Three points, and a little extra, up for grabs against Brighton

Morning all.

Arsenal are in Premier League motion this afternoon, when Brighton come to go to. On paper a difficult sufficient sport with out something extra-special so as to add to the event, however I believe what occurred in opposition to them final season has been festering away within the thoughts of Mikel Arteta.

All of us bear in mind the absurd purple card issued to Declan Rice, and in his pre-game press convention the Arsenal boss mentioned he was ‘pissed off’ at how we went all the way down to 10 males and in the end ended up drawing the sport. For a person who’s normally fairly guarded and who chooses his phrases very fastidiously, this was a bit uncommon and it tells you one thing about how he may be feeling about right now. He may even take within the go to to Brighton final season too, when a penalty was awarded in opposition to William Saliba that no one had ever seen earlier than, or since. So, past the significance of the factors for the title race, there’s one thing a bit extra at play right here right now, and we all know how Arteta likes to make use of issues like this as motivation for his group.

I believe the line-up will see a lot of the gamers who started on the bench on Tuesday return to the beginning XI, and whereas there’s not so much to select from on the again, it’s rumoured Gabriel is with the squad, which might clearly be an enormous enhance. I ponder if the plan is to get some minutes below his belt in some unspecified time in the future right now, with a view to beginning him in opposition to Villa subsequent week. A totally rotated midfield with Rice, Martin Zubimendi and Martin Odegaard is my guess, with Leandro Trossard and Bukayo Saka within the huge positions. Then it’s a alternative between Viktor Gyokeres and Gabriel Jesus up entrance.

Does he go for the man who scored in his final sport however struggled to get entangled typically play, or the man who did assist issues mesh within the cup sport however couldn’t discover the again of the online (partly attributable to some good saves from the goalkeeper)? I believe it is going to be Gyokeres, but when it was Jesus I don’t assume I’d be that shocked both. And it is a situation we’re going to should get used to – in addition to the gamers if they continue to be match, and when Kai Havertz will get added to the combo too. Completely different picks relying on type and so on, but additionally who the supervisor thinks is the most suitable choice for that particular opposition.

As for Brighton, we all know what they’re about, with harmful wingers, excessive urgent, and a file at our place that’s frustratingly good. They haven’t been in nice type of late, however it’s all the time a troublesome sport, and we’re going to have to boost the degrees significantly from our final dwelling fixture within the league if we need to take all three factors. It is a huge week within the title race, Metropolis have two very winnable video games on their schedule, and we’ve got to make sure that we profit from our two dwelling video games, beginning right now. There’s sufficient high quality in that group and off the bench to trigger anybody issues, so fingers crossed we will do this to Brighton (and likewise take a little bit of revenge for final season too).

Proper, I’ll go away it there. We did a little bit of preview podcast yesterday, chatting a bit about this sport, the EFL Cup win over Palace, Ethan Nwaneri and extra, and it’s ‘free to air’ over on Patreon proper now. As ever, we’ll have reside weblog protection of the sport, and all the standard stuff on Arseblog Information afterwards too.

Come on you reds!