Tag Archives: She Wore

Wilfried Zaha – Can Arsenal risk buying another African forward?

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This summer Wilfried Zaha will likely be available, having been close to leaving Crystal Palace for both Everton and Arsenal last summer.

Arsenal should not longer be in the running for him.

For a start, we have recruited Nicolas Pepe. We also have Bukayo Saka on the left wing. We do not really need to go big for a winger when we have so many issues throughout the middle of the park – a defender, central midfielder and creative central midfielder as much more important.

But Arsenal’s recruitment team also need to ensure that we do not end up with too many African’s in the squad.

Now before you all start labelling me “racist” or whatever, there is plenty of logic behind keeping the amount of African players to a minimum.

The next African Cup of Nations is in 2022.

It was originally scheduled for January – February 2021, but due to the Covid19 outbreak has been delayed for 12 months.

Any player that is selected for their nation can expect to be unavailable for their club for around 6 weeks – 4 weeks for the tournament itself and 2 weeks for preparation.

Clubs will also be acutely aware of players returning from the continental tournament out of shape, over weight, and not ready to be thrown straight back into European football.

If you end up with a squad with too many African players in it, you could find yourself without some key players for nearly 2 months.

Taking a look at Arsenal, we currently have 2 key players who are African:

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon)
Nicolas Pepe (Ivory Coast)

If Aubameyang is still with us in 2022, and we signed Zaha, there would be a high chance that we would be losing our entire front 3 for 2 months come the tournament.

This would kill any chance Arsenal have of being competitive in 2022.

The club will also be keeping an eye of Bukayo Saka.

The Ealing born England youth international is of Nigerian heritage.

Whilst the youngsters preference is to play for England, and the Super Eagles recently announced that they would not “chase Saka”, a lot can happen in the next 18 months.

If Saka continues his current form, and is ignored by England (highly unlikely), he may well decide to make the switch from England to Nigeria in the same way Zaha switched from England to Ivory Coast.

That would potentially leave Arsenal without Aubameyang, Pepe, Zaha and Saka.

It would be a terrible position for the club to be in and questions would have to be asked as to why the recruitment team have amassed 4 players in similar attacking positions that could leave for 2 months.

Thomas Partey is Ghanaian and would also likely play in the tournament.

Were we to sign him as well, that would potentially be 20% of our squad unavailable in January 2022. By the time you add in the usual injuries from a tough winter period, Arsenal’s squad would be depelted.

The difference between Partey and Zaha, however, is position.

As a winger / forward, Arsenal will already be losing 2, maybe 3, players for the tournament. In the middle of the park we do not have other players likely to play in Cameroon.

If we signed Partey and lost him, we would have the squad depth to cover as we would have 3 or 4 other central midfielders.

As for Zaha, there would not be the cover. Even if Saka remains with the England set-up instead of changing his allegiance.

You need to build a balanced squad, and part of that balanced squad is ensuring that you do not lose too many players over the January period to the African Cup of Nations.

Likewise, teams keep an eye on South American players – as the Copa America tends to be played in odd numbered years; either the year before and World Cup or year after. This results in South American players playing for 3 straight seasons without a summer break (arguably what led to Alexis Sanchez’s loss of explosiveness).

The time to sign Zaha would have been last summer, but we ended up plumping for Nicolas Pepe.

Arsenal’s recruitment team will be focusing on non-African attacking options this summer to offset the potential departures of Aubameyang, Pepe and Saka in 2022.

Everton face a similar dilemma having signed Nigerian Alex Iwobi from Arsenal last summer. Would they really want to lose their left and right wingers for 2 months in 2022?

Keenos

2 more sleeps before Arsenal appear in another FA Cup final

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Morning all.

I am all over the place this morning. Part-time furlough will do that to you. Do not know whether I am coming our going!

Hopefully by now you all have your FA Cup final plans sorted.

I will be doing the same as I did for the semi-final. The lads I regularly go with coming mine. BBQ. Beer. Football.

Chelsea are very slight favourites for the final. How close the odds are might surprise some considering they finished 10 points ahead in the league. But it is the form of Arsenal since Mikel Arteta which narrows the gap.

Since Arteta’s first game against Bournemouth on 26th December for the , Chelsea won 34 points in 20 games. Arteta’s Arsenal 33 points.

I have continually bashed on that Arsenal are a top 6 team that were coached poorly for the first half of the season – firstly under Unai Emery and then Freddie Ljungberg.

No blame can be put at Ljungberg’s feet. The problem was the board took 5 games between sacking Emery and bringing in Arteta.

In that 5 games we got 5 points. How different would our season have been if we had have got Arteta in the day after Emery left. Like Spurs did replacing Pochettino with Mourinho. I am certain we would have finished in a European spot. Maybe even challenged 5th.

So we face Chelsea in the final we double figure points between us in the league, but the gap is narrower in reality.

Arteta has faced Chelsea twice since he took over.

The first game was 3 days after Arteta took the helm. Chelsea won 2-1. But the result did not reflect the performance.

Arsenal were winning 1-0 with 7 minutes to go, before Jorginho and Tammy Abraham scored to steal the victory away.

3 minutes before Jorginho’s goal, he pulled back Matteo Guendouzi.

The Brazilian had already been booked and it was a blatant yellow card, which would have been his 2nd equalling a red.

Referee Craig Pawson had already shown 7 yellow cards, a couple of which were for pulling back an opponent. He bottled sending off Jorginho. What sums it up is Alexandre Lacazette was booked for protesting too much!

In the away game at Stamford Bridge, David Luiz was sent off after just 26 minutes. Chelsea scored from the resulting penalty before Gabriel Martinelli equalised.

Chelsea went 2-1 up with 6 minutes to go before Hector Bellerin scored 3 minutes later.

In years go by, down to 10 men after 26 minutes, Arsenal would have conceded 5 or 6. To come away from the Bridge with a point was seen as a bit of a victory.

So over 2 games against Chelsea, Arsenal have been the better side.

I am quietly confident about Saturday.

Keenos

Match Report: Arsenal 3 – 2 Watford

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Arsenal (3) 3 Watford (1) 2
Premier League
Emirates Stadium, Drayton Park, London N5 1BU
Sunday, 26th July 2020. Kick-off time: 4.00pm

(4-2-3-1) (4-2-3-1) Emiliano Martínez; Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Rob Holding, David Luiz, Kieran Tierney; Dani Ceballos, Granit Xhaka; Nicolas Pépé, Joe Willock, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang; Alexandre Lacazette.
Substitutes: Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Lucas Torreira, Cédric Soares, Reiss Nelson, Eddie Nketiah, Sead Kolašinac, Matt Macey, Matt Smith, Bukayo Saka
Scorers: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (5 mins, 33 mins), Kieran Tierney (24 mins)
Yellow Cards: Granit Xhaka, Rob Holding, Emiliano Martínez
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 51%
Referee: Mike Dean
Attendance: A maximum of 300 attendees due to UK government coronavirus restructions

Well, this is it. At last. The final Premiership match of the 2019-20 season, at home against Watford. I think that we are all pleased to see the back of this campaign, troubled and unpredictable as ever, painful and pleasing as it should be. All we can do today is to make sure that we win, to at least try to get the highest final postion in the Premiership table; our opponents today are coming here to attempt to do the same thing, in order to ensure remaining in the league next year, of course. All in all, it should make for an interesting match, if nothing else.
Within a minute or so of the start, controversy reigned supreme! Alexandre Lacazette was bundled to the ground by Craig Dawson as Dani Ceballos blasted the ball over the bar; the resultant VAR decision was a penalty in our favour (for a change), and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang confidently opened the scoring for us. This certainly put some life into the match, and so early on as well, with both teams creating good chances for themselves. A messy business in our defence led to Emiliano Martínez clearing the ball with his feet, after a good goalscoring chance by Roberto Pereyra, which led to a long period of open end-to-end football, which was both exciting and nerve racking too. However, just before the drinks break, Kieran Tierney scored a beautiful second goal with a sweet left footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom right corner., after a clever ball across the Watford penalty area by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. And so the open football continued, only the majority of the game started to be conducted in the visitors’ half. With twelve minutes of the half remaining, Kieran Tierney sent a quick ball into the Watford penalty area, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang trapped the ball, and as it bounced up above him, bicycle-kicked it into the net for our third goal (and his second) of the day. Spectacular stuff! And still Watford kept coming, despite being three goals down, testing our defenders with long balls into the penalty area. Four minutes before the break, David Luiz had no choice in this instance but to bring down former Gunners favourite Danny Welbeck after a bad Rob Holding error, which led to a peanlty for the visitors, in which Troy Deeney made no mistake from the spot. During the four minutes’ injury time, the visitors applied pressure on our goal, but we held firm to go into the break in the lead.

And so, the last second half of our Premiership canpaign started pretty much as the first half finished, with Watford applying pressure on our defenders. Within ten minutes of the restart, Joe Willock and Alexandre Lacazette were replaced by Eddie Nketiah and Sead Kolašinac, which opened up the game in our favour somewhat. Ainsley Maitland-Niles was unlucky not to get the fourth of the day after the hour, and a couple of minutes later, Emiliano Martínez prevented a certain Watford goal when he pushed the ball away from Danny Welbeck after a snap attack on our goal; however, the former Arsenal man grabbed the second Hornets’ goal at close range after a cross by Ismaila Sarr after a messy exchange in our six-yard box. After the drinks break, Nicolas Pépé and Dani Ceballos were replaced by Reiss Nelson and Lucas Torreira in order to try and stem the tide of Watford attacks on our goal. Emiliano Martínez pulled off a match-saving block after a clever back-heeled flick from Danny Welbeck. After winning the ball sensationally in midfield, Eddie Nketiah ran thirty yards and unselfishly passed the ball to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in front of the Watford goal with fifteen minutes of the match remaining. Sensing the tired legs of the visitors, we composed ourselves well with strong play, and as the board went up for six minutes’ injury time, both sides felt the wind in their sails for the final minutes of the season, but despite some real heroic moments the scoreline remained.

Really, in essence, this was a typical pre-FA Cup Final perofrmance by the team today. The visitors were quite sparky, but in the end we got the three points, which is what counts overall, making our final position eighth in the Premier League, just ten points away from the top four placings. Enough has been said and done about this season, let’s concentrate on the FA Cup Final next Saturday afternoon now. 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: Chelsea at Wembley Stadium, Wembley, London HA9 0WS on Saturday, 1st August at 5.30pm (FA Cup Final). 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.