It feels to me like Arsenal are at a crucial stage of the season. A possible crossroads, if you like, where things could go backwards, sideways, or hopefully onwards after a slow and shaky start. There is another international break coming up soon and we need to get to it with two Premier League wins in the bag.
So it should be a good thing for the Gunners that our next match does not take place until Monday night, as long as Arsene Wenger and the players make full use of the extra two days that is. The boss needs to be drilling the lads on the training ground, making sure that the defensive solidity and togetherness of the team that we saw away to Chelsea last weekend was not a one-off.
Of course we do not expect a home game against West Brom to be the same sort of test we faced at Stamford Bridge but that does not mean we can forget about defending. A clean sheet must be the goal in every game we play because that takes pressure off the attacking side of our game and means that one goal will give us a win, as it did against Doncaster on Wednesday.
Time on the training ground is precious and can be crucial to what happens during a season and with all the games Arsenal have ahead these few days must be spent well. The question is, will they be?
Bob.
It’s just West Brom, Arsenal will go past them easily like Bournemouth, as long as West Brom do not use ultra defensive tactic. Arsenal always have problem against a very defensive tactic and against a team that likes to apply heavy pressures.
If they cannot win this game, they might as well forget about the top three.
8 points already dropped from a possible 15, I think top three is extremely ambitious even if we beat West Brom.
They will sit back, and be very defensive. I just hope Wenger will finally pick his strongest team for the first time this season, and also for the first time this season, have players in the correct positions. It makes winning so much easier!
But West Brom WILL use ultra defensive tactics won’t they? When has Pulis ever done anything else? His whole preparation will be on the lines of ‘Stop Arsenal Playing’. So saying ‘It’s just West Brom and Arsenal will go past them easily like Bournemouth’ is probably not the wisest thing to say. If we score an early goal and make it pointless for them to just defend then we have a great chance of a few goals. If not it could be just a bore-fest with Arsenal having to watch all set pieces against us very carefully.
There are no easy games in the PL. Arsenal must approach this and every game with maximum concentration and seriousness. We saw what they achieve when they do last weekend against Chelsea
There are a lot of really very poor teams in the EPL and the best sides sweep them aside in most games. They do that by doing what you say we need to which is by concentrating in each game and giving the opponents respect.
Where we go wrong is by giving them no respect and putting 10 men in their half and not concentrating as in the Stoke game and many others before that. Then they score on the break or set piece. However we are in the point of the season where we normally try a bit harder and I expect us to win by a couple of goals.
It would be Wenger talking about regulating the fees in football. He said something similar years back before saying how wrong he was with it one or two seasons ago. The top clubs don’t want it to be fair, they want to stay above everyone. And if they do put a cap on it, how long til smaller clubs start catching up to us. They’d have to put the cap above the means of most clubs, and keep it out of their reach. It sounds like it would be too ideal for ourselves, why would they want to do that for us and teams in a similar position to us financially, why would they not go further to help more and more teams, making the game severely more competitive. Arsene should stop acting like we are worse off than most, we are not, we have great financial power but we don’t make the best use out of it. We never go into the red, if it wasn’t for going into the red Manu would not have become the household name they are now. We don’t even flirt with it, we wear two life save jackets and we swim in the paddling pool.
If history is anything to go by with, Arsenal struggles on Mondays.
Really!!? How did this similar scenario happen against Liverpool? They had a UCL qualification game on Wednesday and our players were at home playing video games and taking selfies getting ready for the game.. what happened on match day was shameful to the fans (coz the players and their clueless manager gets paid no matter what the infield outcome is)
We always can’t take advantage of anything, let them go and try to win, but saying we had more resting days than them so we should win, always comes back to haunt us pretty well
They will pack d bus.
We need Giroud