Thursday evening sees us return to everyone\u2019s least favourite competition away at Olympiacos. It is one we must take seriously though as it offers silverware and a possible return to the holy land of the Champion\u2019s League. After a long Winter break between the usually dull group stages and the latter rounds we can now look forward to a straightforward knockout competition featuring some decent teams and a smattering of good ones, maybe even a couple of excellent ones. Which category will we fall into?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A confidence boosting thumping of the\nbarcodes will have done us no harm and Arteta will field a strong side. Expect\nchanges, but the difficulty of how we rotate the squad and keep getting results\nwill increase should we go deeper in the cups and find ourselves closer to the\nfifth place that it now appears may be enough for automatic CL qualification.\nThat situation is pie in the sky without a strong showing in the tie against\nthe Greeks. It is worth noting that Holding, AMN, Guendouzi and Nelson did not\neven make the squad at the weekend, despite being fit, so our strength in depth\nshould see us able to compete on multiple fronts if we need to. Arteta will be\npulling no punches tomorrow. Expect him to demand that his players build on the\nlast result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for our opponents, we have drawn them in\nour group four times in the Champions League since 2009, winning four and\nlosing four and managing our only away victory in 2015 courtesy of a hat-trick\nfrom Olivier Giroud. This year they sit at the top of their domestic league,\ninto the semis of their domestic cup and find themselves slumming it with us in\nthe Europa League due to a third place finish in their CL group featuring only\none big opponent in Bayern Munich. Their danger man is El Arabi, a striker who\nhas netted 17 goals so far in the Greek League and their head coach is Pedro\nMartins. I can tell you that he is Portuguese but little else about him. Without\never having seen him I am sure his hair is not as good as our manager\u2019s and\ntherefore his team will probably lose. Expect Arteta to focus on his own hair\nand not worry about what Martins is doing with his. And if that doesn\u2019t satisfy\nyour need for insightful analysis then I am afraid you are reading the wrong\npreview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Presumably Arsenal have scouted our\nopponents better than I have but I expect we will continue to setup with the\nemphasis on our own performance and attitude. Just as we should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team is hard to guess for this one but\nI\u2019ll go with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martinez<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bellerin,\nLuiz, Sokratis, Kola<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Torreira,\nXhaka<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pepe, \u00d6zil, Martinelli,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aubameyang<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That may prove to be way off the mark. At\nthe time of writing I do not know who has flown to Greece and who has stayed in\nLondon. Therefore Nelson, Lacazette, Ceballos, Willock and Nketiah might start\nand the bench will be interesting. Will Holding or Mari play any part? Is\nGuendouzi back in the squad? We know Tierney, Chambers and Soares are out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Holic\u2019s pound is going on a tough 2-1\nwin which can be had at around 8-1. Shop around to improve that slightly but\nnowhere is offering great value on a popular scoreline. I think we will have a\nlittle bit too much for them but may struggle to keep a clean sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would expect us to turn them over at our\nplace, so a win is not vital but we would all love to see us build on the\nattacking fluency we found in the second half as we checked out the barcodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good luck Arsenal and happy viewing to\nHolics everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday evening sees us return to everyone\u2019s least favourite competition away at Olympiacos. It is one we must take seriously though as it offers silverware and a possible return to the holy land of the Champion\u2019s League. After a long Winter break between the usually dull group stages and the latter rounds we can now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316"}],"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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}