Morning guys.
Arsenal have a few players who are yet to get high numbers of minutes on the pitch. Martin Zubimendi, Viktor Gyokeres, Piero Hincapie, Cristhian Mosquera, Bruno Guimaraes, Jurrien Timber, Mikel Merino and more recently, Myles Lewis-Skelly’s numbers have dropped too. William Saliba is yet to kick a ball for the first time for obvious reasons. Injuries have hampered two or three others in the above list too.
Lazy journalism equals players are on their way out of the club, perhaps as soon as January but I cannot see any departures materialising unless either an ridiculously high offer lands on Arsenal’s door or a player is dreadfully unhappy and pushing hard to get out. The latter is unlikely in my opinion despite those pesky media fellows suggesting differently. Just because they write about Chelsea, Atletico Madrid and even Real Madrid being interested in Martin Zubimendi, it doesn’t make it true. In fact the player himself has no intention of going anywhere as he told Marca:
There’s absolutely nothing to it, and I’m not close to anything. I haven’t wasted any energy on outside things. I’m busy enough trying to earn a place, get playing time, and fight to win this Premier League, which is looking so promising. I haven’t spent any energy on it, nor have I contacted anyone.
I’m calm and happy with how I’m handling this situation. It’s something I’ve never experienced before, and I think you learn from these situations too. I’m patient. When you’ve been playing a lot of minutes, and your role changes to not playing as much, I’m able to see the positive side. I think everything passes; just like last year the opposite happened to me and I played practically everything, this can change very quickly.
You might think I’m being naive but I think Mikel Arteta is trying to manage players minutes. Zubimendi was knackered by Christmas last season and then went off to the World Cup. The minutes Declan Rice has had so far kind of negates that idea but let’s not forget he had two weeks off during the last international break, as did others not away with their respective countries.
Meanwhile, Viktor Gyokeres was away with Sweden and playing every game. Lewis-Skelly was away with and playing for England whilst Zubimendi and Merino were featuring for Spain.
When a player like Rice, Gabriel, Konsa, Odegaard etc, the ones who one might consider to be crucial to the team, are on the pitch and the result is still hanging in the balance, I can kind of understand why Arteta might be reluctant to substitute them.
The only way to solve this is obvious, take our goal scoring opportunities far more often. There’s our problem and it’s been staring in the face for a long time. Arteta knows it too because it’s something he tends to mention after most of our games. With the opportunities we create, we really should be winning games a little more comfortably than we have. I mean no disrespect to our opponents by writing this by the way because often it’s great defending or goalkeeping which keeps the ball from rippling the back of the net but how many times do we see shots go high, wide, or both?
I know, it’s been said and written so often it’s become boring but it needs fixing. The low block we face often cannot be an excuse for our lack of goals or even our struggles to break a defence down because we know that playing quicker football will help solve that but shooting accuracy is something which comes naturally to players. Feed them well and they will score as no doubt Gyokeres will again prove for Sweden over the next few days.
This international break is the last of the year with March 2027 being the next one and my feeling is that this is when we’ll see more of the players who have been given less minutes so far. Saliba should gradually return which will make a difference to our defence in terms of Konsa getting a breather, Timber, Guimaraes, Hincapie and Mosquera’s fitness levels should increase and for once, we might, yes, might, actually go into the second half of the season with a fully fit squad.
Wouldn’t that be novel?
Catch up later.
