View From The Enemy – Arsenal are beatable but West Ham would take a draw

This weeks View From The Enemy comes from the excellent West Ham Blog called Under The Hammers written by Richard Bennett. With West Ham still down in the relegation zone despite beating the Champions Chelsea at the weekend, Bennett is hopeful that David Moyes will conjure up another miracle, but given the Gunners record against his team he would be happy to come away with a point. Listen him to explain his thinking in this excellent in-depth preview….

West Ham v Arsenal Preview 13 December 2017
Can West Ham use the unexpected victory over the champions as a springboard for another win against a top six side when Arsenal visit the London Stadium tonight?

Once again I am able to use my analogy from Forrest Gump that West Ham are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. The win against champions Chelsea on Saturday was unexpected and gave us a much-needed three points in our efforts to climb the table. Nevertheless we are still in the bottom three, and need to continue to demonstrate a consistency of effort and performance to retain the excellent backing from the fans. The atmosphere generated in the London Stadium once again disproved the nonsensical argument that the venue can be compared to a library. All football grounds can be like that at times when the home team are not doing well. Yes, it is not an ideal stadium at the present time and we can hope that structural changes at some stage in the future can make it better. For the time being we have to live with it and not keep harping back to Upton Park. We are not going back. For the record I love the stadium and speak to many others who feel likewise, but until we win more games at home then there will always be doubters.

With three points for a win and just one for a draw, then even if we remained unbeaten and managed a draw in each of the Chelsea and Arsenal games this week, we wouldn’t have been in as good a position as winning one and losing one. And having won the first then hopefully we can do it again in the second against the odds.

Recent history of this fixture suggests that it won’t be an easy task to say the least. Of course we won on their ground in the opening game of the 2015-16 season when Reece Oxford famously kept Ozil in his pocket, but that followed ten consecutive defeats at the hands of the Gunners. The last time we beat them at home was when Marlon Harewood scored a late winner in 2006 which sparked an interesting confrontation between Pardew and Wenger. The Arsenal manager seemed to take offence at our manager’s celebrations, a situation which has reared its head this week following accusations of over-celebration by City players when they won the Manchester derby at Old Trafford on Sunday.

We now have 13 points from 16 games, which means that even a win tonight would still not bring us up to the one point per game average that is the absolute minimum needed to keep us in with a chance of avoiding the drop. But I am looking forward to more than that.

I will repeat the run of 10 league games following Arsenal tonight to highlight the opportunity that we have to significantly improve our position by 10 February. It would be good if we could collect an average of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 points a game in these fixtures. If we could achieve this we will be going a long way towards allaying relegation fears. (A) v Stoke, (H) v Newcastle, (A) v Bournemouth, (H) v West Brom, (A) v Tottenham, (A) v Huddersfield, (H) v Bournemouth, (H) v Palace, (A) v Brighton, and (H) v Watford, presents a realistic opportunity (on paper) to start to climb the table. Failure to do so will bring a nervous run-in to the season.

It is pleasing to see that the way-over-the-top negative reaction to the appointment of David Moyes has died down considerably. There is still a long way to go of course, but the work ethic and organisation he (and his staff) has introduced are clearly evident in recent games. He has a good record and must be given the opportunity to make an impact. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I believe that he realises the task ahead and is prioritising what is necessary to achieve improvement. One small criticism I would level against him in the Chelsea game was his inability to realise that Antonio was out on his feet long before he was substituted.

Once again the bookmakers have virtually written off our chances but if you believe that there is a chance that we will cause another upset you can get around 9/2 on a West Ham win. Personally I would take a draw from this game, but hope of course for a second victory in five days. Despite being a top six side, Arsenal are not quite the team that they once were, and are eminently beatable. One statistic that surprised me was that the Gunners are fourth in the table of goals conceded in 2017, showing that their once renowned defence can be breached. We certainly don’t want a repeat of the 5-1 defeat that we suffered here last season.

The much under-rated Pedro Obiang was in my opinion one of the reasons that we kept a world class player like Hazard quiet at the weekend, and I don’t believe that he gets the credit he deserves for this unfashionable role. I would expect him to be deployed in similar fashion against Ozil, or perhaps Sanchez tonight. Arnautavic and Masuaku were rightly singled out for excellent games, but it really was a whole team performance. Masuaku is really becoming a bit a bit of a revelation in an attacking sense, and providing he doesn’t try his wonderful tricks in vulnerable areas of the pitch then he can become a major creator for us going forward. I would expect Hernandez to play a part now that he appears to have recovered, and Carroll does have a very good record of scoring against Arsenal as witnessed in the 3-3 draw a couple of seasons ago, and even in his Newcastle days.

Adrian deserves his chance to continue between the sticks, but I cannot agree with the vilification of Hart that I read. Hopefully the competition between the two keepers will spur them both on to produce top class performances. Cresswell had one of his best games for ages at the weekend, and the unlikely threesome when he combined with Reid and Ogbonna, who both performed excellently, is likely to be the selection for this game. Noble performed admirably, and Lanzini, whilst not being at the top of his game at the moment, is still our best hope of unlocking opposition defences. But whoever is selected (and I don’t expect many changes) let us hope for another stirring game and three more points.

10 Comments

    1. Cech, Bellerin, Xhaka and Sanchez will definitely play though they have been underwhelming lately.

      Chambers or Holding should start as a CB with Koscielny and Monreal. Wilshere in for Ramsey, Coquelin in for Xhaka.

      Debuchy possibly for Bellerin.

    2. Be honest! You know that you actually don’t wonder at all. You know full well, as we all do, that poor form is not a Wenger reason to drop any favourite of his, including his “boyfried” Xhaka!

  1. I never thought Moyes was a bad manager. He did a good job with Everton. But he isn’t good for top team. I mean I thought Wenger giving Walcott over £100,000 per week was bad, he helped get Rooney nearly £300,000 per week lol

    Anyway, of course West Ham can beat us. We aren’t anywhere near the Invincibles. No team is scared of us.

    Let’s try 4 at the back. 5 defenders doesn’t always work. Continue with Ozil, Alexis and Lacazette. I think we should give Xhaka a rest

    1. “We should give Xhaka a rest”. Could not agree more. I would suggest a lifetimes rest from ever playing for us ever again.

  2. Saw the first half of the West Ham vs Chelsea match. Their win was not a lucky shot, because they seemed to know how to deal with Chelsea’s 3-4-2-1 very well. I think they would use the same strategy against Arsenal.

    Andre Ayew, Arnautovic, Noble, Lanzini and Andy Carroll are quite dangerous when attacking. Especially Carroll, I still remember how he used his dominance in the air to beat Arsenal easily.

    Arsenal’s 3-4-2-1 would be good to prevent West Ham from producing crosses to their tall target man, but Wenger and his players had better study the West Ham vs Chelsea match beforehand. They have to be prepared for West Ham’s set piece schemes.

  3. I hope Wenger won’t play Mertesacker to take care of Carroll. In this case, Lanzini or Arnautovic will be free to score.
    If we lose, Wenger will say “We were a bit tired because it’s very hard to play every 3 days. Take a look at Chelsea, they couldn’t win also on this ground!” and of course he will blame the defensive play of West Ham.
    But there will be a lot of positives after this game: the team showed character, Wilshere is fit to play 60 min and we are in the race for top 4.

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