{"id":9258,"date":"2024-03-04T07:12:10","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T07:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9258"},"modified":"2024-03-05T11:08:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T11:08:21","slug":"no-foreseeable-off-day-or-night-for-the-arsenal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=9258","title":{"rendered":"No foreseeable off day, or night, for the Arsenal"},"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\/2025238738\" 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\/2025238738?et=j7KQWgUbT8ZsiWl6jq0ehw&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=RIUvMlO5D7WieXNOsU0BEJeoGD3n2-FBz9KDPrOJ5Es=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday evening Arsenal pay a visit to Bramall Lane, an old-time football ground in South Yorkshire, to take on Sheffield United, the league\u2019s rock-bottom side. The Gunners haven\u2019t played a league game at Bramall Lane for three years, since April 2021, when a very different Gunners side emerged victorious by 3-0 with two goals by Lacazette and one by Martinelli. Aaron Ramsdale was the goalkeeper for the Blades that day, and the only two Gunners\u2019 starters that day who can be expected to start on Monday are Martinelli and Saka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Blades have played their home games at Bramall Lane ever since the club was formed in 1889. They contested the first two seasons of the Premier League before getting relegated in 1994. After more than two decades in the wilderness, including six seasons in League One and only one in the Premier League, they came back up in 2019 under Chris Wilder and stayed two seasons before getting relegated. This season they came up once again under Paul Heckingbottom but the Blades sacked him three months ago, and Wilder took back the reins but they now look set to continue their roller coaster ride with relegation a near certainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Facing a top three side is a daunting prospect when your team has floundered as the Blades have this season. They come into the game with the league\u2019s worst goal difference at -44 having conceded 66 times in their 26 games, or 2.53 goals per match.&nbsp;&nbsp;And not only have they conceded the most of any Premier League side, their attacking has been so inept that they have scored the fewest (22).&nbsp;&nbsp;Last Sunday the Blades failed to score at Wolves and saw their average goals scored per game fall to 0.85. But it\u2019s bad karma to harp endlessly about the Blades\u2019 weaknesses, so I\u2019ll stop and just say that Arsenal had best stay focused so as to avoid the proverbial banana skin that their rivals Liverpool and Manchester City managed to avoid this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mikel Arteta\u2019s team news, announced on Thursday, will be four days old at kickoff but he indicated that Partey (who also started at Bramall Lane in April 2021) should be in the squad for the first time since October; Tomiyasu and Zinchenko could be back in contention but their condition will be assessed after Sunday\u2019s final training session. Gabriel Jesus should be available after missing Arsenal\u2019s last four matches but Arteta sounded a note of caution about the striker: \u201cWe need him fit \u2013 he\u2019s a massive player for us and now we want to make sure we load him in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having dispatched Newcastle 4-1 last week, high-flying Arsenal have scored 25 goals from six matches, or more than 4 goals per game.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rounding out those 25 goals the Gunners tallied five at Burnley, six at West Ham, three at home to Liverpool, two at Forest, and five at home to Crystal Palace.&nbsp;&nbsp;Arsenal&#8217;s 27 set piece goals, of their 62 goals scored in all, is their most in a single league season since those statistics&nbsp;began to be kept, in 2004-05. The Gunners\u2019 excellent last two months, as they began the calendar year with six league wins for the first time in their history, propelled them into the league\u2019s joint best goal difference of +39, the same as Liverpool and four better than Manchester City but the other two clubs have played once more so the Gunners could use a big win in Sheffield to keep the other clubs behind them in at least that category.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saka has been the spearhead of the Arsenal attack in that stretch, and scored in five consecutive league appearances. He is the first English player to do so for Arsenal since Ian Wright in 1994, and the last Arsenal player of any nationality to do so since Olivier Giroud nine years ago. Here\u2019s hoping that Bukayo can keep on adding to his total while his boot is looking so golden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arsenal XI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Gunners haven\u2019t played for over a week, and they now face the prospect of very few fixtures in the next month due to the rescheduling of the Chelsea fixture so I see no need for the gaffer to change up the side that\u2019s been so successful in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Raya<br>White &#8211; Saliba &#8211; Gabriel &#8211; Kiwior<br>\u00d8degaard &#8211; Rice &#8211; Havertz<br>Saka &#8211; Trossard &#8211; Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The \u2018holic pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Short and sweet: a repeat of April 2021 should do quite nicely, thank you, so my prediction is: Arsenal 3 Sheffield United 0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a good one, \u2018holics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Monday evening Arsenal pay a visit to Bramall Lane, an old-time football ground in South Yorkshire, to take on Sheffield United, the league\u2019s rock-bottom side. The Gunners haven\u2019t played a league game at Bramall Lane for three years, since April 2021, when a very different Gunners side emerged victorious by 3-0 [&hellip;]<\/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\/9258"}],"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=9258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9267,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258\/revisions\/9267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}