his suspension is over which I believe is the case. Time will tell.
I will be at Molineux for this one so hopefully we pick up a vital three points in our top four charge. COYG!
Cheers 21CG.
Bit harsh picking Bate Borisov, they too were in the Champions League not long ago.
Yeah I think Xhaka will come straight back in too. It will be a tough match, also a huge match, will be essential to start on a positive footing.
Have fun in Black Country.
An excellent preview, 21CG and a chilling reminder of how poor our recent record has been against this lot, albeit leavened by unfortunate refereeing decisions. I expect Xhaka and Lacazette to start and ESR to join from the benches if we need to turn the game’s direction. Everyone needs to be on top form if we are to take three points – which we must.
Just win, Arsenal.
Another excellent preview 21CG. I’m delighted you are getting to another away game. See you there!
Good going, 21CG. Like others, I expect Xhaka to start. Arteta’s blank teamsheets come with the Swiss’s name preprinted. As you point out, this is a six-pointer. Enjoy your trip to the city of the Wulfrunians.
Mid-table opposition away. A sign of the times but it doesn’t look particularly winnable from an Arsenal perspective based on performances from the last several seasons. An occasion for some individual and collective “stepping up” of a variety rarely seen recently. Which is not to say about it can’t be achieved. COYG
Forgot to thank you, 21cg on an excellent preview. I hope your travels are enjoyable both from your individual and our (Arsenal’s) collective points of view.
What an excellent and witty preview and a very good analysis of Wolves .
When I first watched football they and Burnley were the teams to beat . How times change.
I detest the set up at Wolves and I couldn’t understand the acclaim for NES who was as boring a coach as you could imagine . They are a super agent’s plaything – Portugal comes to the Black Country . But they are a very tough opponent and unless we play very well they will overcome us tomorrow. Probably 1-0
How might we avoid this? Possibly by picking the team that 21CG advocates . I’d go with that too but I’m pretty certain Tomi isn’t fit so Benny Blanco will be right back with Capitola Rob in the centre . It will all depend if we can set up Gabigol and I think Odegaard will be key .
I can’t see beyond a draw but I hope our brave travellers enjoy their trip and return safely
I didn’t note you’d left out the best defensive midfielder in Europe . Granit will return and after his first positive contribution ( 65 minutes) the Goonerverse will be clamouring to tell us how lucky we are to have him . One other option is Pepe who slaughtered their right flank at Molineux until Pawson intervened last season . He could play on the left as he did last season with ESR joining as a sub
Thanks 21CG, I hope we play as well as we did in that first half at Molineux last season. Should have been three up in that game before their penalty.
Anyway, a draw will probably do tomorrow but I think we can win it 2-0.
Hope you have a safe and enjoyable trip😃
2-1 up, 3-2 down.Cheers spuds!
Three points off Wolves are even more important now that the neighbours have frittered away their games in hand.
Spot on Ned. Huge game tomorrow, but we have a record of 11-3-7, identical to Spurs but our GD is +8 and theirs is only +1 which is markedly worse than it was when they sacked Nuno if memory serves me. Hilarious happenings at the henhouse today.
More to the point, Wolves are two points behind us with the same number of matches played and a GD of +4. There’s one certainty, that at least one of Arsenal and Wolves will pick up points on Spurs so let it be us.
Fine job, 21CG !
I’m liking your tone, Sir, and approve of the level of respect you demonstrate for august organisations like UEFA. I say “august” cos I think they are off on their hollibobs for the rest of the year, burying their heads in the sand. Or something 😳
Very fine preview 21CG, thank you!
Xhaka will come and go in less than 90 minutes, as usual, I’m afraid.
I don’t know for certain but it seems Arteta has a debilitating effect on the strikers. It’s true Guardiola is not a big fan of the big striker egos nor Arteta is. But someone has to score goals and we don’t have a team yet that could provide this.
Any win would do and it would be just right to see us winning.
COYG
Excellent preview 21CG! You and others going to the match have a great time. Looking forward to hear you all cheering the team to a resounding victory.
I like your team but I think Mikel will start Xhaka ahead of Sambi and Laca in place of ESR who will be an option from the bench.
Any win will do. It will set us up nicely for the run.
I used to have a soft spot for Wolves, back in the 70s. They had Derek Dougan, John Richards, Kenny Hibbit, those funky gold shirts with the three wolves badge in the centre of the chest. And a mate supported them.
Then I found out he was a closet Tory. A few years later he stood for the council as a Tory candidate.
Worse than that, he regularly played table tennis
It wasn’t that that put me off Wolves though.
It was this bloke
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10897192.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/I170729_161759_1120442oTextTRMRMMGLPICT000002583655o.jpg
Cheers 21G!
But Xhaka over Sambi everyday for me.
@ 17Cynic
Grew up in Tamworth in the 60’s/70’s. Mixture of Villa, West Brom and Wolves in the playground. They were all cunts.
One for any Wolves fans who might stumble on here tonight;
Esso @19 Good point, well made.
Cheers Cynic
Top boy in the area!
cept it cut his fucking head off!
Ramsdale, Cedric, White, Gabriel, Tierney, Partey, Xhaka, Saka, Odegaard, Martinelli, Lacazette.
Ramsdale, Cedric, White, Gabriel, Tierney, Xhaka, Partey, Odegaard, Saka, Martinelli, Lacazette
Subs: Okonkwo, Awe, Holding, Tavares, Elneny, Lokonga, Smith Rowe, Pepe, Nketia
Substitutes: Okonkwo, Smith Rowe, Holding, Pepe, Tavares, Lokonga, Elneny, Nketiah, Awe.
Question : by the end of the evening will be be in awe of Awe?
(Maybe not the most important question at hand)
Team news update…
@Bernd_Leno
misses today’s game after testing positive for Covid.
Get well soon, Bernd! ❤️
Snap!
Eso es.
The team is much as many of the greybeards on here expected.
No room on the bench for the youngsters who were there during AFCON. Awe’s presence shows how thin we now are defensively
The bookies have Xhaka at 17/10 to get a card and 33/1 to get sent off.
bt8@28: As long as we are not in shock…
@bt8
Saw them at The Electric Ballroom Camden in 78, about 3 months before ‘cant stand losing you’ became a minor hit. As a ‘serious (probably forerunner of oasis types) clash fan’ at the time, didn’t think much of them. But i really remember that single and its popularity at the time. And I was still a teenager, just. Happy daze.
Esso. That was the year I started college and attending concerts. Never any of the three bands you mentioned though.
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11670/12519066/arsenals-bukayo-saka-says-heart-was-always-set-on-joining-gunners-as-youngster-despite-tottenham-trial
Three points on the menu. Shall we order??
We will need a moment of genius or a stroke of luck to beat that miserly defence. Hopefully our midfield will conjure that up – most probably Ødegaard – and one of our forwards will finish it – most probably Martinelli. I don’t foresee a high scoring game. A classic one-nil to the Arsenal will do. me very nicely.
COYG!
excellent work, 21cg. i do hope our old habits don’t come back to haunt us today. let’s get three points!
and you and CER and C100 enjoy the game 🙂
gabi’s workrate is fantastic. wow.
This is hard work. Good stuff from White, Lacaa and Gabriel for the goal. Pity the lovely move from Øde, Saka and Laca didn’t nestle in the goal. Need the same work rate in the second half and no more yellow cards.
Steady steady now and we can do this. But if they try to plot in Portuguese we have native speakers all over the pitch in Martinelli, Gaby and Cedric, and Tavares on the bench. 🙌🏻🙌🏻
esr for mø in the 68th.
Bollocks is that a red, first foul was on Martinelli
Aaargh Laca. Great ball too.
Going to be a tough 20 minutes.
Never a second yellow, soft as baby’s ass.
Laca’s chance, that’s why we need a proper striker, no, not that Juve’s overrated signing
I bloody hate time wating whoever does it and it’s so pointless because referees always add on more time than is wasted. Quite why we were delaying the game in the most blatant ways with half an hour to go is beyond me.
In the end we won the game, but I don’t like the way this team operates.
Well done lads. Imagine what they can do if they play a full game 11v11 😁
holy effin shite, that was a ride. ten men of pure heart and the greatest of stature…
Massive result!
Never let it be said we make things easy for ourselves.
Emerges from behind sofa, screams YES!
Great 3 points.
That is a massive result. The lads put in a sterling effort especially after going down to ten men. Gabriel, White and Ramsdale were colossal. Shades of that famous back four tonight.
Well done Arsenal.
Onward.
Maybe our senior midfielder should sit down with Martinelli and have a talk about the importance of not being sent off.
OM 🤣🤣
I, myself, was not aware I could hold my breath for 20 odd minutes.
Well done. If you can stave off Liverpool for 90 minutes maybe you can stave off Wolves too.🤨. Also, that is five of our last seven league matches that we have kept a clean sheet.
Full marks to Arteta for his substitutions after Martinelli’s red. Rob Holding played his bit-part to perfection, and the whole defence was immense throughout and especially after we went down to ten.
Yeah, it was that sort of 20 mins KS,.
Re: Cynic @45. I’m glad to see you’ve taken the moral high road but I can’t quite see why Arsenal should place themselves in the position of being the only club that doesn’t take every advantage available to protect a lead. Thanks very much for three points. It’s tough to get into a “take no prisoners” mentality in contesting balls all over the pitch if you are conceding advantages to the opposition in other ways. Three points is three points and I will take them gladly. And not being morally superior I will still advocate against time wasting when the other side does it too.
It’s not really a moral high ground, although I think it’s embarrassing and I don’t think we’re very clever at doing it. If you waste time in a blatantly obvious way, such as going down clutching the back of your thigh a few seconds after you’ve trotted on unhurt after a challenge and clearly are not hurt, which is Gabriel’s little party trick, all you do is invite the referee to add time on. It’s not very clever to waste ten seconds if the referee is fully aware of it and adds half a minute.
I wish someone more anally retentive than me would do a study of “tactics” like time wasting and try to work out how much extra time referees add on, over and above the “advantage” a team thinks they gain by fucking about. I would be guessing, but I bet at least a minute was added on by the ref for our time wasting.
All teams do it, but it’s not clever. I doubt anyone is really stupid enough to think that making a substitution in added time, for example, really saves any time at all. They can’t possibly think that anyone falls for that shit, yet most teams do it.
My guess is that the teams have done loads of studies, and the studies have shown that time wasting is effective, which is why all teams encourage their players to do it. My impression is that the referees do not add on as much time as the players waste. Probably because they’re so anxious to get home.
Cynic@59: Three academics from INSEAD, the Yale School of Management and the National University of Singapore Business School published a research paper on time-wasting in 2019.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0224150
It doesn’t appear to come to any particular conclusion beyond that there is a lot of time-wasting in games and footballers are rather shrewd judges of when time-wasting is advantageous to them.
This, based on the 2018 World Cup, is blunter. Only about half of stoppages in games gets added on as stoppage time.
Apart from the time itself, time-wasting breaks up the flow for the other team and also frustrates them when they are trying to play quickly, and it gives your own team time to re-organise. It annoys the shit out of me when we’re chasing a game of course but – and this is just a feeling – there seems to be more yellow cards for it this season.
MA planning to talk to the officials about the red card today and other decisions that have been difficult to understand this season – good luck with that Mikel.
Sorry to get on my referee hobby horse again, but re time wasting above, at the home game vs Burnley, they we’re wasting time from the 7th minute onwards. And frankly the referee colluded. Whenever there was a goal kick, he would firmly keep his back to the keeper, either initiating or joining in conversation with their players, allowing their keeper to take as much time as he wanted. Since when it is the act of a good referee to keep his back to the ball, on multiple occasions of the same type?
I’m so sick of it.
Matt @64.
Good luck to him indeed. Recent history suggests talking to the officials is pointless….expect more red cards. :p
My phone seems to have died but I believe Scruz is publishing my report today
TTG, I haven’t receved your post.
I have never seen a referee apply pressure and yellow cards as assiduously to our opposition’s timewasting at the Emirates as they seem to do to the Arsenal. Perhaps Cynic is correct that we are far less subtle than others and are therefore subjected to the officials’ ire but I have sat through horrendous time wasting at the Emirates for which the occasional yellow for a keeper with 5 minutes to go was the only response. Call it one eyed paranoia if you wish but this is another example of the double standards of English referees.
As for the double yellow cards for Martinelli, the point has been made elsewhere that if Oliver thought the first was a card he should not have played advantage as the Wolves player made a foul throw and therefore he should have acted on that giving either a foul against Martinelli or a throw for Arsenal. However it was by no means the first foul throw that he and his linos ignored. Indeed that is another law that appears to be most rigorously applied against the Arsenal.
Harness that siege mentality boys and ride it to fourth place.
Arteta talks about us getting red cards and talking about it and trying to stop it, but not knowing how to. I think it’s quite simple really, our players are not all that bright when it comes to game management and maybe, if they’re told to time waste or do whatever they do that’s all niggly and invites problems, whoever is “coaching” them in the dark arts is not very good at it.
Anyway fuck it. I just found Arseblogger’s ‘So Paddy Got Up’ in a charity shop for 49p so I’ll read Holic’s piece and stop moaning.
For the time it takes to read that at least 😉
>>>>>>>