Morning.
It’s our first home Champions League game of the season as we face Olympiacos later this evening. They’re a team with whom we’ve had some history in this competition down the years, but more recently in the Europa League. We beat them in the 2020-21 season at the Round of 16 stage, but in 2019-20 there was that game at home which had late drama, an Arsenal exit, and side helping of Covid-19 after Evangelos Marinakis tested positive for the virus – after which Mikel Arteta became infected and football (and much of the world) shut down.
Strange times.
I don’t know much about this iteration of the Greek side, they’re not replete with names I recognise, but they’re top of the table after five games, and will come to London to try and cause a bit of an upset. So, the focus is on us and what we might do with our team this evening. With West Ham on Saturday, I think Arteta should rotate a bit tonight, and players like Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ben White, Gabriel Martinelli, Christian Norgaard, and others ought to be in the mix for a place in the starting XI.
The only injury issues are Noni Madueke, Kai Havertz and Piero Hincapie, who is still out with a groin issue. Martin Odegaard is back after his impactful cameo at Newcastle, and for this game there’s room for Ethan Nwaneri who was with the team at St James’ Park but not picked in the 20 man squad for the match itself. Arteta explained that in his pre-game press conference, saying:
I talked to all the players and we had a meeting specifically about that and the scenarios that we’re going to have throughout the season. Some of them are going to start, some of them are going to finish the game, some of them are going to be on the bench and aren’t participating, and some of them, unfortunately, are going to be out of the squad because with the Premier League you have the limitation with the numbers.
Sometimes we have to travel more players because things can happen and somebody can get ill or we have a doubt with somebody, and unfortunately we have to do that. But the attitude of every player, because we have explained it to them and personally they know how we feel about it, has been really good and they will have the chances to play.
I do feel like tonight, without taking anything for granted at all, is one of the games where you can envisage quite a bit of rotation. The whole strategy of building a big squad with quality and experience is so that you can feel comfortable using it, and if things don’t work the way you want you have the ability to change things from the bench. West Ham have been tricky opposition for us in the last couple of seasons at home, so if we can do the job tonight, while ‘resting’ some key players for Saturday, then that’s the ideal scenario for me.
One thing I would like to see tonight is Viktor Gyokeres on the scoresheet. I thought his performance against Newcastle was good in a so-called ‘big game’, and I felt like it was a bit of step forward in comparison to his displays in other games of this stature (although his role in our goal against Man City was a bit overlooked because of the quality of Eberechi Eze’s pass and Martinelli’s finish). On that, and the way he dealt with Newcastle’s physicality, Arteta said:
I loved it. I absolutely loved how he took it. I told him that you’re going to get some decisions, some others not, stand up, you’re going to have two or three players around you in many moments, the ball is in the air, and a lot is going to happen. But I loved his reaction, I loved the way he handled the situation emotionally, and also because he was involved in a lot of dangerous moments that he created. He was very much involved in them. It’s a pity that he didn’t score a goal at the end, because in my opinion, he fully deserved it.
Obviously he should have had a penalty, and I strongly advise anyone to avoid any Howard Webb and Michael Owen clips today. Not simply because they feature Howard Webb and Michael Owen, but you’ll see previous videos where the head of the PGMOL completely contradicts himself over Sunday’s penalty incident and if we hadn’t won that game you might have been driven completely mad. Anyway, point is, a Gyokeres goal or two later would be very welcome ahead of the weekend.
Fingers crossed.
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Elsewhere, William Saliba’s new contract was made official yesterday. I wrote about it in more depth last week, and who amongst us doesn’t love a Big Willy extension? In seriousness though, it’s great news, he’s one of the best in the world, at 24 he’s got his peak years ahead of him, and the fact he’s committed to this club tells you so much about the potential we have.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. As ever we’ll have live blog coverage of the game for you, and all the post-match stuff – including player ratings and reaction – on Arseblog News.
For now, have a good one.
