{"id":9087,"date":"2024-01-19T17:44:21","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T17:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9087"},"modified":"2024-01-21T14:08:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T14:08:07","slug":"fresh-slate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9087","title":{"rendered":"Fresh Slate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Palace at home, a fixture that some Arsenal teams in the recent past must remember without fondness.  In April of 2016, the season we should have won the title but faltered to allow Leicester City to live their dreams, Palace scored on a late counterattack, and the game ended 1-1 bringing home the sense that Arsenal\u2019s title challenge was all but gone.  This fixture\u2019s history also includes the Emery era debacles of 2019, including the 2-3 loss in April when Mustafi\u2019s defensive lapses had a direct role in all three Palace goals; and the 2-2 draw in October when the substituted Xhaka told the booing crowd what they should do.  It seems fitting then to recall those games as a warning because Arsenal\u2019s season now teeters on the edge of a mid season collapse, the club having lost three games successively in all competitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth-placed Arsenal will kick off the second half of their season on Saturday lunchtime, home to Crystal Palace.  I say that despite the fact that the Gunners have already played 20, or one more than the exact half, of their 38 fixtures. But the way the team appeared to have switched off in their New Year\u2019s Eve defeat at Fulham suggests not only that a complete reset is required, but that the Fulham game must be consigned in the players\u2019 minds to the season\u2019s first half.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsenal have not taken all three points since their December 17th 2-0 home win against Brighton, so a positive result is imperative for the team to maintain any kind of title push.  The successive defeats to West Ham and Fulham concluded a miserable end to 2023 when the Gunners won only one of their last five league matches, scored only five goals in their last seven matches in all competitions, and fell out of first place.  Due to the Premier League\u2019s new winter break, and the club\u2019s warm weather training in Dubai, Arsenal have played only one match in 2024, nearly two weeks ago when they bowed out of the FA Cup to Liverpool despite dominating play and creating numerous chances in the first half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming they manage to avoid relegation, Palace are likely to end the season in the bottom half of the table as they have done in every season but one since they were promoted in 2013.  But Roy Hodgson knows how to frustrate attack minded opponents, and Palace can be expected to deploy a deep block of defenders in an attempt to prevent Arsenal from finding the perfect through ball.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Eagles have won just one of their past 11 matches while suffering six defeats in that stretch, and they currently sit five points clear of the relegation zone in 14th position. In their 0-1 FA Cup defeat at Everton on Wednesday, Palace struggled to create opportunities while Hodgson’s substitution of young forward Eze was met with boos by some away supporters.  Hodgson commented later, saying \u201cI wouldn’t have wanted to see Eze taken off either, but we play on Saturday and we need people like Eze who is one of our very best players.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this season\u2019s reverse fixture, our second game of the season, Arsenal\u2019s 10 men kept a gritty away clean sheet playing with the seldom seen back five of left-back Tomiyasu, the recipient of two cheap second yellows, center-backs Saliba and White, right-back Partey and keeper Ramsdale.  Raya, Gabriel and Zinchenko, all three of them first team regulars since that time, started on the bench.  \u00d8degaard scored the game\u2019s only goal on a penalty kick that was won by Nketiah from a quick free kick that caught the defence napping.  Seeing as the Palace defense will almost certainly be difficult to break down again, Arsenal might need to come up with another instance of free kick magic in this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsenal XI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Left-back Zinchenko missed out against Fulham and Liverpool due to a calf problem but if he has recovered, must go right into the team.  If the Ukrainian can\u2019t make it, Jakub Kiwior stands ready to make his third successive start in his place.  In Arteta\u2019s pre-match presser he was non-committal on the question, saying \u201cWe are touch and go with a few, that’s what I would say.\u201d  But parsing Arteta\u2019s words a bit further, other than a few tactical tweaks the team worked on in Dubai, I would not expect to see any changes from this familiar set-up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White  Saliba  Gabriel  Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d8degaard  Rice  Havertz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka  Jes\u00fas  Martinelli <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018holic pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing as it\u2019s an early kickoff following the winter break, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the game begins slowly and halftime comes around without any goals scored.  But I\u2019ll take a punt on the giant awakening in the second half, and the Gunners putting two second half salvos into the Palace net, with our defense keeping a clean sheet.  It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess really, how well we will respond, but I\u2019m inserting a tinge of optimism into the new year\u2019s uncertainty, and predicting a refreshing Arsenal 2 Palace 0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a good one, \u2018holics, and Happy New Year to all who\u2019re still reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palace at home, a fixture that some Arsenal teams in the recent past must remember without fondness.  In April of 2016, the season we should have won the title but faltered to allow Leicester City to live their dreams, Palace scored on a late counterattack, and the game ended 1-1 bringing home the sense that Arsenal\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"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\/9087"}],"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=9087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9091,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9087\/revisions\/9091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}