The Evil Empire of the Pots vs Arsenal

“Watching him, I thought he had the quality. I met him and he had a good spirit and a good attitude, so basically overall it was a no-brainer for us.”  Exactly the sort of player we have been missing, according to Mr Wenger.   As indeed he reminded the assembled hacks…

“When we built the stadium we had to sell these players and we played with very young players, and at 18, 19, when we played Fabregas or Nasri when they were very young they had not the experience to deal with that so much.  And we had less-physical players on top of that maybe, but as well most of the time it was because we had a very young team.

“He uses quite well the strength of his body without violence and when he intervenes it doesn’t look to be a foul, he just uses his body strength. It is an important quality to help adapt to the Premier League.”

Apparently Jesé Rodríguez now of Stoke was out injured for nine months after a challenge from Kolasinac during a match between Real Madrid and Schalke in March 2014. It was is described as a shuddering thud.   So when we think of the Evil Entity (Shaw Cross) we now know who to send over to have a quiet word with him.

Meanwhile the talk about Arsenal now in the media is that Arsenal have “no excuses” for… well anything.  And it is interesting that Kolasinac made nine assists for Schalke last season – although obviously not while playing in a back three where he will probably play again today.

“He has the capacity to repeat runs, and we noticed when we watched him play that he is quite dangerous in the final third,” said Mr Wenger.  “He already has some assists since he came here, so overall maybe he is not a glamorous dribbler but the quality of his runs is very efficient.

“There is something there and you feel that from the crowd.  The determined attitude gets to the crowd and the crowd responds to that, and that gives a swing to the team, you can see that with him and when he intervenes he provokes happiness.”

So what of the Evil Empire?  How have they been doing of late?

Since fighting (and in their case I mean this literally) their way into the Premier League they have finished ninth on three occasions, 11th, 12th, 13th on three occasions and 14th.

Their top scorer during that period in terms of league goals was the Crouch fella who once got 14.  He was the top scorer again last season with 10.  And in 2013/14 with… 10.  In each of the last two seasons they scored 41 goals, which must make watching them quite enjoyable compared with 2012/13 when they scored 34.  Top scorer Walters with 11.

Here’s their last ten from last season

So that was two wins, six defeats and two draws.  During this spell they scored nine goals in ten games. and conceded 16.  This season they lost 1-0 to Everton.

Now if we look at their last six matches (last season and this) they have scored two goals or more just the once (in the draw with Bournemouth).  Arsenal have scored at least two goals in each of their last six and at least two in five of our last six against Stoke.

In fact if we go back through our run towards the end of last season and add this season in, it is looking fairly decent (not that you would know if from any newspaper reporting).

2016/17

2017/18