Day 2 of no football.
We have 19 days between Porto and Manchester City.
An FA Cup weekend is followed up by an international break. The result is we do not play again until the Easter weekend. It is a long, frustrating break and halts our momentum.
It takes my mind back to the “winter break” in January.
We went into it with just a single win in 7 games. It was a run that saw us exit the FA Cup and drop to 4th in the league, 5 points behind Liverpool and just one point ahead of Spurs in 5th.
Fans were losing their head, pointing fingers at Mikel Arteta, saying he was tactically inept and had been found out. There was also a lot of talk about us needing to spend big on a striker in January to save our season.
During the winter break, I blogged that Arsenal were not getting the results our performances deserved and we should not be too concerned.
Yes, 1 win in 7 was not good enough, but one of those games was a Champions League dead rubber and another a good point at Anfield. The win was at home to Brighton.
We had a tough game away to Aston Villa, where we had an equaliser incorrectly ruled out, and the Liverpool FA Cup game could have gone either way. Fulham was an atrocious performance with no positives from it.
Then we had West Ham.
Someone not watching the game will see 2-nil to West Ham away and think we have played poorly. That was simply not true.
We dominated the West Ham game. They scored an opener that should never have counted and we had enough chance to score 5 or 6. This game was what made me realise we were not getting the results our performances deserved.
When we returned from the winter break, we stuck 5 past Crystal Palace. I do not actually think we played any better than we did against West Ham. We just scored out chances.
That win was followed up by a 2-1 victory away to Nottingham Forest and a 3-1 win at home to Liverpool.
We got our revenge for the home defeat to West Ham by hitting 6 in the Olympic Stadium, and this was followed up by 5 at Turf Moor. Two games that another season we might have capitulated in.
The last minute Porto defeat was a gut wrencher, but we quickly bounced back with a 4-1 win at home to Newcastle and then scored 6 again away to Sheffield United.
A last minute Kai Havertz goal kept our winning run going. And then on Tuesday we get through Porto on penalties to make the last 8 of the Champions League.
8 Premier League games since the winter break
8 wins
33 goals scored
4 clean sheets
4 goals conceded
We have gone from 4th to top, gaining 5 more points than Liverpool and nullifying the game in hand Manchester City had. We have won 10 points more than Spurs during the run and they are now distant in our wing mirrors.
During the blog in January, I spoke about how good coaches look at performances rather than results, and will not make drastic changes just because of a few poor results.
We had been excellent in the 18 months up to that dip in form. You do not change the tactics that have worked for 50-60 games just because you struggled for 6 or 7. And in those 6 or 7 games we only really played poorly once.
Arteta stuck with the team. He made a few minor tweaks, which were enforced, and we have not looked back.
Gabriel Jesus’s latest injury and Eddie Nketiah’s poor form led to Kai Havertz going up top. Declan Rice was then pushed higher into the left hand space with Jorginho coming in behind. It is a tactic that we were always going to play throughout the season but had been denied due to Thomas Partey’s injury.
Rice as excelled in the more advanced position and I think there is no debate that he is the best central midfielder in the world. All those West Ham fans that claimed they had turned Arsenal over for £105m are now saying “we should have got £150m for him”. He has become World Class.
It will now be interesting to see how Arteta manages the squad through this next break.
The head-scratcher is that the international break comes first, so that throws the next 8 or 9 days into the air.
If it was the other way round, the players would be sent off on their international duty and then we would have 8 or 9 days to prepare for Manchester City. Arteta may have made the decision to return to Dubai for half of that for some warm weather training.
But there is no point going to Dubai in the first week and beginning to prepare for City over the next 8 days as all the work we do will be undone when players go represent their country.
I imagine yesterday the players would have gone to London Colney for a debriefing and massage session. I would then be very surprised if Arteta does then not give the players 4 or 5 days off. A bit of personal time for them to enjoy with families before they head out on international duty.
Most players will look to join up with their countries next Tuesday, so we might as well give them today through to Monday off, and then let them make their own way to whatever nation they are representing. Some might decide to head abroad early if their country are playing at home. 4 or 5 days with the family they leave behind when playing in England.
Those that do not go on international duty will probably return to the club next Tuesday, and it will then be weeks training before the full squad is back together, and 12 days before Manchester City. It will be tough for Arteta to keep a (smaller) group of players motivated. Maybe he might take those not on international to Dubai for a few days to get away?
Top of the league with 10 games to go. Very few would have predicted it during the last international break. But for me the performances were always there. It was just the results.
We are in the title race…
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 