{"id":13944,"date":"2026-08-01T08:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T07:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=13944"},"modified":"2026-08-02T12:02:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T11:02:42","slug":"girona-away-for-our-preseason-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=13944","title":{"rendered":"Girona away for our preseason opener"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1090274516\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:65.48821% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1090274516?et=ht_TsHnEQopA3CiAfZaLWA&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=t0zNBTjlwrYh6Cg2byCIYe2jnNXvc7EF52XSo6MvQAA=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"389\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>And so it begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2025-26 Premier League Champions travel to Catalonia this weekend to take on Girona FC at the Estadi Montilivi in our first preseason match, and our only away match before we go to Birmingham to face Villa in the league on the last day of August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Girona<\/strong><br>By the time Girona Futbol Club rose from the ashes of Uni\u00f3 Deportiva Girona in 1930 they&#8217;d spent most of their time in the lower reaches of non-professional football in Spain.  While they rose to the Secunda Divisi\u00f3n in 1935-36, they narrowly missed promotion that season. The Spanish Civil War interrupted all of Spanish football, and it would be another 81 years before they could manage to crack the ceiling and win promotion to Spain&#8217;s top flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their 2017 promotion brought them to the attention of the City Football Group (the multi-armed kraken that owns Manchester City, NYCFC, Troyes, and Palermo, among others), who purchased 44% (now 47%) of the club and invested substantially in their training facilities.  Success was not instant.  After two years in La Liga Girona was relegated in 2019, leading to three years in the Nah Liga wilderness.  Promotion in 2022 brought improvement each year in La Liga; finishing 3rd in 2024 earning automatic qualification to the Champions League in 2024-25.  Our preseason match is the second Arsenal have played at the Estadi Montilivi; our first was in the Champions League league phase, in January, 2025, where we came from behind and ran out 2-1 winners on goals from Jorghino and Nwaneri.  With only 3 points from 8 games, including losses to PSG, Liverpool, and AC Milan, Girona finshed 33d of the 36 teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, despite the heightened level of investment the <em>Blanquivermells<\/em> are coming off a year that ended in even more disappointment.  After four years in La Liga, and sixteen months after they last played Champions League football, they were relegated by drawing Elche in the last game of the season (Girona would have stayed up had they won).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While players like Marc-Andr\u00e9 ter Stegen (whose loan from Barcelona ended), Vitor Reis, Claudio Echeverri, Hugo Rincon, and Thomas Lemar have all departed Girona this Summer, there are some players whom are recognizable:  Donny van de Beek, Bryan Gil, Paulo Gazzaniga, and Alex Moreno all have Premier League experience.  Others were involved in that league phase game, including 3\/4 of their defense, and 2\/3 of their forward players.  Notable among them is ex-Barcelona Spanish international Abel Ruiz, who we can expect to lead the line on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arsenal<\/strong><br>While it is just one game, it looks like we&#8217;re taking a rather thin squad on the trip, with only 5 first-team defenders, <em>including<\/em> those who are recovering from injury (White, Timber); Saliba and Gabriel are either too injured or too fatigued to make this trip. New signings Meslier and Tzolis are on the plane, as are loan returnees Nelson and Vieira. Gy\u00f6keres, Havertz, Martinelli, and Hincapi\u00e9 have made it to Spain upon their return from the World Cup, whereas Saka, Rice, Eze, Madueke, Raya, Merino, Zubimendi, and \u00d8degaard are still in recovery after their exertions in the Americas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately, Arteta decided to fill the emergency raft with 11 of our up-and-coming youth, including Dowman, Salmon, Harriman-Annous, Kabia, and Ibrahim, all of whom have made their first team debuts.  Besides Salmon, any of Clarke, Ogunnaike, or even Julienne can play at various positions in our back line.  O&#8217;Neill, Ranson, and Augustien can play in midfield or up front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what will our lineup be?  Impossible to say, especially since there will probably be wholesale changes at halftime.  Nonetheless I hope we won&#8217;t see any of White or Timber, which would leave us to start the game with something like the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Kepa<br>Salmon &#8211; Mosquera &#8211; Calafiori &#8211; Hincapi\u00e9<br>MLS &#8211; Nwaneri &#8211; Vieira<br>Dowman &#8211; Gy\u00f6keres &#8211; Tzolis<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whom Arteta mixes and matches after that (assuming those wholesale changes) is hard to say.  We should certainly see a debut for Meslier (sorry Setford, you&#8217;re hard done by), and perhaps some final Arsenal playing time for Nelson, Jesus, and N\u00f8rgaard.  I&#8217;d like to see how Harriman-Annous is coming along, and both Kabia and Ibrahim showed promise last season&#8230;let&#8217;s hope they can use this preseason to push their way into Arteta&#8217;s plans for the coming year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The &#8216;Holics Pound<\/strong><br>Kind of silly, right?  I think, if I had to, and without knowing the odds, I&#8217;d put a punt on Dowman to score, and maybe parlay that with a goal from Gy\u00f6keres, maybe even on an assist from Tzolis.  I just hope we get a good run-out, a good look at the young&#8217;uns, some shop window time for our probably departees, and no injuries.  After all, isn&#8217;t that the point of this type of exercise at this stage of the (pre)season?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>COYG!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images And so it begins. The 2025-26 Premier League Champions travel to Catalonia this weekend to take on Girona FC at the Estadi Montilivi in our first preseason match, and our only away match before we go to Birmingham to face Villa in the league on the last day of August. GironaBy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13944"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13955,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13944\/revisions\/13955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}