Tag Archives: soccer

Jekyll and Hyde Chelsea should not be taken lightly

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And just like that, we wake up and it is another game day.

Facing Chelsea is never an easy task, no matter what form they are in.

As Mikel Arteta said in his pre-game press conference, we need to “keep doing what we’ve been doing, focus on the game, on the task.”

Whilst some of us might already be glancing towards Sunday’s North London Derby, we need to get past this Jekyll and Hyde Chelsea team first.

Chelsea have lost just 2 games from 8 against Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Man U and Tottenham – 2 wins, 4 draws, 2 defeats. They certainly seem to up their game in these bigger matches.

Reports are that Cole Palmer and Malo Gusto are out injured, but my feeling is this is just Mauricio Pochettino being cagey on his team selection. And ultimately they have 3209572057 players to choose from so having a couple out will not make much of a difference.

Arsenal seem to have no new injury issues. It was only Jurrien Timber that Arteta spoke about yesterday, ruling the Dutchman out of Sunday’s game against Tottenham.

Last night, Timber played his first game since August – starting left back for the U21s. If you have been living under a rock, he opened the scoring within 9 minute with an absolute worldie.

Oleksandr Zinchenko has got some criticism this season for his defensive frailties, with many calling for a new left back to be signed this summer. This is wrong.

Arteta recognised last summer that Zinchenko would be better utilised further forward and centrally, and pushed for the signing of Timber.

I am fairly certain that had Timber been fit this season, the Dutchman would have spent much of his time at left back, and we would have seen Zinchenko replace Granit Xhaka in that left hand 8 position, with Declan Rice in behind. Who knows what we might have gone on to achieve?

Considering how long he has been out for, and how little of the season there is left, it is unlikely that Timber will start a first team game this season.

What is more likely is he gets on the bench for Bournemouth and Everton and has a 10-minute run out at the end of both games if we are comfortably winning.

With the focus back on today, we just need to start fast and maintain that intensity. Win and the momentum is back with us.

UTA.

Keenos

No more distractions, time to focus on The Arsenal

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That is the distractions out the way. Now to focus on the Arsenal.

We have 12 games left this season. Maybe 15. We are the in-form team in Europe. Players are returning to injury. We just need to keep focusing on ourselves and see where we end up.

Yes, we have some fixture congestion. But you can not be in the fight for multiple trophies at the business end of the season without it. If you do not want fixture congestion, then you are better off supporting someone like Spurs who are never in the race for trophies.

I will be delighted if we end up playing all 15 potential games we have left this season. That will mean we have got to the Champions League final at Wembley.

Teams these days have big squads, with 20 international players. It is down to the manager how he rests and rotates to keep players fresh.

Liverpool also potentially have 15 games left, and we are at the stage of the Europa League that Klopp will begin to take it more seriously – it is the only trophy Klopp has not won with Liverpool and he would not want his final season to end with just a League Cup.

Manchester City potentially have 17 games still play, with them still in the FA Cup. So fixture congestion really is not an excuse for any team (although I imagine Klopp will use it as an excuse).

Up first is Manchester City. Probably the hardest fixture to have after the international break. The positive from our point of view is that all of our players got through international duty without injury, even Declan Rice who played 180 minutes (was this Southgate’s revenge for Saka pulling out / Ben White situation?).

Meanwhile, they saw Kyle Walker limp off against Brazil and John Stones pull up injured in the opening minutes of Belgium. It is unclear the status of both but their worst case scenarios is their season could be over.

Walker went off with a hamstring injury. If it is just a twinge, it could be a couple of days (although if his muscles are on the brink, it is only a matter until his hamstring goes properly). If he has pulled it, that is 6-8 weeks out. Season pretty much over.

The way John Stones knee collapsed could mean it is a serious injury. The worst are always those that happen when an opponent is nowhere near. I would not be surprised if is a ligament injury and his season is over. It should not harm City as they have about a dozen centre backs that they paid £50m+ for…

I have enjoyed the conspiracy theories that both players hobbled off within 10 minutes as some sort of ploy to get out of international duty. Like England do not have their own physios and doctors who would have been able to assess straight away if they were “faking”.

Back to Arsenal. Arteta has had around a dozen or so senior players to work with this last week (they did get a few days off based on Ben White playing Uno on the beach!).

Of the 11 who have been away, 10 were in teams who played yesterday so today. With most of those playing at home, they probably got a flight back to England straight after their games and will report to training this morning following the same rehabilitation schedule as a Tuesday night Champions League game.

It will be massages, stretches and analysis work ahead of Man City today, so nothing to strenuous. And then Arteta will have 3 full days of proper training to prepare ahead of Sunday.

Of those 10 who were still on international duty yesterday, 7 started for their countries, and 3 did not play any minutes. That takes us to 19 players who either stayed at home during the international break or have not played this week.

As above, international duty will not be an excuse for whatever happens Sunday. Just 6 of Arteta’s first team were in action yesterday so everyone should be well rested!

Sunday is huge. It reminds me of Liverpool last season.

I said in 2022/23 that I will not start to believe that we could win the title unless we win at Anfield. We drew 2-2 and then fell away. It is the same this season.

It is so tight at the top. 90 points is what is needed to win it. That means 8 wins and a draw from the last 10 games.

With trips to Manchester United and Tottenham, and home games against Chelsea and Aston Villa still to come, we do not want to drop points too early in this run in. Beat Man City and I will start to believe we can do it. Lose and I fear we might fall away and finish 3rd.

Back the boys!

Keenos

The Arsenal peaking at the right time

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Morning! Hope you all haven’t missed me too much.

Just over a week ago I returned from 10-days in Egypt and bought something back with my that has seen over a stone in weight loss in that time. Some will say that is not a bad thing for me! The stomach bug hit me for 6 and completely drained my energy.

Today is the first morning I have woken up and not had a bowel movement that resembles the Niagra Falls. Sorry to all those tucking into a Friday morning bacon roll!

Sadly the illness led me to miss the Sheffield United victory (and could not even get out of bed to watch it on TV) and I have also sold my Brentford ticket. Hopefully this is now the recovery and not a false dawn!

This blog was never supposed to be a daily one. I only ever really wrote when I fancied it. But in the last year and a half, it had become something I was doing each and every day. The last 3 couple of days with no blog broke a daily writing streak of more than 500 days!

That Sheffield United victory seems a lifetime ago right now.

I remember writing to some mockery back end of last year that Mikel Arteta was ‘negative splitting’ his season. That we were holding back in the first half of the season deliberately to ensure that we had more energy for the final kick.

This is something you see distance runners and swimmers do. They will try and complete the second half of the race quicker than the first half, taking advantage of others who might have put too much energy into the first half of the race.

It is something Manchester City under Pep Guardiola have always done so well. Done just enough to get through games in the first half of the season before being unbeatable in the second.

Last season was the perfect example of how a team that has a better 2nd half of the season will usually finish ahead of a team who start fast and has a good first half.

Now some will argue that “we have left too much to do” and started out drive to the finish line too late. I really do not think being 2 points off top after 27 games is leaving ourselves with too much to do.

Yes, these fans will point to Fulham (both games), West Ham and other fixtures, but football is not perfect. If you say “Arsenal should have won those games” then you also have to concede that Liverpool and Manchester City “should” have won games they did not. The issue with fans at times is that they expect their own team to be perfect all the time, but do not hold the same bar of expectation to others.

On to Brentford tomorrow. A late kick off and a game I was really looking forward too. Instead I will be watching it from the comfort of my sofa, hopefully having kept down the last 48 hours food!

Have a good Friday.

Keenos