Arsenal v Atletico, a first encounter…

Morning all.

This is a rare thing, almost as rare as hens teeth and I found it in The Daily Mail:

Arsenal have made the best defensive start to a season in their history. Mikel Arteta’s team have shipped just three goals in eleven games in all competitions which is the best effort of any team in Europe and beats a previous record of four set by Arsene Wenger’s team in 2007/08.

Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Fulham on Saturday night was scrappy but the Premier League leaders have just played back to back games without the opposition even having a shot.

Remember when, after losing 1-0 at Liverpool in August, Arsenal were being hammered by the TV pundits for not being adventurous enough?

I do. It sounded like nonsense at the time and so it has proved.

Champions League football returns tonight with Arsenal hosting Atletico Madrid. My knowledge of tonight’s opponents floats between little none but I do know they are the masters of dark arts and have a reputation for being defensively strong. Arsenal have played them before in Europe but that was before the days of Mikel Arteta and this squad making history between the two clubs irrelevant.

Anyway, I did a bit of research online to find out what today’s Atletico Madrid is about.

For over ten years now, Diego Simeone’s teams have been known for their resilience, compactness and defensive qualities. They press hard and are ruthless in transition. This season though, not all has gone their own way, dropping points against Deportivo Alaves, Espanyol, Real Mallorca, Elche, and Celta Vigo in the league. The walloped Real Madrid 5-2 though. In the Champions League, they were 2-0 down against Liverpool at Anfield, fought back to 2-2 before a very late van Dijk goal won the game. Their second game was a 5-1 hammering of Eintracht Frankfurt.

From what I’ve read on Total Football Analysis Atletico have looked way off of being the disciplined unit which once “thrived on suffocating opponents and striking with precision”. Instead, they are referred to as having “possession without penetration, pressing with a lack of coordination, and a defence no longer impenetrable”. A side unsure of its own identity.

Hopefully, whatever confusion or struggles Atletico may be going through, I hope they continue tonight. When the fixtures were announced for the league format, I wasn’t looking forward to this one but now it’s here, I am. Very much so.

This is what Champions League football is all about, some of the best clubs in Europe going head to head and with this new league system, we don’t have to wait until the knockout stages to get to see them. We as a club have two more big clubs to face after tonight, Bayern Munich at The Emirates in November and then Inter Milan away in January next year with SK Slavia Praha and Club Brugge in between. Kairat At The Emirates is our final league phase fixture but hopefully we’ll be qualified for the knockout stage before then.

Mikel Arteta on coming up against Diego Simeone and how highly he rates him:

At the highest level, I think what he’s done since he got to Atletico has been outstanding, not only what he has achieved but the way he’s done it. I think the identity that he has created for the club, for the team, the spirit, I think they are very simple and clear to identify, and that’s because the manager is very much them. That’s extremely difficult to achieve for a short period of time and to do it for 14 years, I think he’s been there now, he’s done something incredible so it’ll be a pleasure to meet him.

I’m sure it’ll be an even greater pleasure for Mikel Arteta if he can beat him.

Piero Hincapie is back in the squad tonight which is good news and there are no new injury concerns after our 1-0 win over Fulham. Ben White is fit and healthy too. Having picked yellow cards in both of our opening two Champions League fixtures, Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice are one booking away from a one-game suspension.

Catch up in the comments.