It’s Bournemouth away right now within the Premier League, and primarily based on what he mentioned in his press convention yesterday, Mikel Arteta has some damage points to cope with.
After the sport towards Brentford on Wednesday, he talked about having 7 gamers again at London Colney due to health points. We knew that Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Thomas Partey, Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard, and Jurrien Timber made up six of these, so who was the mysterious quantity seven? In his presser, he talked about that William Saliba and Fabio Vieira each had knocks which prevented them from taking part in within the EFL Cup sport, in order that’s really eight!
On-line chatter means that Rice, Saliba and Saka are a part of the squad right now, however with Man Metropolis on the horizon, which may issue into the crew choice determination right now. Let’s not overlook there’s a midweek Champions League sport towards Lens too, so the supervisor has some considering to do. Does he danger gamers right now and doubtlessly worsen one thing, or does he belief in his squad after they went away to a tough place on Wednesday to beat a powerful Brentford aspect.
It appears like a kind of the place there’s all the time going to be an argument for the other. If he’s cautious with large gamers like Rice, Saliba and Saka, and the sport doesn’t go our means, folks will marvel why they had been there in the event that they weren’t prepared to start out and perhaps there are questions on not taking the opposition significantly sufficient. If he begins one or all of them and there’s an damage, he’ll be accused of not taking care of the gamers correctly.
That concern of participant welfare was one thing he was requested about within the second a part of his press convention. The calls for on prime degree footballers are so excessive, between membership and worldwide commitments, there’s barely any downtime, and it led this week to Vincent Kompany suggesting there must be a cap of what number of video games a participant can play in a season.
Arteta’s response:
One thing needs to be mentioned significantly about the place we’re taking the sport, the publicity of the gamers and the way we’re going to permit it. As a result of, as properly, if we’re not going to alter that, then we’re going to have larger squads. For those who’re going to have larger squads, we want larger assets. And it’s important to enable groups and squads and supply the monetary assets as properly to have squads of 30 gamers.
As a result of on the finish it’s a means of limiting a participant to play 50 or 60 video games, having a squad of 20 or having a squad of 30. It’s a unique sport. We already made some adjustments with the 5 subs. Now if anyone tells you, no, tomorrow is just three subs, we might all be shocked, we aren’t used to it. So, there’s something that needs to be modified as a result of at that degree is unimaginable to take care of.
All I can say about right now’s crew is that the gamers who got here in towards Brentford demonstrated now we have a deep squad now that’s able to dealing with out eight first crew gamers as we noticed. That ought to give Arteta some reassurance that if he’s a bit cautious, they’ll nonetheless produce what we want right now towards Bournemouth. We additionally should acknowledge that his choices shall be made with far better data than is accessible to us in regards to the extent of the accidents and the way the gamers themselves are feeling.
I feel there shall be some apparent adjustments, with the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus and Martin Odegaard coming again in, and I do hope the Brazilian performs up prime. If Martinelli and Trossard stay out, and Reiss Nelson can’t get a begin after his good show throughout the week, then there’s one thing incorrect. He couldn’t have performed extra to indicate the supervisor he is able to play, not least with the massive defensive shift he put in on prime of the purpose that received the sport.
So, let’s see what occurs, and who is accessible. As ever, we’ll have live blog coverage, in addition to all of the post-game stuff on Arseblog News.
Within the meantime, there’s a preview podcast on Patreon to move among the time, and I’ll catch you in a while for the sport.
Come on Arsenal!
