By Tony Attwood
- Napoli v Arsenal: the injuries, and how the clubs are doing…
- How are Arsenal finances doing, and how are we seen across Europe?
So the old days of playing a team home and way are now long since gone, and just as last season we are playing eight different teams in this round of the Champions League startin with Napoli away at 8pm tomorrow.
And one thing is for sure – we can’t do better than last year because last year we won all the games – all eight of them – and came top of the league. And that means that all the media are waiting for us to get beaten so they can say we are not as good as last year – which is exactly what they were saying after the end of the transfer window. And come to think of it, half way through the window. And… well you get the idea.
So the first game is tomorrow and the next game is on 13 October at home to Lille and so it goes on with the top eight clubs from the group stage missing out the next round but going straight into the knock out competition next year. Or something like that.
As we hve seen Napoli are 12th in their league, having just played three games. And looking back we can see that they have just lost their last two games – 3-2 away to Inter and and 1-2 at home to Como.
Napoli, meanwhile, are looking to bounce back from their league phase exit last season. The Italian side finished 30th out of 36 teams, taking just eight points from their eight games. Napoli haven’t started the new season well, either, with one win and two defeats from their three league matches.
These two sides have met four times before, including in the 2013/14 Champions League group stage. Arsenal have won three of those games, with Napoli’s sole victory coming in December 2013.
In terms of Arsenal and the players the feeling is that no one picked up a new injury in the last game against Chelsea, which was rather good news since they are known on occasion to be a bunch of hearty roughs, but the word is that this is too soon a game for Cristhian Mosquera and Jurrien Timber, so it will be a similar team to that which we saw at the weekend.
The feeling is that no one will be risked to ensure that Arsenal start the competition with a win. Otherwise the media will go bonkers with claims that we are not as good as last season and should have bought 150 players in the window.
So pretty much the same team, although there is a hint that Saka might be given a rest with Noni Madueke getting a start. But in terms of the key players from the weekend’s great result we should be keeping them in the line up.
Napoli have scored five goals in their last three games, so the defence needs to be 100% alert – not that I expect them to be otherwise.
But the BBC has come out with a warning, to the effect that Arsenal has only won one of the last six away games against Italian teams in the Champions League and have failed to score in the five games they filed to win. That was of course our 3-1 victory over Inert (sorry Inter) earlier this year, so I would say that the spell is now broken.
But the main thing to be wary of is this variation in Napoli’s performance in the league coming 10th, 1st and 2nd in the last three years.
Napoli’s player chart as provided by TransferMarkt shows an impossible 32 arrivals at the club with something like 19 of them being players who have been loaned elsewhere and have now come back. It seems to be quite a strange way to organise a team, but if you know your way around Napoleonic football perhaps you could have a look at that page and let me know what on earth that club is doing.
