Can we beat Stoke away again and make a strong start this year? by Konstantin
Good day to all of you lovely Arsenal people! Straight away our next game is Stoke at the Britannia. A trip we don’t really like, but one we finally won last season after 7 years of failing to do that. Still it’ll be a hard one, because Stoke hate us. They still think Aaron Ramsey was at fault for Shawcross terrible tackle and they obviously hate Wenger for questioning their style of football.
Quality wise, we have more than enough to beat them. We just have to strengthen the defence and I think Mertesacker and Mustafi who Arsene declared fit will return to the back 3 and I suspect Monreal will join them on the left side. Holding was not too great against Chelsea and Leicester and I really hope the Ox takes Bellerin’s place and Kolasinac goes on to the LWB position.
Looking at Stoke, they hired Mark Hughes to transform them from the long ball team they were under Pulis and to some extent he did that, but they will not hesitate to return to the origins they were known for and last season against us they did it and it caused us problems.
If I’m the boss of Stoke I’d be looking at the Leicester game and thinking that I would let Arsenal have the ball and try hitting on the counter and putting a lot of balls in the box. I don’t know if their star signing Jese Rodrigues would be available for the game, but if we cut most of the mistakes we did and give less of the ball away than we did with Leicester we should take the points.
We really need this win, with the financial risk Arsene is taking by running down the contracts of 3 expensive players. Arsenal must make a real challenge for the title if we are to convince some of these players, this is the right place for them to stay and not lose them for free.
Also, with the amount of good teams, it’s so important to win against mid and bottom table teams. Chelsea are playing Spurs and if they fail to beat them, we could have a 5 point gap already with them. Every way you look at it, we have to win this one and we have the personnel to do it.
Konstantin