The Arsenal welcome 1907 Como to The Emirates tonight for their final pre-season friendly (assuming we win the Community Shield, therefore making that a real match and not a friendly) hoping to end on a high after a mixed bag of results and performances.
The bumpy road so far has a lot to do with the personnel Mikel Arteta has been able to call upon, or more to the point who he hasn’t been able to call upon, but with everyone who is fit now back in training, it will be interesting to see who is deemed ready to play a part tonight. One player that I am expecting to play a part is Bruno Guimaraes, who is likely to add a bit more structure to our midfield whereas there is rumours that Eberechi Eze is going to be included in the squad as well, so it really does feel like we’re getting somewhere now. This is what I think the starting eleven is going to be:
Arrizabalaga
White
Mosquera
Gabriel
Calafiori
Guimaraes
Lewis-Skelly
Odegaard
Tzolis
Havertz
Dowman
Subs to come on:
Eze
Nwaneri
Gyokeres
Hincapie
Martinelli
Salmon
Subs we really shouldn’t be brining on:
Jesus
Nelson
Vieira
The team above is the one that I think has the most structure to it, in terms of balance, but it might be that Mikel Arteta tries to shoe-horn Kai Havertz into midfield so he can play Viktor Gyokeres, which in my opinion would be a mistake. Some players like Guimaraes are likely to only play about 30 minutes, so this will be changing quite a lot throughout the night, but I’d really like to see how we do with a proper 6, 8 and 10.
Regarding the subs that shouldn’t be coming on, I don’t mean to be harsh as they’ve there all during their time and Arsenal, with some of them delivering some unbelievable moments that I’ll remember for a long, long time (Bournemouth anyone?), but they need to be moved on now. For both the sake of their own careers and for the Arsenal squad as a whole. These players are not going to be part of our plans for the new season, so the minutes they’ve been taking up really need to be going towards other members of the squad or academy players.
Myles Lewis-Skelly drama
Be honest, did you get sucked in by yesterday’s silliness?! I usually do, but I managed to take a step back yesterday and see it all for what it was – baseless. The journalists that ran the story were clearly all informed by someone (likely on the play side or an intermediary), but the really reliable ones never picked it up. So either the likes of David Ornstein, Gunnerblog, Sami Mokbel etc. weren’t told about this apparent offering of Lewis-Skelly around most of the teams in the league, or they heard it and didn’t run it as they were skeptical about the source. I imagine it is the latter and that’s why I held off on my outrage!! It wouldn’t make any sense though, would it? To have an academy player start in the Champions League final in May and then sell him to one of your rivals a few months later. Nah, Lewis-Skelly is going nowhere, at least for the time being. Expecting a big season from him.
Anymore for anymore?!
It’s quite right now, like, really, really quiet! Are we done? Is that it for the transfer window? After the Vinicius Junior debacle, I was really hoping we would pivot quickly onto the next target on the list, but there has been so little noise since then.
Looking at the left winger market, I do actually believe that we might be done on that front. There’s so little out there right now. Especially in the profile that we want. If Gabriel Martinelli leaves, we need a pacy winger to replace him. We lack raw pace in our front line so we can’t sell our only speedster and then bring in another ‘wing-fielder’ who likes to cut in and link up. There’s been loose links to Juventus star, Kenan Yildiz, but it seems that the Old Lady wants to keep hold of him and again, he doesn’t really fit the profile that we need at this stage.
The only option out there is Bradley Barcola, but the price is absolutely ridiculous and he seems Liverpool bound in any case. I’m not entirely sold on Barcola in any case, so I don’t think this is the deal that we would go all out for. There’s a reason why PSG are moving him on and I can’t for the life of me think why they believe he’s worth £145m!! At £80m, I think we’d be there. Maybe up to £100m, but nothing over that.
So it seems to me like Gabriel Martinelli is staying put for now, despite links to Galatasaray and the like, as if we don’t have a replacement lined up, he’s surely not for sale.
One to keep an eye on.
One final note, I broke my cardinal rule and watched a YouTube highlight reel of Ezri Konsa before we had agreed a fee…we need this guy!!! Very impressed. Let’s hope this one moves closer in the next couple of days, as it’s not that long until we play Aston Villa, so I’d rather he was lining up on our side of the pitch than theirs! Let’s see.
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