Morning all.

This coming weekend sees Arsenal travel to Manchester to play Utd on Sunday afternoon but before the game kicks off, Mikel Arteta and his players will know whether Fulham have managed to put a dent in City’s title hopes. Pep Guardiola has said in the past that he doesn’t like the trip down to London and now he has two to make. Craven Cottage on Saturday for a lunchtime kickoff and then he and his players return on Tuesday to play Totts.

Two other key fixtures take place this weekend, Totts v Burnley on Saturday afternoon and Aston Villa v Liverpool on Monday night. If Totts beat Burnley, as I expect them to, they’ll be just 4 points behind Villa with a game in hand and should Liverpool beat Aston Villa, Totts will go into their game knowing that only a win against City would give them a chance of securing Champions League football next season.

But of course, all of the above will be irrelevant if Arsenal don’t win at Old Trafford and that’s the tricky bit. Utd don’t have much to play for really as the best they can do is finish in a Europa League spot. Even if they win both of their games in hand of Aston Villa, they still can’t overtake them. Nor can Chelsea or Newcastle for that matter but they can still overtake Totts.

Last season, we came away from Old Trafford with nothing.

Mikel Arteta’s team started the game really well. Both sides spurned early chances but with less than 15 minutes, Gabriel Martinelli had the ball in the back of the net. However, VAR sent referee Paul Tierney to the pitch side monitor and the goal was subsequently disallowed as Martin Odegaard was deemed to have committed a foul in the buildup. An absolute joke then and even more so today having seen what Christie got away with at the weekend. Martinelli caused Utd all sorts of problems with only de Gea preventing him from getting on the scoresheet. We went into half-time a goal down after Anthony scored just after the half an hour mark. A sucker punch really as we’d been in control of the game.

After the break, we saw a couple of chances go begging again but then Bukayo Saka brought the scores level. Bruno Fernandes then set up Rashford to restore Utd’s lead and again to provide Eriksen with a simple tap in.

The starting eleven that day was:

When Utd took a 2-1 lead, Mikel Arteta turned to his bench. Nketiah, Tomiyasu, Vieira and Smith Rowe replaced Odegaard, Lokonga, White and Zinchenko. The changes didn’t work but desperate times called for desperate measures I guess.

We’ll go to Old Trafford with a very different looking squad this time. Havertz, Partey, Rice and probably Tomiyasu will be in the starting eleven. David Raya too, fresh after securing his golden glove award.

The victory for Utd was flattering because in every department, Arsenal bossed the stats barring goals scored. 61% possession, 16 shots to Utd’s 10 but just we managed just 3 on target. 4 if one counts our disallowed goal which really should have stood.

After the game, Mikel Arteta said:

We have to learn from that. We lacked the discipline that is necessary in certain areas of the pitch against these world-class players to prevent certain spaces, because overall when you look at the performance and the way we played, obviously the result should’ve been very, very different.

He’s absolutely right, the result should have been very different. This Sunday, it must be different.

Catch up in the comments.

 

 

 

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