A weekend of footy-celebration beckons as we move from the euphoric high of trouncing Ludogorets for six unreplied back to the EPL plus Arsene Wenger turns 67 on Saturday. Hey lets keep the champagne on ice just yet......first another 3 points in the bag, then we can celebrate. The team from Bulgaria will definitely feel hard done by the football
gods for not rewarding their “effort” when they look at the final score but that’s
football, eat or be eating is the name of the game most of the time. Arsenal’s
run of six wins in a row will be examined by Aitor Karanka's men from the riverside this weekend
at the Emirates.
Middlesbrough haven’t particularly had a run of good form with
only one win in 7 EPL games for them against Sunderland FC way back in august.
That seems like a long distant memory in this league where things can take a
turn for the better or worse in so short a time, while we seem unplayable at
the moment based on our hot form. Nicely poised for a potential banana skin here if you ask me so lets not get too cocky. After our champions league win on Wednesday the
Boss recognized the way we seem to lose concentration after establishing some
sort of lead thereby giving the opposing team a look-in …..Swansea game in mind
here. Stronger teams would probably have punished us more even against Ludogorets
when they had that spell of good possession. Wenger alluded to it at his press conference
when he kind of admitted the need for a “relentless attitude”;
“First by analysing the games and noticing that you have periods
where you are not as relentless as you would like to be,” he replied. “You also
do it by reminding yourself that the game is never won, even at 2-0 up in the
Premier League.
“Teams fight hard to come back and we’ve had lots of experience of
that. You learn from your experiences and we learned against Swansea because we
could have been punished. Hopefully we have learnt from that without suffering
any damage.”
Its good when you believe in
your ability which, Wenger is almost guilty of blindly overestimating, but it’s
also nice to see that the boss recognizes that this is a tough league [not the
best …sorry] with teams that fight to the dearth. I would expect this to be
communicated down to the players well, if we wanna really challenge on all
fronts against the very best.
Like I said, Middleborough haven’t
exactly had a good start to the season but will by no means be a pushover. They
have a couple decent players in Negredo, Ramirez, their highest goal score so
far…Stuani and our own Calum Chambers who is on loan thus won’t be eligible to
play against the gunners in this match. They have the third best defence
currently in number of goals conceded, losing only one match by more than a
goal margin against Everton. The biggest problem has been their lack of goals.
Its telling of a team when Calum Chambers currently stands as joint second top
scorer for them with one goal. Here is hoping his absence upsets the balance of
their defence and the gunners do capitalize on it. Middlesbrough’s main threat is
from crosses into the box by Stuart Downing and Ramires as they have Negredo
who can hold up play quite comfortably. Mustafi and Koscielny would have to
remain organized and switched on always to thwart any threats especially aerial
threats from them.
Our team selection will probably
see a few tweaks Cech back in goal, Monreal should still be thrusted back into
the left back berth, Carzola remains doubtful after picking up that ankle Knock
on Wednesday, Xhaka is serving his red card suspension. The front four should
remain the same even though I would like to see Perez start with Sanchez or
maybe Walcott rested a bit. Having said all that Wenger knows so, why predicted
line up will look like this.
Subs: Ospina, Gibbs, Oxlade, Elneny , Perez, Rene Adelaide, Gabriel.
 |
| Courtesy The Guardian Uk. |
Like his 20th anniversary, I hope the boiz are reved up enough to get a good win and a clean sheet to add as well. Anyway that’s it from the team, heres to a very happy birthday celebration with a win for you Arsene, enjoy the game wherever you are..…Ciaooo
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