{"id":6897,"date":"2022-11-02T21:20:16","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T21:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6897"},"modified":"2022-11-04T16:08:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T16:08:03","slug":"five-star-arsenal-take-on-rosti-looking-swiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6897","title":{"rendered":"Five Star Arsenal Take On R\u00f6sti Looking Swiss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The treadmill turns again and exactly 100 hours after the final whistle blew on our 5-0 crushing of Nottingham Forest, we kick off again, this time in the Europa League against FC Z\u00fcrich from Switzerland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need only to match whatever PSV Eindhoven achieve in the Arctic Circle against Bod\u00f8\/Glimt to ensure finishing top of our group. Apart from the prestige and confidence that being group winners might lend us, that feat would also save us two extra games in the new year by avoiding the play off round of qualification into the round of 16. Group winners go straight into the Round of 16 draw while the 8 second placed teams will play off against the 8 teams who finished 3rd in their Champions League groups. There are likely to be some big names dropping down – Tottenham will not be amongst them after a smash and grab 2-1 win in Marseille against the run of play – and whilst it might be true that the bigger they are, the harder they fall, it seems better to avoid some of them at this juncture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Bank Ned wrote an excellent history of FC Z\u00fcrich in his preview of the reverse fixture a month ago so, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re after, I would refer you to his piece in the archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what of the Swiss? In our Europa League group the men from the mountains are rock bottom with no hope of \u2018alp or rescue from this last round of fixtures. They sit seven points behind PSV, with a 2-1 home win against Bod\u00f8\/Glimt their only source of points, and a further two points behind the Arsenal sitting proudly at the summit. In the Swiss Super League things appear no better as they have been on something of a Swiss roll down the table into tenth place, with six draws and seven losses from their thirteen games played so far. It\u2019s to be hoped there will be no way off that slippery slope for them at the Emirates. The Swiss have so far conceded 15 goals in their five group matches, twice conceding 5 against PSV, so there must be a realistic possibility of an avalanche of strikes for us on Thursday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s usually so cold in the Swiss Alps that a violinist once noticed that he couldn\u2019t keep his violin in tune, so he asked the conductor of his orchestra to help. “Take it to Opporknockety,” said the conductor. “He is a violin expert.” The violinist packed his things and made the trek to the village where the expert lived. Sure enough, Opporknockety fixed the problem and the violin sounded great. A few years later, the violinist noticed that his instrument was once again failing to stay in tune. The violinist said to his conductor, “I guess I’ll have to take it back to Opporknockety.” “No, you can’t, ” said the conductor,” “Opporknockety only tunes once.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teams I looked through the whole Z\u00fcrich squad list and have to admit that I didn\u2019t recognise a single name. I can\u2019t find any news regarding injuries and suspensions for the Swiss team and, frankly, it would make no difference to me if I could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand there is quite a bit of news concerning our own players. Mo Elneny has reportedly posted on Instagram that he is back in training and \u201cready to fight\u201d. Oleksandr Zinchenko could also make a return – it\u2019s hard to imagine a softer game for him to test his fitness and he is reportedly back in full training. Maybe Mikel Arteta could minimise the risk to those two by giving them 45 minutes each. Someone is going to have to fill the gap left by the absence of our Mr. Everpresent, Granit Xhaka, who will be serving a one match ban following his yellow card against PSV last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There doesn\u2019t seem to be any solid information on Marquinhos, in which case Gabriel Martinelli may have to continue – a pity with Chelsea coming up on Sunday lunchtime. It seems unlikely that the manager would risk Gabriel Jesus but on the other hand – there\u2019s always another hand in football management – a couple of nice easy goals would do his confidence the world of good. Reissue Nelson looks bound to continue after a fine performance on Sunday and will look to carry on slaloming his way past the defenders on our right wing. Matt Turner is given a chance of returning too, following his groin injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus news for Gooners today is that Bakayo Saka suffered only bruising to his foot and ankle, and is already back in training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so my stab at a stronger line-up than would have been ideal right now is –<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turner<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomiyasu — Holding — Gabriel — Tierney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vieira — Lakonga — Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson — Nketiah — Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subs most likely to be used – Elneny, Jesus, Marquinhos (if fit), Cedric (if it\u2019s comfortable)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holic Pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The odds are unsurprisingly heavily stacked in our favour for this game – typically at around 4\/23 or 1\/6 on an Arsenal win, around 43\/5 or 9\/1 against a draw, and 20\/1 against a Z\u00fcrich victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kick off is on Thursday 3rd November at 20.00hrs UK time. Coverage on BT Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The treadmill turns again and exactly 100 hours after the final whistle blew on our 5-0 crushing of Nottingham Forest, we kick off again, this time in the Europa League against FC Z\u00fcrich from Switzerland. We need only to match whatever PSV Eindhoven achieve in the Arctic Circle against Bod\u00f8\/Glimt to ensure finishing top of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"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\/6897"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6907,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6897\/revisions\/6907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}