Leeds preview: Change it around to try and find the attacking spark

Morning all.

It’s now 28 days since Arsenal last won a Premier League game, the 3-2 victory over Bournemouth on January 3rd. To say it’s overdue is something of an understatement. Today’s task is far from simple, away to a Leeds side who have lost just one of their last ten games, and who will surely view an Arsenal side in indifferent league form as worth having a go at.

I’m curious to see what Mikel Arteta will do with his team today. There’s surely a need to acknowledge this recent run by doing something different. Whether that’s a change of personnel in certain positions, tinkering with established roles, or a combination of the two we’ll have to wait and see.

The very least we can say is that he has plenty of options at his disposal. It looks like William Saliba and Leandro Trossard will be back after sitting out the midweek game against Kairat, and beyond 16 year old Max Dowman (who signed a new contract yesterday), there’s nobody else on the treatment table. So, his hands are not tied in terms of team selection, it’s just a matter of who he chooses.

I suspect we’ll see the return of Riccardo Calafiori at left-back, a player who gave us a lot before his injury, not just defensively. If you are going to ask one of your full-backs to roam and invert and play whatever kind of hybrid role you’d describe it as, you might as well ask him to do that job. He just has a level of attacking thrust that the other options on that side don’t.

If Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice return to midfield, there’s a question about who makes up that trio. Martin Odegaard’s form in the last few weeks hasn’t been where it needs to be, so is there scope for a change there? Some might look for Eberechi Eze to come into the side, and I wouldn’t be opposed to that at all, but it’d be the most Mikel Arteta thing of all time if he handed that job, away from home to a hard-running physical team, to Mikel Merino.

There’s also Kai Havertz to consider, and when the manager was asked if he was ready to play after his 45 minutes in midweek, he said:

He is ready. Obviously he started the other day, it’s been a long period and now we need to manage that load and the games that we’re going to select for him to start. But there was no reaction to that, I think it was super positive, you could see straightaway the impact that he can have in the team. So yes, he’s ready.

If he is a player he’s thinking about starting today, I’d be more inclined to see him give him the job up front, with Bukayo Saka on the right, and one of Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli or even Eze on the left. I suspect the latter is quite unlikely, with too much scar tissue from that Matty Cash moment at Villa Park, but as a way of doing something different structurally and tactically, I’d give it some serious consideration. Suffice to say though, there are plenty of ways to construct his side today, and I do think we need to see something a bit different after three disappointing results in a row in the league.

Leeds have been very solid since switching to a back three back at the back end of last year, and breaking down a well organised side who will stay compact and drop their wing-backs in to make it a five when defending will be a challenge. I don’t think they’ll be parking the bus or anything like that, they play with energy and intensity, and at home, when they’re in possession, they’ll have a go, so we need to be defensively more solid than we were last week. As I said yesterday though, the key thing for Arsenal today is to find a way to get going again as an attacking outfit, and hopefully the manager finds a way to do that today, and the players can respond to the setback at home last weekend.

Right, let’s leave it there this morning. As ever, we’ll have live blog coverage for you, all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News, and there’s a preview podcast on Patreon if you need something to listen to in the meantime.

For now, have a good one, and I’ll catch you later for the game.