Negative? No, just smart…

Morning all.

Today sees last seasons top two clubs go head to head in what should be a cracking game of football. Actually, it’ll probably be a game of ten million passes as Mikel Arteta and Guardiola try to outsmart each other.

Mikel Arteta:

We’re expecting a really competitive one. We’re going to the home of the champions, the team that I think in Premier League history has been the most consistent ever, not only in terms of results but in terms of dominance and consistent top performances. This is the challenge, we have to go there and prove that again we’ve made another step and we can compete.

Whether they’ve achieved all they have whilst breaking a lot of footballing rules or not along the way remains to be seen. At least the process of finding out is underway.

Erling Haaland is in ridiculous form having already scored eight goals in his last three Premier League games including hat-tricks against Ipswich and West Ham, and two against Brentford. Arsenal as a team have managed just six in total so far. What I will add though is that City haven’t been away to Totts or Villa yet. They do have a few injuries though with Ake and Bobb ruled out and de Bruyne is a doubt too.

Martin Odegaard, Mikel Merino, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney are still injured. However Declan Rice is available again after serving his one-match suspension.

January 2015 was the last time we came away from The Etihad with all three points. A Santi Cazorla penalty and an Olivier Giroud header secured the win. Nine years of Etihad frustration although at least last season we managed to come away with a point.

Both ourselves and City played midweek although we played a day after them and away from home. An interesting stat for you all, Guardiola’s team have only won two of their last seven matches following a midweek European game, drawing five and losing the other two. No, I don’t know what our numbers look like after a European match. Theirs are far more interesting. lol.

The back five picks itself I think unless Arteta is tempted to bring Calafiori into the side in place of Timber. I say that only because of his lengthy absence and how many minutes he’s already played. I think he’ll play Trossard in the Odegaard role as he did against Totts although Opta predicts that Rice, Partey and Jorginho will start today which if right, would hint towards a massive shift towards the defence with hope of a smash and grab goal or two on the break.

A win today would be fantastic but at the same time, a draw would be good result too. In fact if we replicate last seasons points tally against City, it would be great. Dropping two points at The Etihad didn’t cost us the title last season but a few poor results at home did when our finishing was woeful. Now we have even less attacking players and I’m already worried about where our goals are going to come from. Actually, I was concerned about that long before the season kicked off as were many of us. Sterling, our only attacking player signed in the summer is yet to really find his feet in this team let alone the back of the net.

Not for one minute do I expect Arteta’s team to go toe to toe with City in terms of possession or goal scoring opportunities. I think we’ll see a pragmatic approach with low risk attacking football from Arsenal. Rodri might have felt the need to criticise Arsenal for being too negative in this fixture last season but who cares? The game itself was scrappy because Arsenal didn’t allow City to find their rhythm. De Bruyne and Silva were kept quiet, as was Haaland.

Arsenal’s approach might be considered negative again today but if negative is what it takes to stop City from winning this game, then negative will do for me.

The officials for todays game:

Referee: Michael Oliver
Assistants: Stuart Burt, Dan Cook
Fourth official: Andy Madley
VAR: John Brooks
Assistant VAR: Richard West

Catch up in the comments.