Arsenal legend Martin Keown has been sharing his thoughts on Arsenal, Bukayo Saka’s injury, their title chances, and why Liverpool aren’t guaranteed to win the league.
On Monday, it was revealed that Bukayo Saka will be sidelined for a while. The hamstring injury he picked up in the 5-1 win over Crystal Palace will see him spend weeks on the sidelines.
The concern is how our Gunners will cope without their most productive player. Saka has racked up 9 goals and 13 assists in 24 games this season. However, Keown believes that if Arteta can trust someone like Nwaneri to step up and offer something different, Arsenal can manage.
Keown said, “It’s up to someone to step up. Maybe [Ethan] Nwaneri, who has been playing in the [Martin] Odegaard role, can come into the front line and give us something different.”
For some, Saka’s injury, combined with Arsenal’s current situation—they’re 6 points behind league leaders Liverpool, who have a game in hand—might signal the end of their title race. But Keown disagrees. “You’ve got to make it difficult for your opponent, but Arsenal are still very much in this fight,” he asserted.
He thinks Arsenal haven’t been lucky with their fixture schedule, which included tough away games. He also believes Liverpool had an easier run of games at the start of the season.
Keown continued, “But the fixtures didn’t help Arsenal at the start of the season. When you’re having to go to Villa Park, Man City away, Chelsea away, these are all very difficult games.
“And of course, some of those fixtures Liverpool haven’t yet faced.”
From Keown’s comments, a Gooner can’t help but feel that our Gunners aren’t in such a bad position. There’s still a long way to go to determine their fate. We can take solace in the fact that the Reds have tougher fixtures lined up for them.
Liverpool just have to drop points, and our boys need to win their battles. The business the club does in the winter transfer window could go a long way in ensuring we step up as we should in the Premier League run-in.
Daniel O
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Martin there are no easy games. Wake up. Tell them to Man u, City , Chelsea n Pool
Absolutely Martin. The players need to remain focused on winning each match and not allow either real or just perceived lesser chances for the title to make them lose site of qualifying for next season’s UCL or even winning this season’s tournament.
oops: or even not loosing “sight” of qualifying👀
We could sign a new inverted-RW in January if Saka is sidelined for several months, but Liverpool are six points ahead of us, still have one game in their hands and didn’t struggle in tough away matches
That’s why we need to focus on UCL instead
Personally, I trust on the rest of the lads to put in a strong shift whenever being called upon to replace our talisman, hence I’m confident of no dip in form that could derail our title ambitions. COYG!
True GAI, UCL could easily slip out of our grasp and that would be a big blow to any real chance of any iteration of this squad winning the title within the next couple seasons.
Now why would Arsenal gives up when the title race is wide open.
The champion have had enough and may have lost interest, the Big pretender continues to scare the field but they are not the winning machine as Man City when in it’s glory days.
The Christmas festive period is a time most teams drop points because of the many games to be played in such a short space of time. Let’s see if we can put a winning run like we did second half of last season, if we can do that, I’m positive we will close the gap between us and Liverpool. That’s a big IF though.
We really need to go on a long winning sequence to breathe new life on our EPL title bid.