Arsenal kicked off their pre-season preparations with a closed-door friendly against Watford, resulting in a 1-1 draw. Manager Mikel Arteta and his team are back at the Colney Training Ground, determined to mount a challenge for the Premier League title in the upcoming season.
While not all players have returned to training yet, those present have been diligently working towards regaining full fitness. In the friendly match against Watford, Arsenal Media reports that the Championship club took a surprise lead against the run of play late in the first half.
During the halftime break, Arteta made nine changes to the team, and it was Marquinhos who found the back of the net for Arsenal, scoring an equaliser ten minutes into the second half. The game ultimately ended in a 1-1 draw, providing the Gunners with an opportunity to assess their squad and fine-tune their strategies for the forthcoming campaign.
Just Arsenal Opinion
The most important thing now is for the players to build their fitness and the results are not so important as we prepare for a crucial campaign.
As long as many of the boys get minutes, it is okay whatever the score is. These games would also hand us a chance to test several formations with our old and new players so that we can become more unpredictable when the season starts.
Marquinhos was sent out on loan last season and that might be the case again, as the club has too many talents ahead of him on the pecking order.
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Haven’t seen much of the kid, but I suspect he should need a full season on loan to make real impression.
Watford’s training ground is next door to Arsenal’s and is in fact our old training ground.
From what I’ve seen from him he looks like he’s got proper talent
I like seeing the club develop young talent, a sense of pride and accomplishment seeing a young player given a chance and perhaps sticking in the first team.
Unfortunately it’s easier to reach for the checkbook than make time and effort to develop youth.
He looked quite good last season in the early EL group games. Hopefully he turns out to be a £3m bargain.
The depth we need at the back four should be Arteta’s number one priority. That’s where we tripped to let go away a trophy that was literally in our hands. But that’s the nature of football and we must accept that reality. We tortured our man Gabriel maghalles to near death just for lack of that depth