The Welshman Aaron Ramsey has been giving so many interviews lately I was beginning to think he had been named the Arsenal captain! But as he has scored in both our serious games so far this season he can say what he likes as far as I’m concerned.
This particular nugget has him saying that Arsenal need to get more points away against the big teams, which is a bit like saying “the Pope is a Catholic”, but as I say he is allowed his opinion.
He said on Arsenal.com after yesterdays win: “You saw last season that we picked up a number of points against the teams outside the top four,”
“Our main target this year is to improve our away form against the bigger teams.
“If we did pick up a few points away from home against the top four teams last season then I think we may have been champions, but that wasn’t to be. That’s our biggest thing to improve on – to pick up points away from home.
“The last few seasons we’ve struggled in the first game of the season and we nearly did again today, but it was important to keep on trying even though it wasn’t quite happening for the team today. It wasn’t as fluid as it normally is but we came away with the win and that’s important.
“I didn’t have the best of games today but I kept wanting to try and get into the box and finally it broke to me. I’m trying to improve on last season and I’m counting the Community Shield goal, so I’ve got two so far.”
Like Arsene Wenger, Ramsey has also been impressed with our new arrivals, but again admitted that there was room for improvement. “I think they have started really well,” he said. “We were really solid at the back with Debuchy and Chambers, who were playing as if they’d been there for the last three years.
“Alexis showed glimpses of his quality and he’s very quick on the turn but he’s part of the team and the team struggled to get going today, so we’ll be looking to improve that on Tuesday.”
So that’s the party line. Improvement needed for Tuesday, and if we win well then we will straight away have an advantage over Everton next Saturday as we will have three competitive games under our belt to their one. And there we have two good away games we have a good chance of winning Aaron!