Arteta looks for Arsenal identity ahead of Sporting clash

Good morning from Lisbon.

Arsenal and Mikel Arteta arrived yesterday evening, and the team news is mixed. Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard and Gabriel have all travelled, but Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber have stayed behind in London, not quite ready for this one. With a huge game on Saturday against Bournemouth, you have to imagine they’re taking a low risk approach to injury issues.

Still, I think this team will look pretty different from the one that started against Southampton on Saturday evening. David Raya will come back in, we’ll probably see William Saliba start, and I don’t think Myles Lewis-Skelly did anywhere near enough to keep his place so I think it’ll be Riccardo Calafiori at left-back in the absence of Piero Hincapie.

In midfield, it’ll be Rice and Martin Zubimendi with Martin Odegaard ahead of them. Viktor Gyokeres is sure to start against his old club, and I wonder if the wide players might be the same as at the weekend. Certainly Max Dowman made a case for himself with an impressive display, but perhaps the seniority of Noni Madueke might come into play. For me, I’d stick with the 16 year old, but I do recognise there is, maybe, a need to manage a player of his age just a little differently in terms of the physical burden we place on him. Then it’s Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli on the other side to complete the XI.

I watched Mikel Arteta’s press conference, and it was interesting to hear him refer more than once to Arsenal’s ‘identity’. When asked if his players might be emotionally impacted by defeat in the last two cup games, he said:

I think when you have the opportunity that we have, that has to be taken through excitement, through preparing yourself in the best possible way to focus on the present and the things that we have to do. And especially in our identity, very clear what is taking us on the way to where we are. That’s where we have to focus.

And on what that identity actually is:

Everything. It’s not philosophical. There are parts and identities created by behaviours, not with words in the world or with things that I want to achieve. We have so many facts in the areas that, in our opinion, make us the team and the club that we are.

For me, in terms of this season at least, that’s about trying to rediscover where we were in the first half of the campaign. Results were good, and we were very, very hard to beat. In fact, it used to be hard to even get a shot on target against us. Yes, the margins of some games might have been tighter than we’d like, but when you nullify the opposition as well as we did, it makes it very difficult for them to score.

At this point, I think the idea that we’re going to just burst into life as some kind of ruthless attacking machine doesn’t make much sense. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it and I do think it’s really important that at least a couple of our forward players find some goal scoring mojo, but after mistakes cost us goals in the Carabao Cup final and at St Mary’s on Saturday, my guess is the focus will be on eliminating those from our game first and foremost. Which, to be fair, is not an unreasonable priority.

I think the stability of the goalkeeper should help in that regard, and you’re looking for that midfield duo in particular to give us a platform to go and win this game. I know he produced an awful scuffed shot on Saturday, but overall I thought Martin Odegaard’s performance was quite encouraging, and in the absence of Eberechi Eze, we’re going to need him to deliver. Hopefully tonight is that night, and we can get a tune out of whichever front three the manager picks.

After two successive defeats, we need a win, and if it comes with the kind of performance that eases some of the nerves created by those last two games, then all the better. As we saw away at Bayer Leverkusen though, the dynamic of these two-legged ties can often make the first game a bit more cagey and closed than, for example, the group stage fixtures like the one we played against Sporting last season. Which is to say, I don’t think this is going to be easy, nor should it be, but if we can dig deep and give ourselves a little confidence boost it’d be very welcome ahead of the second leg and Bournemouth on Saturday.

So, fingers crossed for later, and I’m looking forward to seeing the team live again. Hopefully I’ll run into a few of you at the game or around town today, and as ever we’ll bring you live blog coverage later and all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News too.

For now, have a good one!