By Walter Broeckx
With Tony away to foreign parts and our Bulldog seemingly not barking today it is up to me to write anything that can be regarded as a match preview.
A quick look at the league tables shows that Bourmenouth is sitting in 10th position in the league after having gathered 15 points so far. I think most Bournemouth supporters would have signed for that before a ball was kicked this season to be in this rather comfortable mid-table position. They have 3 points more than last seasons champions Leicester. Who on the other hand are doing rather nice in their CL group.
Back to Bournemouth. Of their 12 matches they have won 4, drawn 3 and lost the other 5. That usually brings you 12 points. They scored 14 goals and let in 16. In the last 6 matches they have won 2, had 2 draws and lost 2. In that sequence they had a draw with Tottenham at home and a win at Stoke. That was their last game by the way.
Arsenal have had two draws in their last two PL matches against Tottenham and Manchester United. After we had 6 wins in a row we have struggled a bit since our win at Sunderland. Time to turn this around and go back to winning ways. No better moment to do so in front of my own eyes.
Who can play? For Bournemouth Jack Wilshere cannot play against the club that owns him. I just read today that Arsenal will offer Jack a new contract. So that could mean that Wenger is satisfied with what he has seen from Jack so far and with him being out of the Arsenal spotlight he might have more protection finally from the refs and thus less chance to get injured again? One can but hope that he keeps injury free this season and will be back stronger next season.
For Arsenal we are sure to be without Bellerin and Santi Cazorla. Two top players that are much missed. Bellerin because he offers so much attacking wise to our game. And Santi because he can do all and everything with both feet. As Wenger said he is the link between attack and defence. And it is Santi who is at the start of much of our attacks. I do hope that both will be back soon. Last year our title challenge ended with Santi being out till the last match of the season. Lets hope he will be back earlier this time and help us in our challenge.
Another Spanish player Lucas Perez is back in training but will take no part in this match. Maybe in the League cup match next week. Apart from those 3 we also miss the long term injured players like Per, Welbeck and Akpom. All of them are scheduled for a come back in January.
But for the rest all our players should be fit enough to start in this match.
Who would start? I think the starting line up will be something like:
Cech
Jenkinson – Mustafi – Koscielny – Monreal
Coquelin – Xhaka
Özil
Walcott – Giroud – Alexis
With on the beach players like Ospina, Gabriel, Gibbs, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi, Ramsey, Elneny
Of course this will probably be very wrong but I think that with the words of Wenger about having to find our speed again the inclusion of both Walcott and Alexis seems to be on his mind.
I hesitated a long time between picking Xhaka and Ramsey but with Ramsey still not at his best after his injury (well my opinion anyway) I can imagine that Wenger would go for Xhaka this time.
We have to pay attention to the set pieces as Bournemouth scored 6 of their 14 goals from a set piece. Arsenal can also be dangerous from a set piece as we scored 7 of our 25 goals from set pieces so far. So a goal from a set piece could be possible.
Bournemouth have 3 players with 3 goals. Gosling, Smith and Arter are those who have done the scoring for them most of the time.
Arsenal top 3 scorers are Alexis and Walcott with 8 and Özil with 7. Özil has scored against Bournemouth in both matches last season. Let us hope he can keep up with this good tradition.
Our run of draws now reaches 3. Some not so bright performances in that run. Maybe it is time to go back to where we were in our run of 6 consecutive wins. More speed (we miss Hector so much to bring this) and better passing. As I noticed in the PSG match report too many Arsenal players kept on running with the ball for too long and thus took the speed out of our attacks and then lost the ball as we ended up being outnumbered by PSG defenders. More and quicker passing please is what we should be seeing tomorrow.
Each bad run comes to an end and drawing 3 matches in a row feels like a bad run. I will be in the Emirates shouting the players on to deliver what they can deliver. We know they can do better than what they showed in the last weeks. Time to show the real Arsenal we know and love.
The Arsenal Belgium flag will be in the stadium tomorrow and if that isn’t enough to spur the players on… then what can spur them on?
As a result of me also being away from any computers I fear that you will have to wait a long time before we get up anything new. Sorry for that.
Come on you Gunners!
What are we talking about here? aren’t we talking about winning the title this season, ehn?
Arsenal’s 25 points haul so far in 12 PL games this season doesn’t urge well for a title win. For, if in their next 12 games they collected 25 points again, that’ll make it 50 pts after 24 games they would have played leaving them with 14 games to play for a maximum collectable 42 points to end the season.
Therefore, beginning with our Bournemouth match today at the Ems, The Gunners MUST start to upped their points collection rate in their next 12 games to reach at least 34 points collected dropping only 2 points in the process. This will take us to 59 points after playing 24 games. Which is far far better than the 50 points we would have amassed if we keep going at the current rate of collecting 2 points per game on the average.
This 2 average points collection per game we’ve been collecting so far this season is not a championship winning points collection. It is too low and it can’t win this hotly contested title for us this season if I should confess..
Would Arsenal be able to collect the maximum 42 points in their last 14 games of the season? It’s not impossible but is doubtful they will do that to win the League on 92 points after collecting 50 points from their earlier 24 games
I’ve checked our next 12 PL fixtures starting with our Bournemouth match today on Arsenal.com. And I can see 10 out the next 12 games Arsenal will play are winnable matches. And our 2 away big games during these 12 games period are to Man City and Chelsea. One of which I expect the Gunners to win and draw the other to finished our next 12 games on 34 points. This is what I want Le Prof to seriously start planning for.
Samuel,
Thank you indeed for your invaluable direction to Mr. Wenger. I don’t know how he could cope without it! 😉
Nice preview, Walter. 🙂 Have a nice game today. I would’ve been more optimistic if Mrs Broeckx had been on the Emirates today but I guess we should win with you on the stands as well. 😉
Last season we had two home matches that should have ended with double-digit-score – Stoke and Bournemouth. Özil was extremely inspired against Bournemouth, at some point he had six created chances in five minutes but all of them were wasted by our attackers. Finally, Gabriel (who had a birthday yesterday so happy birthday, Gabby!) broke the deadlock after Mesut’s corner and in the second half, Mesut decided to stop creating chances and scored after a beautiful assist from Giroud.
I hope for a big victory today as we have been overdue one in the league at home.
5:0, Giroud to score a hat-trick.
Enjoy the game, let’s hope we are back to winning ways, and we don’t even have to mention anything the ref does or doesn’t do.
Interesting line-up. Elneny and Xhaka with the Ox and Theo, Debuchy in at the back, the almighty G on the beach with Ramsey and Iwobi.
Looking forward to this.