We are all happy that Arsenal managed to topple the Belarus minnows BATE on Thursday, but now we we only have three days to recover before taking on one of our traditional bogey teams, Southampton, at the Emirates. The Saints are drawn into the dogfight for the last relegation spot and are fighting for their lives, but Ralph Hasenhuttl has made them a very hard team to beat since his arrival.
So this week
Right now we are two thirds of the way through Unai Emery’s first season as Arsenal boss, and it has certainly been a rollercoaster ride with the 22-game unbeaten run, and then the collapse of our away form. Not to mention the three season-ending injuries and our ever -changing tactics, especially in defence.
Arsenal certainly made up for last week’s awful defeat at BATE by beating them 3-0 last night, and at last it was a polished performance from the Gunners. It was imperative that we did not concede again to make the job even harder, but when we got a lucky own goal right at the start we could relax and go for the winner.
The main talking point amongst Arsenal fans in the last few weeks has been about the ongoing spat between Unai Emery and Mesut Ozil. The Spanish coach made it clear before yesterday’s game that wanted Ozil to stop missing training with his undefined illnesses and buckle down with the squad. Emery said: “Now, this week is good for all the players, because we are in a big, important moment for the season and I look at him [Ozil] doing the training like we want.
Well this is very interesting study into the spending of each Premier League club since the new League was formed, and Arsenal are only one of three clubs to have spent over 2 billion GBP on wages since 2002,
As we all know Arsenal are going through a run of awful performances which culminated in our defeat to lowly BATE last week, but Unai Emery has promised to stick to his “gameplay” despite the recent performances. He told Arsenal.com: “It was a bad result last week, but the team worked with our planning and we had chances to score and every chance we need to improve tomorrow. We need to continue with our gameplay despite the bad result. Tomorrow we must manage 90 minutes with the result to get a good result for us, but knowing that this is 1-0 we need to be very consistent. We also need to get into their box, find the best positions to score and be efficient.
Tonight’s game against BATE is probably the most important game this season for the Gunners, as a draw or a defeat will destroy our very last chance of a possible trophy this season. It may be the poor man’s version of the Champions League, but we have never won it before and it is becoming tougher to win every year.