Arsenal secure another gritty win by Konstantin Mitov
Good morning, evening or whatever part of the day or night is Arsenal people. We took on Huddersfield and a lot of people were expecting a pretty easy win and but it was anything but that. We had 2 excellent chances in the first half to finally have the lead at halftime but somehow Auba and Lacca squandered them.
It’s unbelievable that there are like 2-3 games till the end of the first half of the season and we’re yet to have the lead at the break. This statistic must change, because although we’re doing spectacularly well in the second halves, the pressure mounts until a goal comes and you could see it in the game.
We were almost trying too hard at the end, but thankfully Guendouzi lofted a great ball which Aubameyang controlled superbly to put in Torreira who scored with some great acrobatics. Fantastic goal honestly and one we deserved in my opinion.
The ref was shocking again. There were clear double standards when it comes to the bookings as our players got ones for diving, yet Huddersfield weren’t penalised at all. Unbelievable how 3 games in a row every decision goes against us and yet it’s the stupid “hippie crack” story every media is talking about when just a week ago the racist lot down the road threw a banana at Aubameyang in 2018?!?!
Regardless of the rather poor performance I enjoyed this win. It’s the kind of win that could make the difference between the top 4 or not. The big difference for me is that I felt we would win. Last year I’m not sure I’d have the confidence in the squad, but this year I’ve seen us win it late so many times I thought we’d do it today again and we did.
What I really, really like about our squad is the nastiness our new signings have brought. You see Lichtsteiner taunting the opposition when they make rugby like challenges. Then there is Sokratis celebrating defensive tackles and I absolutely love this! And what about that guy Torreira? I’ve ran out of positive things to say about him.
The bad thing from the game is what’s happening with the injuries. The defense we’ll put against Southampton will be quite an experimental one. I can’t believe I’ll miss Mustafi, but if I understood correctly Sokratis will miss a game due to yellow cards. Monreal returned to action today, and Koscielny was on the bench, but it’s not like they are up to the required fitness and I’m not sure they’ve had enough training to understand the managers ideas.
With Holdings injury, I think we’ll need to go into the market in January and get a CB or we’ll be playing a huge gamble on our top 4 chances. We also really miss Welbeck. Apart from Auba and Lacca we don’t have any strikers and often we see Emery dropping one of the two so that we have options from the bench.
Sadly Chelsea and Spurs won and I was really expecting one of them to drop points. The premier league has become incredibly competitive and we cannot afford to miss any points against lesser opposition. I’m a bit worried that apart from Spurs and Liverpool we’ve hardly put in a home performance of intensity that is capable of dominating a team. It’s game changes have won us a lot of games. I love it, but I still want to see us start strong against the so called “weaker” teams.
Finally, no Ozil again. I even hear people asking if we’re selling him in January? I think this is ridiculous, but you can see Emery is not afraid to drop him and he needs to pick his game up. We need a strong, dominating performance from him. Our next few games look like perfect opportunities. We could really use with him creating some chances and any player coming back in this extremely tight period where you play 3 games in 7 days is massive.
The good news is we have the deadest game possible in the Europa league and we’ll likely rest everyone. Then it’s back to massive games. We’ve been doing pretty poorly at Southampton, so winning there, especially with our defense will be extremely important and difficult.
That’s it for now, see you with Arsenals next game!
Konstantin