Morning all.
We now know five of the eight clubs who’ll drop into the Europa League from the Champions League are. Ajax, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla and Juventus. Any one of the four cubs in Totts group could yet drop into the Europa League but if Totts lose is France to Marseille next Tuesday, it’s likely to be them. RB Leizbizg or Shakhtar Donetsk and FC Salzburg or AC Milan will drop out of the Champions League too.
Who would have thought Barcelona and Juventus would fail to qualify from their group eh, but that’s this crazy game called football for you. Anything can happen.
Having won four out of four, Arsenal need just one point to finish top of the group which should in theory, give us a better draw in the knockout stage. I don’t believe that though because after the group phase is over, every fixture is difficult.
Mikel Arteta will no doubt, hope to avoid facing a play-off against one of the sides knocked out of the Champions League.
Last week we made the first step which was to qualify for the next round. We need to win [on Thursday] because we want to finish first. This competition is getting harder and harder. It looks like the next round is going to be extremely competitive. That’s why finishing first in the group and avoiding another two games is such an important thing for us.
PSV Eindhoven will be a tough test this evening, tougher in my opinion than last week’s match as Ruud van Nistelroyd’s team will have their own fans urging them on.
From Mikel Arteta’s pre match press conference:
Injuries:
We had Marquinhos who wasn’t feeling good today and he hasn’t travelled, but the rest are OK.
Picking strong teams in the Europa League:
We don’t have that many players! We bring the players that we have and we have brought four kids with us so we cannot even make up the squad, but we need to put 11 players out and they need to play – we cannot change those 11 players every game.
There’s a message to the Arsenal board in there, Mikel wants some more players and if we’re to believe what’s written in The Mirror, he might get them in January as there’s £50m available to spend.
Bradley Ibrahim, Matt Smith, Catalin Cirjan and Karl Hein are likely to be the four ‘kids’ Mikel Arteta was referring to. Shame Marquinhos is unwell though, as it means Bukayo Saka is likely to start again unless Mikel Arteta has a different plan up his sleeve.
I think we’ll see a very similar team to the ones we’ve seen so far in this competition with the ‘first team’ players rotated again.
Just need to keep an eye on the PSV wingers..
COYG’s
Thanks for the post Rico, as I said earlier, Nelson should come in for Saka and Eddie for Jesus. A single point tonight could make a big difference to our on going Europa League campaign.
I hope so Cicero, surely Saka needs to sit this one out.
Nice to see the sticky tape has worked
UEFA banned PSV from selling tickets to its fans for the team’s game in Norway next week against Bodø/Glimt.
The Dutch club must also pay a fine of 40,000 euros ($40,000) and compensate Arsenal for damage to seats and the stadium last week.
So they can’t go to the Artic circle for what might become a meaningless game. Even if we win tonight their goal difference is so superior to Bodo’s that the Norwegians would have to win by 5 or 6 goals to turn it around.
It is important for us to win the league because of not having a play off against one of the Champions League drop outs . Although we shoud beat Zurich it would be nice to have the luxury of playing the stiffs in a home match and this has to be our aim tonight .
A nice 1 nil to The Arsenal will do..
I would hope VanHorseface won’t set his side up to defend from deep again. Dull as ditchwater.
I kept my eye on Gakpo last week to see what all the fuss is about. He’s tall and quick but lacked control and skill. It was a one off game, so he may have had an off night, but he didn’t look that impressive. Simons was their best player last week.
No injuries please.
UEFA have acted promptly and correctly to fine PSV and make Eindhoven pay for the damage their ‘fans’ caused, it must have been quite extensive for it to become newsworthy as I’d imagine that the away end at the Emirates suffers from criminal damage on a regular basis. Didn’t the Scum regularly smash up the toilets?
I knew watching Blue Peter would pay off one day Potter.
1-0 or 1-1, no injuries and I’m sure we’ll all be happy.
Serves PSV right, behaviour like that is disgraceful.
Matt Turner is ruled out of tonight apparently. Ramsdale or Hein I wonder…
Arsenal:
Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, Saliba, Holding, Tierney, Lokonga, Xhaka, Vieira, Odegaard, Martinelli, Nketiah.
Subs: Hein, White, Cedric, Gabriel, Partey, Smith, Cirjan, Ibrahim, Nelson, Saka, Jesus.
Hi Rico.. how are you? All good, I hope. I managed to go to the reverse fixture last week – first time I’ve been this season – tickets are like gold dust now unfortunately ☹️
The PSV fans were a rowdy lot and
their team weren’t anything special, so think we’ll be alright tonight.
Had a little chuckle to myself last night and hope Guendouzi, Tavares and Sanchez do the biz against the Spuds next week!
Saka is rested 🙂
Ramsdale; Tomiyasu, Holding, Saliba; Tierney; Ødegaard, Lokonga, Xhaka; Fabio Vieira, Martinelli, Nketiah.
Rico… and Kolasinac (against the Spuds) how could I have forgotten him? 😁
Hi Sue, long time and all that, I thought you’d deserted us.
I watched the end of that Totts game on YouTube, so so funny. Tavares seems to be getting bad reviews now after his fast start. Really hope Marseille thumps Totts next week.
Good to see you back by the way..
Ha ha re Kolasinac, wasn’t he one of your Arsenal faves?
That looks a pretty reasonable starting eleven with enough on the bench to change things round if necessary.
I cannot believe that BT Sport are still going on about the Xhaka thing, three bloody years later. Their lack of imagination is staggering.
Cole was doing all he could to resurrect the Keown RvN incident too. Keown wasn’t having it…
There’s the warning…
VAR to the rescue. Without it see would be one nil down. The linesman on the far side got the other call right.
Martinelli with our best chance of the half. We have very little penetration down the right, Tomi is staying back to counter their threat down their left side. Perhaps Nelson could come on for Sambi and push Vieria further inside.
Been so busy of late, Rico – hardly had any time for surfing the net. Yes, Kolasinac was, well remembered, Rico 🙂
Not a great half, hope we wake up in the 2nd.. and to think I said we’d be alright haha!
I only remember bizarre stats and facts Sue. 😂
Oh dear, the wheels have come off.
I really don’t see the point in these changes. Not when we are at home in the last Europa fixture. It’ll be just our luck to see Jesus, Saka or Partey get injured.
Doctored pitch notwithstanding, we got just about everything wrong tonight.
Little seems to be going right recently..
Former Arsenal centre back Pablo Marì got stabbed by a mad man in a shopping center close to Milano, per reports.
He’s amongst six people stabbed — and he’s now at the hospital.
(Fabrizio Romano)
I cant make my mind whether PSV were good or whether the fringe players. are not up to it .
I dont have BT so I watched it on a stream with no sound. So no interruptions just observation and I just couldnt see where we would get anywhere . It’s easy to write off players but it can’t be denied that many were totally anonymous . I dont think that they believed either they just seemed out of it.
Sunday against Forest suddenly takes on a new importance . They need to get back in the saddle and quick.
Terrible news from Milan.
Best wishes to all the victims.
Omg, that’s awful. Hope they all get well soon and none are seriously injured…
I don’t know what to make of that 95 minutes. Nothing seemed to flow and the players looked like they wished they were elsewhere.
I agree Rico. It was quite awful. The team looks low on energy, confidence and ideas. It all seems very makeshift to me.
Absolute rubbish second half, Arteta’s substitutions made no sense whatever. Totally disorganised, disjointed and no cohesion.
It’s a worry Adam.
The subs didn’t make sense to me either Cicero, the game was pretty much over.
At least the Arsenal Women won..
Morning Rico and all. Nice to see Sue back.
Didn’t get to see the match, was we crap or just still tired.
I hope Pablo Mari and the other 4 injured get well soon, my best wishes to the family of the Person who died, good news sounds like the have court the attacker before he could do any more harm.
Morning
New post up now
Mari out for 4 weeks apparently according to the radio although a source in France is saying two months before training. Hopefully he completely recovers and gets to play again after the world cup.
At 1 nil I could understand the substitutions as we might have been able to grab a draw but once we got 2 down there was no point.