Swansea, Giroud, Mourinho, Bayern and Arsenal set-pieces

The Arsenal machine keeps on rolling in the league!‏ by KM

Well, well! Having a fine Arsenal weekend are we? Sure we are, because I’d take any sort of a win against Swansea away, let alone a 3:0 one. I mean what a turnaround from the games we played against them last year!

Mesut Ozil was sublime again. I mean Ozil is the complete opposite of sublime compared to Sanchez. He’ll never be that dynamic and energetic and bombing forward, but his vision and technique is of no less importance to the squad. Given the right players round him Ozil could easily lead us to greatness and for me our last 2 league wins go down to goals he produced out of nothing.

Olivier Giroud deserves words of praise too because first, he is 29 and he was made second choice. Two – he had a terrible start with that red card and three, because despite of all the critiques he had, the guy is well scoring goals! Giroud netted once again, his third in a row in the league and four in five counting that he put his head where it hurts, against Bayern.

He give us hold up play and the ability to throw balls into the box, where we have presence. I love Theo, but he will never have this and we have tons of pace in the squad outside of Theo too. Joel Campbell was another player, who had a good game for me. I was really worried who was going to play on the right, but the Costa Rica international had a “now or never” chance and for me he proved a point. He was tracking back to help against Montero, he linked up well with the squad, and scored a beautiful finish.

We had our fare share of luck in the game too though. Mertesacker was lucky to escape a silly penalty with Giroud standing to cover anyway, and Gomis was easily slipped one on one with Cech and our new shiny signing made enough to disrupt the out-of-confidence Swansea forward. Bellerin made a fantastic sprint to clear the ball and later he made a ridiculous clearance off the line, and even though it was offside it was a joy to see such desire not to concede! Bellerin is such a rare example of a player breaking through the ranks in a big club like Arsenal and really taking center stage – and I just love the guy.

I hope we sign him up for the long term, because Barcelona were looking to part with Dani Alves and they might try their “boyhood club” dirty mind games once again, but I think Bellerin might learn from Fabregas’ mistakes and stay long term with us. And of course Cech. He made some mistakes at the start, but he has already won us more points than that defeat cost us and he’s probably having a laugh, seeing Chelsea down the table.

Fourteen points is the gap and you are reading correct! I guess there is one manager in failure right now. I mean this is a fantastic time to mock Mourinho and Chelsea for getting exactly what they deserve. The not so “Special One” of late always has a word about Arsenal and Mr. Wenger, but the truth is he and Chelsea lack class where Arsene and Arsenal have lots.

And Mr. Wenger deserves great credit. I think Le Boss is really looking at this league title and seeing an opportunity. Our squad is not big enough for all competitions so he rotated and it cost us in the league cup, and we’re still more likely to leave the Champions League than go through, but in the league we are looking good and we finally have different ways of winning games.

You never know which Arsenal will turn up? Will we hit them with pace, or sleep for 60 minutes than kill them off in 10, or we will throw balls in the box and score headers. We’ve scored quite a few headers and goals from set pieces this year, which is a nice surprise.

The boss finally gave us a chance to sack that possession football and to his credit it pays off. It’s a marvelous turnaround in results compared to last season. Man Utd at home 1:2, now 3:0, Swansea away 1:2, now it’s a 3:0 win. We are kings of the road, winning at teams like Watford, Swansea and Crystal Palace, all tough grounds to go to. If we make the Emirates a fortress and keep up the away train, we will be contenders for sure.

Next up is Bayern Munich who for the first time failed to score against Eintracht and we’ll be hoping that they fail to do it again. Make no mistake this game will be against arguably the best team in Europe right now, but the ball is round and it can roll over their net as we saw at the Emirates, besides our record at the Allianz is not too shabby.

We need at least a point to keep our hopes alive and even if we somehow get all three, Olympiacos will most likely win and we’ll need a victory in Greece which we haven’t gotten in a few attempts (although mostly playing our second squad).

The one worry I have for Bayern is that we really have no forward options on the bench. We really miss Welbeck, Walcott, Ramsey, Wilshere and the Ox. We’ll most likely start the same squad we did on Saturday and that same squad will have to battle a solid Spurs team next weekend. If we somehow pull a rabbit out of the hat and win those two, I’d go on a trip to the moon and back!

I think Wenger will go all guns blazing against Bayern, although a win against Spurs with our league position might seem more valuable. Anyway, if, and it’s a mighty big if, we beat Bayern or even if we don’t but we get out of the group, this would be truly the greatest escape, one which Houdini himself would be proud of.

The spirits are high right now, enjoy!

Konstantin

Tags Munich Swansea

15 Comments

  1. Listen Baby Please

    Swansea: We won 3-0 🙂
    Giroud: Is improving and playing well. Hope it continues all season
    Mourinho: Still a Jerk, but now a specialist in Failure jerk
    Set pieces: My chess set is missing two pieces

  2. Off Topic: I believe we can shock Bayern again but i hope the Refs officiates well @ Allianz Arena. I saw their game over the weekend and Rooben the diver did something He does so well which is dive in that game and the ref booked him for assimilation…..I just hope the Referees have a good game on Wednesday

    We can defeat them, Yes We Can………..Arsenal All The Way!

  3. um wait a sec!………. Didn’t muller and Lewy say they gonna be up against us in the 1st tie?……… Guess who showed up that day!

  4. I would like Giroud to start from the bench tomorrow and Iwobi to start upfront or on the left with Alexis upfront. This way the Bayern defence will struggle to cope with any attack we throw at them. If need be, Giroud can come from the bench and give us a different option.

  5. Giroud is on good form but he needs 5 to 6 players in the opponents box to score(watch all his goals). Walcot does not need dat sought of assistance, as our defence can still keep its shape and send through or long bals to walcot to stretch the opposing difence. I kind of like the opposite qualities of walcot and Giroud and how it changes the game play and each brings a different dimension. Against bayern I wld have love to see walcot start.

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