The matches come thick and fast in Project Restart and though the ink has barely settled on a miserable trip to the Emptihad we are back on the road again, perhaps halfway down the line by now. The weekend sees us journey from London down to Brighton for a game that offers the opportunity to rebuild confidence after a match in which, according to Mikel Arteta, “everything went wrong from the first minute…… every possible accident that could have happened did”. Hard to argue with that and I won’t, onwards we go.
Our recent record against Brighton is not particularly encouraging, one win in five and that back in 2017, with the nadir our home defeat in December during King Freddie’s short-lived reign. Although it is not a game I wish to remember, duty calls and so I will remind you that we started slowly, were dominated at home by Brighton in the first half (yes, that’s right, thine eyes do not deceive, the ignominy of it all still galls six months later) and although we improved after the break with the introduction of Pepe more sloppy defending gave Brighton an 80th minute winner. The boos rang out and though they certainly won’t this weekend we will need to be much sharper mentally and physically this time. Graham Potter, Brighton’s current manager, played three centre-backs that day and we duly conceded to one of them at a corner. I see no reason he will not try to repeat a winning formula and it is to be hoped we will be aware of the danger. The Seagulls squawked noisily in their opposition to neutral venues before this oddest of seasons resumed as they believe rightly or wrongly that home advantage will be significant in their battle against relegation – they are currently two points off the bottom three. Well, at home they are and we will see on Saturday whether they were right. I believe the first 15 or 20 minutes will be crucial as they so often are after a bad game. Concede early and our fragile confidence will again come into play. We must be made of sterner stuff this time, rock like in defence, a certain rapacity in attack and a morale boosting three points should accompany us home from the sea.
Who will play?
So who are the men we entrust with the task of sticking it to Brighton? Though I cannot pretend to know the thoughts in Mikel’s mind as he balances the needs of an immediate win against the demands of a busy schedule my guess is that he will stick with most of the starting line-up from the last game. Some changes however are enforced. Mari is lucklessly out for the rest of the season already, Luiz is banned and Xhaka unlikely to be available. Of those not involved on Wednesday it’s extremely doubtful Torreira, Soares or Papa will suddenly be deemed fit enough but needs must in Rob Holding’s case and with he and Mustafi our only available actual CBs I expect that to be our default pairing. Rob has not had many opportunities of late but he is by all accounts a nice lad (just ask scruzgooner if you don’t believe me) and I very much hope he takes what may realistically be a last chance for him with Mari to sign and Saliba to arrive soon. See, there is a place for sentiment in football!
In central midfield too, options are limited and I expect Guen and Dani to be our starting pair unless Mikel has a surprise rabbit in the shape of Joe W to drop back or AMN to provide a more defensive centre. In attack Mikel has again spoken very positively on Eddie this week, which in all likelihood means no place for Laca. The wide players are I think anyone’s guess – mine you see below but it could easily be Saka, Martinelli or Pepe starting in place of Nelson or even Auba based on his body language on Wednesday. On Ozil I won’t comment for tactical reasons (that is code for I have no clue what is going on). Our early season dream front four of Ozil, Pepe, Auba and Laca feels a long time ago now with all available and only one likely to start. Regardless, reading between the lines on Ozil’s probable absence it should mean another opportunity for Joe Willock.
The side then………
Leno
Hector – Mus – Rob – Tierney
Guen – Dani
Nelson – Joe W – Auba
Eddie
It is an XI with great potential but also an XI that, it must be faced, may give away goals and lack the know-how to battle out a bits and pieces type win. It is a learning process for several of them and in an unforgiving league we must support them with opportunities and I am glad that Mikel has the balls to do so. It would be great to see the youngsters get a run and put together two or three well-worked goals but after Wednesday any old win will do to get us moving again.
The Opposition
And what of Brighton? With the quick turnover in games I must confess I have not looked at them in any great detail. I do know they had yet to win in 2020 before the break, a run of 9 league games. They struggle to score but have a good defensive record. Sadly, that is a profile we have not excelled against this season. They have a full squad to choose from and will no doubt scrap hard etc etc. I do also know we are better than them and I of course say that with the greatest respect for their little club. Three points are up for grabs and it is never good to let seagulls get the fishy on the little dishy (with apologies to Alex Glasgow).
The Holic Pound
As an inveterate gambler from an early age I will happily recommend a punt. The bookies make The Arsenal only slight favourites to win this one outright and a 1-1 draw is the most fancied result at 6/1. Not surprising as Brighton with 11 draws this season and a goal a game ratio are only a couple short of our own 13 drawn games. That being said, I am not in the business of betting against an Arsenal win and I believe good value lies in the 20/1 available for 3-1 win. We are good enough and the youngsters brave enough to see us home. I also expect to see Auba back on the scoresheet but the odds are not attractive at this particular moment.
A quick tidy up of some other news sees David Luiz’s agent kindly reminding us that 23rd June is the day for contracts to be sorted by and we will know by then whether his client is staying. Arteta has been positive in saying that he will not judge Luiz solely on one game – a courtesy several of the players on Wednesday must hope he will extend to them too – and that he would like Luiz to stay. I would not put my own pound on Luiz staying but we shall see shortly and I assume also get updates on the situation with Dani, Mari and Soares too.
Finally, it only remains for me to wish a happy and safe trip to the comfort of their sofa, armchair or other preferred item of furniture for all the bonny Gooners everywhere
Great job Matt. A late night kick off for you – no falling asleep! Again I hope we will go with pace to bedazzle the seagulls I think we may well see Martinelli and Pepe start as rotation is the name of the game.
Excellent preview Matt. After the damp squib at the Emptihad, this match takes on huge import for the rump of our season. Failure to take something from this match could see a huge unraveling and the mid-table mediocrity that has been the phenotype of this team since the season began will become a reality.
As you note, our record against Brighton has been abysmal of late but despite this, we simply must come away with something from this game to kick start the rump of this season. I agree with CM100 that rotation where possible will see fresh faces, in particular the two wide men he mentions. I wonder if rotation will extend to the captain too given his abysmal performance on Wednesday.
Great preview Matt and nothing to disagree with other than I think the bookies have this right and it will be a 1-1 draw . I hope this period will see exciting new talent like Coyle, Medley , Swanson and Smith making an impact but after that awful performance in Manchester on Wednesday we need some solidity and a few decent results . That will mean going for more tried and tested options until we get some positive results .
I do have to say Willock has yet to convince me and I wish we had the option of the exciting Smith-Rowe.
I can’t work out what the hell is happening with Ozil but it really seems that it would be better for all parties if he was off at the end of the season.,We need a reboot in that role as Bath was suggesting in the precious drinks. I wish Rob Holding well and I hope Kieran Tierney can build on an encouraging return in Manchester .Watching a live league game at 3pm on a Saturday on TV will be a novel experience .
Scruz,
Can you email me with the address you wish me to send you the match report to .
I am not a blow by blow match reporter , a technique employed so excellently by Holic and Bath on Wednesday. But it will be full of pithy observation !
With sincere apologies to Matt.
TTG – Thanks for the clarification @30 in the previous bar. I recall an introduction to behavioural psychology as part of some management training 30 or so years ago – I remember learning people who are vaguely interested in a subject listened only to the first few things that were said. That’s certainly true of me on this occasion (at least).
And now, very belatedly, to read the post.
…and an excellent preview it is too OM. Like others before me, I can find little to argue with and I’m embarrassed to admit I find it hard to recall what potential CBs we have in the squad.
Little more to say. other than…
COYG
Roy Keane hilarious on Sky. Said he’d be throwing punches at De Gea for letting the goal in. He’s too soft, that’s his trouble. 😂😂
You can see why he failed as a coach. The man management skills of Attila the Hun.
But he was correct about Maguire and De Gea. He was also an inspirational captain.
Like TA6 he demonstrates that the skills of captaincy are not transferable to coaching.
Amazing tgat a back four of Aurier, Sanchez, Dier and Davies can repel United ( so far) although they have much to thank Lloris for . The save from Martial was superb
Well they didn’t keep them out and the result from our perspective was probably the best we could wish for . Donkey Dier reverted to type and Jon Moss showed what a crappy ref he is . Pogba showed what a difference flair and creativity can make in a tight match
Definitely the best result for us. A win tomorrow takes us above Spurs with eight games left. COYG!
great job, matt. a peppy preview for a possible pratfall of a game. agreed with c1000 and baff about the wide folk: martinelli on the left, pepe on the right, eddie in the middle, and we should have goals rolling in for the arsenal. auba can do with a rest, his body language was terrible in the game.
as for the contracts being up, bye bye luiz. but for god’s sake, get saka signed to a long-term contract. he’s golden.
Nice one, OM.
Graham Potter has won two of the three games he has managed against us. So not to be underestimated.
Arteta has talked of surrounding the young players with experience so I think Auba will play.
ned, maybe he means “surround” like “surrounding from the stands”.
Great preview, Matt, and a great picture. Was wondering, is that a Brighton seagull, a Japanese seagull, or one of unknown provenance?
*Summons a tide-turning frame of mind.*
It was of course a stunt seagull
bt8 and I’d like to stress no
seagulls were injured in the
writing of this article.
Though some of their fans may
have felt a gentle dig
I’d guess you’re right about
Auba Ned.
Just watched Spud /Manure
highlights and say what you
like about VAR it did stop Moss
from cocking up another game.
How long must we hear his
song?
Watched the Soton / Norwich
highlights too. Soton were
disturbingly clinical for a side
we play next. I hope they’ve
got it out of their system.
Ozil? Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. Tactical 🙂
The dream front four of Ozil, Pepe, Auba and Laca lies somewhere over the rainbow. Mikel just needs to find himself a pair of sparkling ruby red shoes and click his heels. And I agree completely with all of the rest of your thoughts, Matt, including the seagulls and the fishy.
Excellent work. Arigato gozimus.
And Nicholas Pepe? He’s gone from being someone I’d never heard of to someone I now never see in less than one year. A magician or just someone who’s fooling with my senses?
And who plays football matches on warm sunny Saturday afternoons when Gooners are on their golf courses? Difficult to take any of this stuff seriously outside of the real silly season. If you plan to travel to the comfort of your sofa, armchair or other preferred item of furniture, I’ll join Matt in wishing you a very happy and safe trip. 🙂
Reports that Ozil has travelled with the squad to Brighton
Leno
Bellerin
Mustafi
Holding
Kolasinic
Pepe
Ceballos
Guendouzi
Saka
Auba
Laca
Nothing approaching a holding midfielder there. Fascinated to see the formation.
Three at the back with Bellerin and Saka wing backs? Can the Faltering Fullback play CB? If he does, will he become yet another Faltering Centreback?
On the bench
Tierney
Ozil
AMN
Nelson
Martinez
Willock
Nketiah
Martinelli
Medley
It will escape no one that three of the dream front four Matt mentioned are on the field and Ozil (may be) on the bench. We may be one click of the heels of a pair of ruby red slippers from their first appearance. Brighton should Rock!
At least Brighton will be as confused about our prospective line up as we are.
What’s with the obsession with ruby red slippers, BtM? A longstanding fantasy, perchance?
C100@27: Nothing approaching a holding midfielder? Much the same as most games then.
My 2-cents is that we’ll line up in a Citeh-esque 4-3-3 rather than play three at the back. You lose too much of Kola’s attacking play — the best part of his game — if he plays as a CB. Brighton tend to play a narrow 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 against top six sides so Arteta may be looking for width and speed to counter that.
@30
Suddenly MA has gone all retro
on us, the Fab 3 at least are
back. Eddie bigged up and
dropped, no AM it seems and
could it even be 4-2-4 and damn
the consequences?
Not bad looking line up, hoping for an improved performance!
COYG!!!
OM@34: Rotated not dropped.
Looks like 443 it is then.
Decent start and I don’t want to jinx it…
Referees are bloody blind same old
I am watching the game at home without phony crowd noise. Much preferable to the phony noise I heard in midweek.
We appear to have stalled after that good first ten. Midfield particularly disjointed.
Agreed C100 maybe I spoke to soon, midfield non existant. We seem to have real problems with making simple passes. Not sure why Cebalos is so high up.
Leno is crooked FFS
Looks like a twisted knee maybe even a fructure bollocks l!
Looks awful for Leno. Could be a cruciate.
How many elbows is Atkinson
going to let go as accidental.
Bastard for Leno and for us
Come on Emi!
Great saves Martinez 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is unbelievable!!! Our quota of bad luck is simply unbelievable.
I hope Leno gets well soon but it looks nasty.
Nice save Emi!
Forearm across Saka’s face deliberately in Right in front of the ref. Barge into Leno as he catches ball causing serious injury. Elbow into back of Kola’s head as he jumps for the ball. Is it the Laws of the Game that Arsenal players are fair game?
Teams will try anything against us and refs never did a squat to help us, it’s been like this for ages and nothing will change.
In particular, I thought the challenge on Leno was flagrant. Leno obviously thought so.
Stupid foul Laca
Blatant attack on chin and not even a yellow
*shin that is 😂
Laca booked for his challenge
on the keeper
Saka was a fraction slow on
that pass
What a beautiful goal…. Get in Pepe 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Get in!
Get in!!!
I was just thinking take him
off 😄
Well I’d have hooked Pepe at half time so what the f**k do Iknow?
Did Pepe recover his pep by not playing against Pep? Big left footer. 👊🏾👊🏾👊🏾
What a fine goal.
Typical Arsenal ffs
TOO DEEP. We’re too deep.
FUCK
Stupid goal to concede.
That number 8 twat has been hammering into us all day.
This is Arsenal alright score then give away a silly goal in a matter of minutes, we looked like we were already defending this slender lead.
I’m sorry but those subs are a bit late in the day
Baff @ 68. Every 3 minutes he seems to commit a foul.
I’m deeply frustrated by this game. Both the team and the officiating.
@72
Exactly what you said
No surprise. Both have been poor, CM100.
It’s not good enough to surrender a lead like this, officinating was awful but we can’t blame this of our own downfalls.
And this proves everything this team is awful and mid table at best
FFS
Bunch of overrated and overpaid players!
I do not know how we lost that
game. At least we are pissed
off about it.
We didn’t play well consistently at all, and the officiating was terrible. We have lost so many technical player in the last few years and didn’t replace them.
Before the restart we were the only undefeated team in the league in 2020, which was a bit of an upward curve after Emery’s clusterfuck. Back to the drawing board for Mikel.
They should have ended the season in March.
Self-serving interview from the little twat who injured Leno. I went for the ball. It was shoulder to shoulder and he landed badly.
He did come out with an interesting observation. “The Arsenal players could learn a little humility. All game they were talking especially when they went up. They got what they deserved!”
I was really worried that the season would somehow be different when it returned but it is a relief to see that the referees will still allow fouls on Arsenal players and then book Arsenal players for far less incidents.
I thought we were bang average for the majority of that game and that all the officials have allowed fouling on Arsenal for so long that they do not even see it anymore, somwhow we are currently the dirtiest team in the premier league, with a team that never fights for each other or for the manager/fans.
Something is very wrong with us as a club that we have so little determination and fight, the Arsenal of the late eighties or late nineties early 2000’s took it as an affront if you tried to outmuscle us and could fight both fairly and with the black arts.
We are so frustrating and painful to watch, I’m not exactly sure where to begin.
We look disjointed in every position on the pitch, as much as the refs played a part we took the lead and could have easily won the game. It looks as if those players do not posses any footballing intelligence. Then again if you have Ceballos and Guendouzi controlling the middle what do you expect?
Bath @ 82: But isn’t winding up the opposition a part of game vocabulary for all teams? I am sure some of our players — Guendouzi for instance — can do well to control the aggression for the right moments and try to cut out errors from their game more, but I find it’s ridiculous that all these players in tiny teams somehow find themselves entitled to make comments on Arsenal team character: “cojones”, “humility”.
If any of our strikers had made that challenge they would have seen a straight red. Laca got an yellow for going for the ball and mistiming it.
ATG @ 84: We don’t have any midfield that can either transition quickly to spring counter-attacks or control possession and tempo or provide tactical structure. That’s why even a slow player like Xhaka prone to mistakes still offer value whereas even a few years back Xhaka wouldn’t come close to be even named in the bench. It’s really frightening how poor our midfield has becomes.
Sadly we appear to have lost the winning mentality. There was no great spark in the team and we scored through just 1 piece of sublime skill from Pepe – typically that was all he showed all afternoon. We then concede 2 sloppy goals, both due to a defensive lack of concentration – both goals eminently stoppable. We continue to be plagued with bad injuries and suffer from poor officiating. This club needs a massive shake up and it can’t come soon enough.
Win the NLD, the Cup and put
Maupay on our shit list for next
season.
We have a goal difference of zero.
In 30 games we have only scored 41 goals and have conceded 41.
Three months without football feels like a halcyon time.
DG @ 83: Let’s face it…they kicked out AW thinking that his philosophy is obsolete. We replaced it with something that we thought is more in line with the standards of the modern game. It didn’t work. This is a horrible case of ‘identity crisis’. Someone here said that this is ‘back to the drawing board for Mikel’…I think this is pretty much ‘back to the drawing board for the entire club’. Hard times ahead…
The way things are going, with credits for this season and no Europe they may end up paying me for my pair of seasons tickets.
Where’s the Scotch?
@19, Countryman, I suppose that had the season been written off, Arsenal would have to have paid back their share of £750M owed to SKY and Co, so maybe they’ll think they’re getting off lightly by buffering the C100 coffers by participating in this ‘crock all your players’ sausage machine EPL finale?
I recall feeling pretty glum when Citeh humped us at home last November. MA8 was sitting on the away team bench and looked bewildered by Arsenal under Emery. A month or so later I saw us outplay Chelski but lose to a couple of Leno blunders under Mikel’s tutelage. A good home win against Manure followed, an away draw at the Bus Stop was one of several very creditable performances on a good unbeaten run. CL qualification looked possible then, if challenging. Then the Co19 shit hit the fan.
Mikel Arteta has a mountain to climb to restore this club to the position to which all Gooners aspire. I see the internet is full of doubt on the back of two games in which the players’ minds and bodies are in a multiplicity of very strange places. It’s a time for resilient support and patience from all quarters – something of a challenge for many who only sing when we’re winning and like to fly aeroplanes with banners on when Arsenal ‘absolutely unacceptably’ slide from the top four.
I’m off to watch the game (probably on double speed). Judging from comments, the golf course was a better choice this afternoon. The rest of this season is going to be a bumpy ride I suspect. No time for gloom 🙂
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