Morning guys.
Champions League football returns this evening with Arsenal playing Athletic Club in Spain. It’s a 5-45pm UK time kickoff. Arsenal and Athletic Club have never faced each other in competitive football although we did beat them 3-0 during pre-season just a few weeks ago. For Mikel Arteta, he’s going home as he was born not far from Bilbao in San Sebastián – right at the top of Spain in the Basque Country.
During his pre-match press conference Mikel Arteta said:
We’re excited to start again from scratch in a beautiful place, in a stadium that is going to generate something special. We’re looking forward to that and I’m very excited again to step by step build some momentum, and start to have some wins. We landed in Bilbao, that’s normally where I land when I go back home to San Sebastian, it’s an hour’s drive from there. All my family is from there, and you just sense the passion, the rivalry, the football atmosphere. It’s great to be here – I’ve never been in this stadium before, so it’s a good experience.
He also confirmed that Gabriel Jesus, Bukayo Saka, Ben White, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard are ruled out of tonight’s fixture. I didn’t know this until I read it on the official website but should we win tonight, we’ll be the first club in the history of the European Cup to win six consecutive matches against Spanish sides, having beaten Real Madrid and Sevilla twice, as well as Girona during our first couple of campaigns back amongst the elite.
I know little about tonight’s opponents other than Nico Williams plays for them and if my memory serves me right, he was awful when we faced them in pre-season. He’s ruled out of tonight’s fixture anyway with an injury he picked up whilst on international duty. New summer signing Aymeric Laporte wasn’t signed in time to make Athletic’s Champions League squad and on top of that, the hosts have a number of problems in defence. Yeray Alvarez has just been handed a 10 month doping ban and Unai Egiluz is ruled out for the season with a cruciate knee ligament injury whilst Benat Prados recently suffered a knee injury which requires surgery. That’s a lot of defensive injury for any manager to deal with, including one as experienced as Ernesto Valverde.
Valverde loves to play fast-paced, pressing football in a 4-2-3-1. They average just 48% possession in La Liga and tend to be much more direct and incisive when they burst forward. They are strong from corners and wide free-kicks too, racking up 18 set play efforts on goal in less than 400 minutes of league action. Athletic Club, who tend to attack with pace and panache down the sides. Inaki and Nico Williams are usually their wide forwards, but also look out for right-back Jesus Areso. He has produced 18 open play crosses in four La Liga games, flying forward on the overlap. Alex Berenguer [above] is another to keep an eye on as he can play anywhere across the front line and chips in with plenty of goals and assists. Bright and technically excellent, Berenguer has made seven chances this season.
Valverde will want his players to press us, but given our quality on the ball, he may set up slightly more pragmatically than usual. If we begin to play through the thirds, they will switch to a hostile mid-block. Boasting La Liga’s best expected goals against number (2.0xGA), they defend well as a team and are not easy to break down. If we press Athletic, we could experience plenty of joy. Their defensive players have made several errors during the early weeks, so it could be a good idea to apply pressure in a bid to force fresh mistakes. Viktor Gyokeres, our new pressing machine, has a big role to play in this regard.
I think this has the makings of a really good game. Both teams are defensively strong, although Clarke has hinted at Athletic being prone to making mistakes of late, and both teams will want to start the campaign on a positive note.
Catch up in the comments.
Good morning Rico.
Off out shopping very shortly, back later.
Shopping done and dusted for another week
I believe this evening’s match is also being shown on Amazon Prime Video
Afternoon Cicero, I’ve been to indoor cricket 😝
TNT/Discovery+ for our game I believe. Prime is showing Totts..
Arsenal very much second best , lucky to be only one goal down. Too many passes going astray. Thirty one minutes, Arsenal get their first corner..it doesn’t clear the first defender.
Afternoon lads and lasses
Good post Rico. Enjoyed reading it much more than CL motivating me. I feel more motivated and forward looking to the EPL. And tbh even the FA Cup is more exciting for me. When we are out of CL I dont feel gutted as much as when we are out of the EPL and FA Cup. Each to his own I guess.
I hope today Kepa, Nwaneri and other players like MLS get to play. So thank goodness they have many problems as well. We dont have many problems atm but its always nice to see everyone get to play. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hincapie make his debut today with Eze taking the place in midfield and Martinelli playing on the left. Calafiori needs to be rested imo today.
I was at the new San Mames before Arteta :-). I was there three weeks ago where I visited the Museum and the Stadium. I predict a very tough game.
Dreadful mistake by Arsenal ‘keeper 2 – 1
Penalty. 3 – 1