{"id":4783,"date":"2022-02-09T10:35:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T10:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4783"},"modified":"2022-02-11T12:17:45","modified_gmt":"2022-02-11T12:17:45","slug":"beware-wolves-in-wolves-clothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=4783","title":{"rendered":"Beware Wolves in Wolves Clothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image courtesy of Nationalgeographic.org<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Arsenal travel to the West Midlands to take on Bruno Lage\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite not having been in action of late, Arteta\u2019s 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\u2019s side\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019t?) 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 Jim\u00e9nez 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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019t do that, like integrity, or something. It is noteworthy perhaps that their rules don\u2019t include playing finals in Europe. Worth looking into in case we qualify for that ridiculous Conference League competition. Beggars can\u2019t be choosers of course but I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019ve 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\u2019re 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, \u201cIt always hurts when you are doing well and then you hear you might be going to Tottenham\u201d. Not hard to see where he was coming from there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of the starting line up this is personally what I\u2019d like to see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramsdale<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomiyasu (if available), White, Gabriel, Tierney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey, Sambi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odegaard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Smith Rowe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be at Molineux for this one so hopefully we pick up a vital three points in our top four charge. COYG!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsenal travel to the West Midlands to take on Bruno Lage\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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\/4783"}],"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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4783"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4803,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4783\/revisions\/4803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}