Happy new week gooners all over the planet. Hope we all had a splendid weekend? Hope we enjoyed our game? Well, I don’t know about you all; but as for me, I did. These are my five takeaways I brought away with me from the game against Norwich.
Number 1: Leno is the real deal- Hope you will agree with me that we would have lost that game if not for the heroics of our efficient goalie, Bernd Leno? He was simply at his best on Sunday, and if I were to choose my man of the match I will gladly have chosen him. He made several great saves from Pukki and Cantwell; these saves kept us in the game and gave us the needed push to surge on in search of goals. I wrote a piece sometime ago questioning if Leno was actually the goalkeeper we needed and I won’t be ashamed to say that Leno responded to my query with a positive performance on Sunday. I love German keepers for one thing; and that is the fact that they ooze confidence whenever they are in between the goalposts. I saw confidence written all over Leno on Sunday. I am proud we have him.
Number 2: Aubameyang should work on his penalty skills- If not for the VAR, we probably would have lost that game. We had a chance to level up against Norwich and our top scorer was luk-warm in executing the penalty! The VAR gave us a second chance and thank God he scored. If it were in the days when we had no VAR, we probably won’t have had the opportunity to retake the penalty. Last season, against Spurs, we had the golden opportunity to cart away three points from that game; but our top scorer failed to score the penalty we won and we drew against them. Auba is a good striker and we are so lucky to have him play for us but he needs to improve on his penalty taking skills, ASAP.
Number 3: The Defence is still shaky- Should I really write much concerning this? Our defensive issues continued and it almost cost us the game yesterday. I believe our coach will eventually find a solution to our defensive issues on the long run.
Number 4: Xhaka and Luiz may play much more under Ljunberg- A few minutes before the start of our game against Norwich, I went online to check out our team list and when I saw Xhaka and Luiz in the starting lineup, I smiled sheepishly. I guess there is something coaches see in Xhaka that we fans are not seeing. Wenger made use of him, Emery made use of him and now, Ljunberg seems to also want to tow that line. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and watch how things unfold on the long run.
Number 5: The team may take time to earn its confidence back- I sensed a lack of confidence in the way our team played on Sunday. We had not won a game in 8 attempts now and this showed on Sunday. How do we build our confidence back? By winning games and winning them in style. This will take time to find but our confidence will surely come back to us.
So that’s my five takeaways, what are yours?
Cheers for now!
Sylvester (Lagos Gooner)