{"id":7767,"date":"2023-04-19T18:52:30","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T17:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7767"},"modified":"2023-04-23T06:38:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T05:38:05","slug":"resilience-and-exuberance-to-the-fore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7767","title":{"rendered":"Resilience and Exuberance to the Fore"},"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=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1435896303\" 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:66.66667% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1435896303?et=5apoaJ4bR9VUwWgOz4J1yA&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=ng13QW1p3HPRJa-eLMeLZxLgl9GqOxaHtOIgh1IbogE=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Emotional resilience under stress. Arsenal could use a bit of it at the moment, or maybe I am projecting my nerves onto the team.&nbsp;&nbsp;In either case, it is fair enough for people to point out that successive surrenders of two goal leads is not optimal performance for a title-contending side, no matter whether nerves were the root cause of surrendering those leads. But Arsenal, having played so well all season, remain top of the league so everything is still in play. The question at hand is: Is Arsenal\u2019s young team resilient enough to withstand the stress they find themselves under as results have suddenly stopped going their way? Certainly, the team must demonstrate their resilience Friday evening at home against Southampton to maintain their title aspirations against the league\u2019s bottom side. But Southampton, lest we forget, took two points off Arsenal in this season\u2019s reverse fixture, and they are in a fight for their Premier League lives, so don\u2019t expect the Gunners to have an easy time of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At season\u2019s start the media declared Arsenal to have the league\u2019s youngest team, but a few months on they now have only the second youngest first team (and manager) in the Premier League.&nbsp;&nbsp;In both cases they have been outflanked by Southampton who have a slightly younger team and manager in 39 year old Rub\u00e9n Sell\u00e9s (Mikel Arteta turned 41 in March).&nbsp;&nbsp;In spite of the two sides featuring so many young players, their relative quality varies widely, with Saka, Martinelli, Saliba &amp; Co. competing for the league title and the Saints in distinct danger of relegation unless they pull off a miracle in the season\u2019s last weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sell\u00e9s is Saints\u2019 third manager of the season, and their ownership seems to have sensed all along that the club was in grave relegation danger.&nbsp;&nbsp;In February Sell\u00e9s replaced Nathan Jones, who succeeded Ralph Hasenhuttl after the latter was sacked in November.&nbsp;&nbsp;Sell\u00e9s had been one of Jones\u2019s assistants, but became caretaker boss when Jones was sacked, and was appointed on a (more) permanent basis after his first game in charge, a 1-0 victory at Chelsea.&nbsp;&nbsp;Saints lost seven of eight league matches under Jones, as opposed to only six defeats in nine league matches under Hasenhuttl, but both managers departed with the club mired in the relegation spaces.&nbsp;&nbsp;Despite managing a draw with Arsenal at home in October, nearly all else has been a bit rocky for the South Coasters, who always managed to avoid relegation under Hassenhuttl with 16th, 11th, and two 15th-placed finishes in his four seasons at the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Athletic recently projected Southampton to finish rock bottom in two different computer simulations that gave them only a 12% to a 21% chance of avoiding relegation.&nbsp;&nbsp;Saints have been bottom for a number of weeks now but seem to be capable of mustering a semblance of life, as they showed on March 18 in coming back from a two-goal deficit to draw 3-3 against a ragtag outfit from the outer reaches of North London, causing such a ruckus that the ragtag outfit soon became a managerless ragtag outfit.&nbsp;&nbsp;After that game Saints\u2019 ex-Gunner Theo Walcott commented: \u201cwe stuck with our identity and what we wanted to do in the game and we got our reward in the end (so) hats off to the lads because to come back against a so-called top four team shows we\u2019ve got a lot in that dressing room.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But getting to the root cause of Saints\u2019 inability to move up the table, in the same article The Athletic reported that no Premier League side scored fewer than Southampton\u2019s 12 goals since Hassenhuttl\u2019s departure, and Saints failed to add to that total in last weeks 2-0 loss to Crystal Palace. But Southampton have garnered&nbsp;13 of their 23 points away from home, including such recent results as the 1-0 win over Chelsea in February, and a goalless draw at Manchester United on March 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arsenal XI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With no clear return date for Saliba at this stage, Rob Holding should continue&nbsp;in the heart of the Arsenal defence despite 21st Century Gooner\u2019s interesting suggestion that the more mobile Jakub Kiwior should be tried in that position. Oleksandr Zinchenko is expected to return from a muscular problem replacing Kieran Tierney&nbsp;in the nominal left-back slot. Despite their disappointing performance at the London Stadium, I don\u2019t expect any other changes to the team that faced West Ham on Sunday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Ramsdale<br>White &#8212; Holding &#8212; Gabriel &#8212; Zinchenko<br>Xhaka &#8212; Thomas &#8212; \u00d8degaard<br>Martinelli &#8212; Jesus &#8212; Saka<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s no real need to tell you again, but three points or bust is the order of the day. A sustained good and exuberant performance over 90 minutes is close behind, since we really need to get the team back into title-chasing form less than five days before our season-defining clash with the expensively assembled oilers at the Emptihad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for now, focus only on Southampton, and enjoy the game, \u2018holics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Emotional resilience under stress. Arsenal could use a bit of it at the moment, or maybe I am projecting my nerves onto the team.&nbsp;&nbsp;In either case, it is fair enough for people to point out that successive surrenders of two goal leads is not optimal performance for a title-contending side, no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"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\/7767"}],"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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7767"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7783,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767\/revisions\/7783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}