Arsenal v Atletico Madrid: all you need to know, the league table, the team and the Tottenham game

Posted on by Tony Attwood

By Bulldog Drummond

Ahead of Arsenal’s game which kicks off shortly we now have the first league table to emerge out of the ICC tournament thus far and it reminds us of the special arrangements being made in this competition. 

Indeed it makes rather interesting, if occasionally bemusing, reading .  For what it brings home is the fact that different teams have been persuaded to run on totally different schedules, in order to make the whole thing last for as long as possible.

In this competition we don’t have draws, we have wins in normal time (worth 3 points and known as wins), wins on penalties (worth two points and known as WP),  defeats on penalties (worth one point and known as LP) and defeats (worth nothing and known as L).
Pos Team P W WP LP L F A Pts
1. Dortmund 3 2 0 1 0 6 3 7
2. Tottenham Hotspur 1 1 0 0 0 4 1 3
3. Juventus 1 1 0 0 0 2 0 3
4. Bayern Munich 2 1 0 0 1 3 3 3
5. Liverpool 2 1 0 0 1 3 4 3
6. Benfica 1 0 1 0 0 2 2 2
7. Manchester United 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
8. AC Milan 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
9. Arsenal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
10. Chelsea 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
11. Lyon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
12. InterMilan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
13. Real Madrid 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
14. Barcelona 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15. Atletico Madrid 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16. PSG 1 0 0 0 1 1 3 0
17. AS Roma 1 0 0 0 1 1 4 0
18. Manchester City 2 0 0 0 2 1 3 0

As you will note above there is a slew of teams that like Arsenal have not played but we do have the interesting sight of Manchester City having two straight defeats at the foot of the table.  They have lost to Dortmund and to Liverpool.

In the Tottenham v Roma game I can see that Roma made at least eight substitutes so it looks like there is pretty much a free for all on that level.   That was a very strange game with Roma scoring first and having almost twice as many shots as Tottenham, more possession, more passes, and a higher pass accuracy, and yet they lost 4-1.  It is also interesting that Tottenham committed over six times as many fouls as Roma (19 by Tottenham to three by Roma).

As for our game today, for Atletico, Antoine Griezmann, Diego Costa, Diego Godin, Jose Gimenez and Sime Vrsaljko are, I am told, not available after the WC.

For Arsenal on the other hand only Lucas Torreira and Danny Welbeck are still skiving off from proper footballing duties.  I don’t have details of when Danny comes back but I have been told that Torreira will be joining the club at the start of August and will obviously be undergoing intensive language training and jet lag adjustment.

Mesut Ozil has been receiving warm praise and support all round for his stand against racist comments from a few idiots in Germany, and it is good to see that many have been pointing out just what sterling service Mesut has given his country in recent years.

It would be good if as a result of this experience a few officials realise that playing for your country is not an obligation but something given voluntarily by players.   The players have every right to say no, and the worse they are treated by racists, the less likely they are ever to want to play.

But back to today.   We know that Bernd Leno, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Matteo Guendouzi are in the squad along with our new young superkid, Emile Smith Rowe, who has been talked up no end.   Eddie Nketiah, whom we saw earlier in the summer with an incredible display in the Toulon tournament for England is also in the squad.

Atletico Madrid have suffered more from unwarranted Fifa interference in their team selection with Antoine Griezmann, Diego Costa, Saul Niguez, Koke, Diego Godin, Jose Giminez and Sime Vrsaljko all still being in the WC or thereabouts.

It would be foolish in the extreme to do the normal pre-match team prediction as there is nothing to go on other than the squad.  So here is the squad.

In goal:

Petr Cech, Bernd Leno, Emiliano Martinez,

At the back:

Hector Bellerin, Sead Kolasinac, Calum Chambers, Rob Holding, Shkodran Mustafi, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Jordi Osei-Tutu,

In the midst of it all:

Mohamed Elneny, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Matteo Guendouzi, Reiss Nelson, Emile Smith Rowe, Joe Willock, Aaron Ramsey,

Going forwards:

Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Mesut Ozil, Alex Iwobi, Eddie Nketiah, Lucas Perez, Alexandre Lacazette, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

So the simple question is do you play a first team squad and then bring on back up players as the first teamers tire, or do you mix them up from the start?

There is a benefit in each approach for if you mix them you see how the kiddies fit in with the big boys.  You do it the other way and you risk being over run in the latter parts of the game but you get much more insight how ready young men like Smith Rowe, Willock and Osei-Tuto are to play on the big stage.

We shall see.

 

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19 Replies to “Arsenal v Atletico Madrid: all you need to know, the league table, the team and the Tottenham game”

  2. Hmm,
    No mention of all the Tottenham players missing – Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Kieran Trippier, Eric Dier, Hugo Lloris, Danny Rose, Toby Alderweireld, Mousa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen recovering from world cup duty. Harry Winks, Josh Onomah, Juan Foyth and Victor Wanyama out injured.

  3. What a totally pointless, so called, competition. How can a team win a league based competition when they don’t all play the same teams?

    @UKFootballFan he doesn’t mention what Roma or Man City players were missing either. He mentions what players are missing from the team Arsenal are playing today and from the Arsenal team as a preview to the game. Sorry you are so busy looking for anti chicken shagger news on an pro-arsenal website or just to slow to understand that.

  5. michael – more pertinent, surely, is why an article on a pro Arsenal website is so interested in Spurs and so overly eager to find fault with their 4-1 victory in the their first pre season game in a “pointless, so called competition”? I can assure you that I know of no Spurs website that has, or ever would, major on an equivalent Arsenal game and try so hard to belittle the outcome of what always is, in effect, little more than a glorified fitness session.

    And, by the way, I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of “news aggregates”. No one has to be “so busy looking for” news about what interests them – wherever it might originate – when it is so conveniently presented to them in one place.

  6. Michael he mentions fouls and possession in the Tottenham game including the number of substitutions Roma made. Only fair to also mention the full story.
    I’m not going to bother exchanging insults.

    Have a good day.

    P.S. I also check on Arsenal too as I had a high regard for what Mr Wenger achieved.

  7. It is something that I often find Jim. A line which is written in passing about an interesting set of stats is translated into “so overly eager to find fault with”.
    We had never seen such a set of stats before, and so mentioned them. The motive behind that is entirely in your mind, not ours.

  8. JimB – what a pointless comment. The cock is still yet to crow & you are already complaining of our polished gun. At least wait til we fire it!!

  9. “…….more pertinent, surely, is why an article on a pro Arsenal website is so interested in Spurs”

    So says a Spurs fan that seems utterly obsessed with the aforementioned pro Arsenal web site. He spends more time here than I do.

    You couldn’t make it up.

  11. Nitram

    Once again, I have to point you in the direction of news aggregates. This website publishes articles, or partial articles, about Spurs with great frequency. And because of this, they are picked up by Spurs pages on various news aggregates. If there is an obsession, it originates here, with the writers and regular posters on UA. I merely respond occasionally to whatever has been written – which is fair enough, I think.

    Tony

    As ever, you are very adept at employing precisely the kind of spin that you condemn when employed by your despised Arsenal “blogettas”! As you well know, what you (I’m assuming that Bulldog Drummond is just an alias?) wrote was more than just a mere line, casually written in passing. It was very carefully and deliberately spun. There was, in fact no need to mention anything about Spurs vs Roma at all. I’ve no problem with it, though. It’s your website, after all. I only posted because of what I deemed to be michael’s unprovoked and unnecessarily rude response to UKFootballFan.

  12. Menace

    Thanks for the link but unfortunately it stopped feeding. Even more unfortunately we’ve just gone 1 down on 41 mins.

    Going by Arsenal.com we’ve had the best of it with a few half and good chances but we seem to of conceded from there 1st effort on our goal.

    Hard to know exactly but from the half hour I saw that would seem about right.

  13. This is what Arsenal.com say at HT:

    “HALF TIME: We’ve dominated possession and had the better chances, but we go in at the break trailing Atletico by a goal to nil”

  14. The report is right. Arsenal have been doing a good attacking job but were beaten by a well worked goal.

    I think we are capable of getting a good result if our luck changes.

  15. And I am always grateful to you and indeed anyone when rudeness is called out. As you may know a lot of our moderation is done automatically, and it is far from perfect.
    But really, as a mind reader, you are not very good – at least on this occasion. We were working on a preview for a match for which neither we nor anyone we could find who had much idea about the team. So we looked for anything of interest. OF course you can disbelieve me, but doing so doesn’t get anyone very far. The numbers came up, and looked very unusual. I would have wanted to publish those figures if it had been Arsenal, Tottenham, Orient or Corby Town. Quite an achievement to my mind. But of course you can believe what you like.

  18. The match has ended all square. Thanks to E Smith Rowe’s 47″ leveler for Arsenal to cancelled out L Coerie’s 41″ lead for ATM.

    All the big Gunners who played in this match were goal shy. Lacazette as usual ran up and down for Arsenal in the game but no goal scored or assisted by him. This trend of him to hardly score for at away games for Arsenal is fast becoming his hallmark. The sooner he addresses this failing, the better it’ll be for Arsenal and him.

    By and large, Arsenal have most of the possessions and the passing in the game but no venom to kill of the opposition to win the match. Reiss Nelson can only clip the tip edge of the bar but it didn’t count. I think Unai Emery should point it out to him that, for him to arrive where it matters, he should try by all means to make his shooting count for Arsenal and not count for the gallery. No hard feeling young chap, I am only trying to be helpful.

    1-1 draw? No! Though its a preseason friendly match but I wish Arsenal had won the match to put one win over ATM after we have suffered a 1-2 aggregate scoreline defeat against them in the ELC semifinal match last season.

    It’s still work in progress for Unai Emery, the new Gunners boss. But I think he better be fast with it and be successful at finalising the work. For, the Gooners will not pardon him should Arsenal not beat Pep Guardiola’s Man City and Seri’s Chelsea in the PL in Arsenal’s 2 opening matches of the new season in early August.

    Will the much talked about Mesut Ozil, Moh’ ElNeny and Danny Welbeck make a difference for Arsenal to beat PSG at the ICC if they are played in the match? Well, we’ll see.

  19. Tony The numbers quoted may have been unusual but so was the fact Tottenham played with so many players missing. They out-played Roma and deserved to win so comfortably.

    Thanks Jim for noticing the vitriol from Michael and thank you Tony for acknowledging it. I would prefer we don’t descend to personal attacks and I’m not going to bother with tit-for-tats.

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