For those saying “it is good, we can now concentrate on the league”, my guess is football is a TV show for you.
Winning trophies and days out. That is what football is about. And the League Cup can often throw up so cheeky different away days, and concludes with a trip to Wembley.
Due to the World Cup, we do have to fit games into to a shorter period of time, but “freeing up time” by being knocked out of the League Cup means nothing if you finish the season trophyless.
I also think it would have been a huge advantage getting through to the next round.
The last 16 of the League Cup is due to be played around the 19th of December – a week before Premier League football returns after the World Cup.
Even if you are in the “glad we are out camp”, you have to admit it would have been nice to have a competitive game to blow the cobwebs off prior to the game against West Ham.
I am not upset about the team Mikel Arteta put out. It was pretty much the team I expected.
And we looked decent, taking the lead with a fantastically worked goal. Then Karl Hein slipped coming out for the ball and it was penalty, 1-1.
We shouldn’t pile onto the young keeper. He is a talent and what happened is a once in a career incident.
At 1-1 we had the chance to win, but could not finish. Then we went 2-1 down and the heads seemed to drop.
For those saying “our squad is too weak, we need to improve it”…this is not exactly breaking news or an insightful take.
We all know that we need better cover for Thomas Partey, a new winger to provide competition to Gabriel and Bukayo Saka, and perhaps a new striker.
We may or may not make signings in January.
It will be a bit like last year where we won’t sign a player for the sake of it. A new signing will only be someone who is one of our top targets.
There is not point going for a 6th or 7th choice winger, who we do not really want, and then you don’t have the money in the summer to sign your 1st or 2nd choice.
Mykhailo Mudryk is a name we have been linked with a lot. If he is not available until the summer, I would rather wait than spend £15-20m on someone else who we do not want for the long term.
Some might say “that could cost us the title”, but realistically I do not think we will win the title this year. And would making a Lucas Perez-style signing really make a difference in the title chase.
Tomorrow, we need to bounce back strongly. Beat Wolves and go into the World Cup top of the league.
Wednesday, 9th November 2022. Kick-off time: 7.45pm
(4-3-2-1) Karl Hein; Cédric Soares, Rob Holding (c), William Saliba, Kieran Tierney; Albert Sambi Lokonga, Mohamed Elneny; Reiss Nelson, Fabio Vieira, (Marcus Vinicius Oliveira Alencar) Marquinhos; Eddie Nketiah.
Substitutes: Matt Turner, Ben White, Gabriel Magalhães, Granit Xhaka, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Thomas Partey, Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Ødegaard, Gabriel Jesus.
Scorers: Eddie Nketiah (19 mins)
Yellow Cards: Mohamed Elneny, Karl Hein
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 57%
Referee: Jarred Gillett
Assistant Referees: Neil Davies, Steven Meredith
Fourth Official: Andrew Madley
VAR is not in operation in this season’s Carabao Cup competition
Attendance: circa 50,000
Our team tonight is a very different Arsenal side though, chock full of confidence after our superb start to the season. We come into this match off the back of a much-deserved win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, one that has kept us top of the Premiership. For this, the third round of the Carabao Cup match against Brighton and Hove Albion, ten changes have been made from Sunday’s team, as William Saliba keeps his place, and young Karl Hein makes his Arsenal debut in goal.
Almost immediately after the kick-off, the visitors came for us quite aggressively, and there was a free header for Julio Enciso after just a minute into the game, but fortunately he could not make the most of it, but the ball fell to our former striker Danny Welbeck, who had a shot deflected over the bar, which was a real let-off so early on in the match. A couple of minutes later, the first booking of the game occurred when Moisés Caicedo was shown the yellow card for a bad foul, and the opening stages of this match were looking to be quite scrappy. Following a period of pressure on our goal, after a quarter of an hour’s play, Fabio Vieira was desperately unlucky not to score after some sterling work by Reiss Nelson; just four minutes later, we took the lead when Reiss Nelson again ran most of the length of the pitch with the ball, neatly found Eddie Nketiah on his left side, and after controlling it, somehow curled the ball into the far corner to open the scoring tonight. Everything started to look good, until Mohamed Elneny received our first yellow card of the night for a foul, just before Solly March placed a through ball onto the path of Danny Welbeck, who was unfortunately brought down in the penalty area by our young goalkeeper Karl Hein, who appeared to slip on the greasy pitch before committing himself into the feet of the Brighton striker. Sadly, he was booked, and Danny Welbeck converted the penalty to equalise the scores. Just before the half hour mark, Eddie Nketiah had a great chance to score, when his right-footed shot from the right side of the penalty area narrowly went past the left side of the post. Both sides were creating good chances, but nothing was coming of anyone’s efforts, as the match is moving quickly from end to end. After a well-taken Kieran Tierney free-kick, Marquinhos had a good chance to grab our second of the night, but unfortunately he was intercepted by Tariq Lamptey in the visitors’ penalty area. As the minutes ticked away for the end of the first half, we started to place pressure on the visitors’ goal, and had it not been for the interceptions of Joel Veltman and Levi Colwell, we could have gone into the break with another goal under our belts, but sadly it was honours even at half time.
The second half started in the same spirit as the first one ended, and the first ten minutes of this half saw us being very unlucky in not scoring, with Reiss Nelson, Albert Sambi Lokonga and Marquinhos wasting chances, that by rights, they should have put away with ease. Despite all of our pressure, the visitors broke away, and on the fifty-eighth minute they took the lead when Jeremy Sarmiento slotted the ball to Kaoru Mitoma, whose right-footed shot from the centre of the penalty area flew past Karl Hein and ended up in the bottom right-hand corner of the net. We were visibly shaken by this goal, and five minutes later, Mikel Arteta made a double substitution when William Saliba and Marquinhos were replaced by Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel in order to try and get something out of this match. The game appeared to level out a bit, but on the seventy-first minute, our nightmare continued when Billy Gilmour passed a simple ball to Tariq Lamptey, whose left-footed shot from the left side of our penalty area ended up in the back of the net for their third goal of the night, which means that we have an absolute mountain to climb to claw anything back now. A couple of minutes later, we made another double subsitution when Fabio Vieira and Kieran Tierney were replaced by Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko to try and make some impact on this game. A superb Cédric Soares pass found Gabriel Jesus on the edge of the Brighton penalty area, but unfortunately his shot was blocked by the opposition’s defenders, and then we appeared to spend the next few minutes trying to keep the visitors from scoring a fourth goal, and with that in mind, Granit Xhaka replaced Albert Sambi Lokonga with just ten minutes of the game remaining. We got close to scoring a second when Gabriel Jesus stroked the ball to Gabriel Martinelli, whose clever shot from the left side of the penalty area was saved quite easily by the Brighton goalkeeper. We continued to create chances to score with Gabriel and Reiss Nelson getting very close to scoring after receiving quality passes, but somehow the ball just would not go into the net, which in many ways, was the story of our evening. After six minutes of injury time, referee Jarred Gillett put us out of our misery by blowing the final whistle.
It really was a bad night for everyone. Not only did we score first, but we lacked the final push to get more goals in order to finish the match off. Instead, we allowed them to come back at us, and score three very opportunist goals, all of which could have been stopped. Okay, we didn’t put out the best team that we possibly could tonight, as there were ten replacements from the Chelsea match, but we could have done a whole lot better, particularly in the second half. Certainly a match to forget.
Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on Saturday, 12th November at 7.45pm (Premier League). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.
Steve
Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon
Throughout the Europa League, Mikel Arteta has adopted a 50/50 approach.
Half the XI have been from his strongest team, half from the 2nd string.
Arteta then rotated who he selected from his strongest team every game week, and within games spread the workload with key players usually playing no more than 60 minutes before being swapped out for fellow first teamers.
Against Brighton tonight we expect him to go for a 100% 2nd string.
We have the break for the World Cup coming up, Arteta will want to finish the league campaign strong against Wolves on Saturday night. That will mean giving everyone a rest tonight.
The League Cup is low priority for us this season and as a reuslt, Arteta will happily sacrifice it for 3 points on Saturday.
Matt Turner returned to the bench for the Chelsea game having missed the last couple of games due to injury. He will regain his place in goal from Aaron Ramsdale who covered for him in the final 2 Europa League games.
Takehiro Tomiyasu limped off last week against Zurich. Post-match Arteta said “We don’t know” what the issue is. He was then not on the bench against Chelsea. I would not be surprised if we do not see him again before the World Cup back. So expect Cedric Soares to start.
Rob Holding will continue his run in the “mid-week” team. I was suprised he was not captain last week against Zurich (Gabriel Jesus took the armband).
Whilst Holding’s selection is clear and obvious, his partner is not so much.
Ben White is now clearly first choice right back, with William Saliba and Gabriel first choice in defence.
If Tomiyasu is fit, we might see him join Holding at centre back. Alternatively Arteta might go with Reuell Walters, who saw some game time during pre-season.
Gabriel is perhaps an obvious choice considering he will not be going to the World Cup, but I think Arteta will want to give everyone a mid week rest. Walters could be the man to make his first start.
Kieran Tierney will return to left back (although Arteta might take it as an opportunity to look at Lino Sousa. A longer blog on the youngster repalcing Tierney next summer will be released during the break).
Mohamed Elneny‘s early return to fitness will see him replace Thomas Partey as the deepest midfielder. Ahead of him well be Fabio Vieira and Albert Sambi Lokonga.
Reiss Nelson will be given another chance to impress on one flank, with Marquinhos on the other side. Eddie Nketiah will look to end his goal drought.
Brighton have ended their 5 game run without a win with 2 victories on the bounce. In 6th place, I would expect them to look at the League Cup as a good chance to make a final; so expect them to field a strong team.
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 