Of course, for long periods we have been saying that the reason we cannot bridge the gap to Man City and Liverpool is simply because we let in far too many goals, but we are all hoping that the return of Bellerin, Holding, Tierney (and hopefully Chambers) will give us a massive boost in our defending abilities. Arsenal’s attacking players are excellent and will be even better when Pepe finds his feet, so what is our biggest problem area now?
According to the ESPN pundit and ex-player, Craig Burley, it is our midfield that is our biggest area of concern. ‘I’m not sold on Arsenal, no,’ Burley said on ESPN FC. ‘But, I’m not sold on anyone apart from Liverpool or Man City, and City at the moment are having a glitch by their standards.
‘They’ve got two excellent strikers, one who is out injured at the moment – [Alexandre] Lacazette – and [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang looks as if he’s going to have a good return of goals again.
‘They’ve got some good youngsters, and it looks like Unai Emery is going to give them some game time, he’s given them their head, and you saw it with young [Gabriel] Martinelli in midweek.
‘I don’t like the middle of the park, I just don’t like it.
‘And I agree, once [Kieran] Tierney and [Hector] Bellerin get up to full speed, he’ll get a better sense and we’ll get a better sense of what his back four is.
‘Having those two full-backs should help him, they should help him.’
So, is Arsenal’s midfield that bad? We have our new arrival Dani Ceballos who seems to be settling in quite well since arriving from Real Madrid, Lucas Torreira has perhaps gone off the boil a bit lately but is being used further forward now, We can’t realy complain about the progression of young Guendouzi at all. We also have Joe Willock and Smith-Rowe knocking on the door, and we have Mesut Ozil perennialy on the bench and of course our mighty captain Granit Xhaka!
Surely we must be able to put out a great midfield out of that lot. So which is likely to be our best three to gel in the middle of the park?
Admin