By Bulldog Drummond
In the lead up to today’s game Mr Arteta suggested Bukayo Saka was being assessed after he was substituted at half time in the victory over the tiny totts, because of an injury. But he hopes he is ok by today.
I would suspect that means he might give this game a miss and instead be ready to torment WHAM on Sunday.
As for Gabriel Martinelli, he went all the way to Greece, sat on the beach, and then came back. The manager has said however, “he has done everything perfect” to earn a place in the team and that, “he trains incredibly well every day,” and that “His attitude cannot be any better. He is disappointed he is not playing more [and] obviously and I have spoken to him, but he needs to be a little bit patient. The competition for the front positions is very tough but he needs to be patient and he will get his chance.”
OK lots of competition – but if we are going to keep him, he needs to get some game time and this looks like a perfect opportunity.
Aubameyang on the other hand will have to “earn his place”.
Continuing the manager’s review of the team he said of Martin Odegaard, he is “getting better and better. I think his understanding of what we want is excellent. His work-rate has been phenomenal and then he’s doing something that, in my opinion, could improve a lot, which is getting in the opponents’ box and maybe being more decisive in the scoreline. If he adds that to his game, he becomes a real complete player.”
As for the stats etc, we normally expect to go through having won the away leg, but we didn’t last time around when Oly beat us 2-1 at the Ems. And that raises the point that we have lost our last two home games against them (2016 and last season). But on the other hand we have never lost three consecutive home matches against a European team – not even Bayern.
And besides Oly don’t normally do well against English teams, in fact (and I really don’t like this stat) the only English club they have beaten away is Arsenal – and they have done that twice.
Now if Auba actually does play and scores he will be the first player since Robin van Persie to score in four consecutive games he plays in, in Europe, outside of the qualifiers.
As for Oly, the main thing to remember is that they have the man asking all the questions. [I refuse to allow any more Sokratis jokes. That is the last one – Tony].
Sports Mole suggest it will end 2-1 to Arsenal with our team being
Leno;
Bellerin, Luiz, Mari, Tierney;
Xhaka, Ceballos;
Pepe, Odegaard, Smith Rowe;
Aubameyang
The Hard Tackle go for 2-0 and have in their team exactly the same line up as Sports Mole.
Goal don’t want to seem to give us a team today so instead we move on to the Standard which tell us the score will be 2-1 and the Arsenal XI will be
Leno;
Bellerin, Luiz, Gabriel, Tierney;
Elneny, Xhaka;
Pepe, Odegaard, Smith Rowe;
Aubameyang.
So just two variants there, with Gabriel and Elneny entering the fray.
The Short Fuse also think 2-0 is a safe bet and their team is
Leno;
Bellerin, Holding, Mari, Tierney;
Ceballos, Xhaka;
Pepe, Smith Rowe, Willian
Aubameyang.
PainintheArsenal also settle for the comfortable 2-0 and for the team suggest
Leno;
Bellerin, Luiz, Mari, Cedric;
Partey, Xhaka, Smith Rowe;
Willian, Aubameyang, Pepe
Putting that all together we get these players by general consensus, although the positioning projections do differ slightly.
Leno;
Bellerin, Luiz, Mari, Tierney;
Ceballos, Xhaka;
Pepe, Smith Rowe, Willian
Aubameyang.
We however don’t like this pussy footing around, so we’re going 4-1.
But either way, a nice fine win here will set us up for knocking the wham out of WHAM and then a bit of a rest. What on earth shall we find to talk about?
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I will be watching the game God willing and expecting a 3-0 win for Arsenal
Line-up
Leno
Bellerin – Holding – Mari – Tierney
Elneny – Ceballos
Pepe – Willian – Martinelli
Aubameyang
Official lineup
Leno
Bellerin, Luiz, Gabriel, Tierney
Xhaka, Elneny
Ceballos, Smith-Rowe, Pepe
Aubameyang
Subs
Ryan, Okwonko, Holding, Cedric, Chambers, Mari, Partey, Ødegaard, Nelson, Nketiah, Lacazette, Martinelli
My earlier comment posting on Aubameyang and Martinelli which I posted after the hard work and thinking that I put in it has been discounted for appearing in the comments posting page.
Why this bas happened to my comment I wouldn’t know. But the UA will know why they do so. However, it’ll be nice if the UA will give freedom to commenters on UA to air their views but not restrict them. This is not democratic despite that Democracy is said not unlimited. As expressed views could be blocked from airing it is considered inappropriate.
But was my last comment posting inappropriate to air? Anyway, I can see that Auba is starting in the Arsenal ELC match at home against Olympiakos tonight. And this will douse the reported purported tension between Arteta and Auba.
No matter how bad we play.
No matter how bad it feels.
No matter how many bad players we buy, good players we sell.
Just be thankful you don’t support Spurs.
Well we did enough to get through to the last 8. Even better – Spurs lost and aren’t!
I have to give the Spuds a huge amount of credit.
This is the most I’ve laughed in the last year 😂 😂 😂
Mikey
Me too
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
“Tepid Tottenham, Horrible Hotspur.”
You love to see it.
Cant stand the man but you have to give Mourinho credit, brilliant interview, very honest.
Fair enough.
Just to say, I know Martinelli came on late, and they were chasing the game, but he did look like he had a bit of his old sharpness back. Lets hope so.
Spurs are the gift that keeps on giving :). ” A brilliant night for Dynamo Zagreb, a disastrous one for Tottenham and a damaging night for English football”…I agree with the first two points…not so much the third
It seems we’ve got a first team but the “B” team is a bit short , we done what we had to do and got a result , a kind draw tomorrow .
@ GGGooner
I noticed that the commentator in our game stated, with 12 minutes to go, even if we got one back Olympiacos would “only need three” as though it would still be likely we might get knocked out even though we’d be 4-2 up!!
I then watched the Spuds when the commentator said, with 8 minutes of ET to go, that if Zagreb got another goal the Spuds still wouldn’t be out of it even though they would be 4-2 down.
Anti-Arsenal propoganda at it’s finest!
There was a piece from Football London stating that Luiz had a terrible game, and that Martin Keown reckoned that Luiz didn’t understand that you couldn’t be offside from a goal-kick. He was referring to the incident in the first-half where The Olympiakos striker beat the Arsenal offside trap, and Leno made the save (I actually thought he was offside). The major problem with this article was the fact that it wasn’t a goal-kick. Their keeper punted the ball upfield from open play. You couldn’t make it up.
Well we made it through to the QF due to our exertions away from home. And that the Spuds conceded 3 goals to get knocked out just seems sweeter.
Up the Gunners !
@Seismic,
I also thought he was offside at first. But on replay it seemed that Bellerin was positioned a few feet behind the centre-backs.
As for our overall performance, I thought that our players looked tired, especially Tierney and ESR. I also thought that Elneny played well but Ceballos seemed to be lacking in confidence.
I was very disappointed that we didn’t win. I had money riding on an Arsenal win. Would have paid for a bottle of wine. All Auba’s fault!! If he hadn’t been late he would have played the match before and been sharper and would have scored his chances.
The match sharpness is so important in football. We don’t realise how important until we have to forgo a tipple.
We played well enough but could do better. There seems to be a lack of hunger and enthusiasm. Looking forward to the weekend game and hopefully a fully energised squad.
COYG (whats a bottle of vino between friends)!!
Blimmey.
It comes to something when even the commentators questioning the lack of bookings for Utd.
Disappointing result but difficult game straight after the NLD. Too many games too close together -a gift for our opponents. Psychology of players is wrong.
Spurs are better than their result and so are we. Anyone whose played the game at a decent level will know this. That excludes Mourinho