Arsenal will make the long trip north to Leeds this weekend with an urgency to transform their form.
The club suffered a debolical 3-0 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa just before the break, which we were lucky to lose by only three goals, while suffering two more defeats in the previous three League matches.
Prior to the Villa game however, we had only conceded twice in the previous three matches, and you could claim that Mikel Arteta had possibly tried to take something away from his defence to bring more creation for his attack, but I can’t say that I saw much change on that front.
The manager has now had two weeks since that loss, and while a number of his players haven’t been able to train with him as they spent the time with their international teams, Arteta will no doubt have been wracking his brain for solutions.
We have a decent size squad of options, with a number of players yet to receive minutes domestically, and the likes of Joe Willock and Emile Smith Rowe may well find themselves picking up minutes.
Mo Elneny has been ruled out of the match due to a positive Coronavirus test while on international duty, and question marks still remain over Thomas Partey, who limped off against Villa, and had to miss the international break because of it.
While Granit Xhaka and Dani Ceballos are the mostly likely to start at the weekend, the former has clocked up 135 minutes for his international side this week, and may well need some rest.
Players coming back will definitely need to be reassessed after a hectic international schedule where a number of stars will have played as many as three matches, while there are a few who have been spared the woes of international duty altogether.
Gabriel Magalhaes, David Luiz, Willian, Rob Holding, Calum Chambers, Pablo Mari, Nicolas Pepe and Smith Rowe to mention a few have all been training with us during the break, while a number of the younger players have gotten involved with the senior side also.
Will Arteta take the chance on one or both of Willock and Smith Rowe as he looks to add more creativity to his side with our team struggling for goals? Will the manager be forced to rest some players after a crazily busy international break?
Patrick