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Arsenal get most difficult possible start – how important is momentum?

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Morning folks and welcome to Thursday. It’s another glorious day in London today, so I’m bringing my work stuff into the garden and do a proper old school “shall we take our workbooks outside, kids” situation for my working day. Screw it, life is too short.

I wonder if that’s how Mudryk is feeling today. Certainly he’ll be thinking about his football career, in which it might be cut even shorter, if his doping ban is upheld and he gets four years. Apparently he hasn’t played since November last year and so, even if he gets off, he’ll have essentially missed most of a season by the time this all gets cleared up. And the Arsenal connection? Well, as we all know, that is a bullet dodged, with the player flattering to deceive ever since Chelsea signed him for that whopping £88.5million. Wowsers. We got pelters for Pepe, but Chelsea aren’t getting nearly as much heat for the Ukrainian, but then again that’s what happens when you are a big club versus an artificially inflated club. That pivot for Trossard is looking definitely a wise move right now.

Whether Trossard is on the starting XI teamsheet for that first trip to Manchester on 17th August remains to be seen though, because depending on what the situation is, we might have some shiny new signings in contention. For as you know as well as I do right now, we’ve been ‘gifted’ another incredibly difficult start to our season in our first six games, playing three of last season’s top six in those matches, with two of those away from home.

I saw somebody say “if you think these fixtures are random you are naive” and I’m inclined to agree. It’s funny that Man City and Chelsea – having played in the Club World Cup – have themselves a very nice start to the season and as Sky Sports has analysed, City in particular have one of the most favourable run ins.

Why does this matter, we all play the same teams, right?

Of course, but what everyone needs to acknowledge here too, is that momentum is massive in football. The first of our three recent runners up finishes came because we got off to a brilliant start. We won five of our first six games, we were top of the league and it helped to sustain a title push until the later parts of the season. Last season Liverpool had a nice and easy start and that helped them to get to 15 points out of 18. It helped them to sustain their title win, which was helped by everyone else falling away. So the start to the season and building momentum matters. What the Premier League have done with our fixtures is give us the most difficult opportunity to build that momentum.

Now, on the flip side, if we come out of those first six fixtures in good shape, then that changes everything. With 18 points to play for, if we’ve picked up anything more than 12 points, I’ll be pretty satisfied with that. United might be terrible, but our record up there is pretty abysmal, with two wins in the League up there dating back to 2006 – that’s nearly 20 years and only six points across 18 football matches. So I take nothing for granted regardless of how rubbish United were last season. You’d expect us to beat Leeds at home, as well as Forest away in the next Premier League game we have, but before that Forest game is Liverpool away (again, I don’t need to tell you how bad our record is at Anfield, but the winless streak stretches back way longer than United, I’ll say that much), then it’s Forest at home before the small matter of City at home and Newcastle away. If we’re sitting anything north of 12 points (four wins our of six) then regardless of the league position, I’d be feeling pretty happy about that.

Then I immediately look to the end of the season and whilst there’s the inevitably daunting trip to City (a reminder that we haven’t won up their since Santi and Coquelin were in our midfield) on 18th April, after that it’s Newcastle at home, Fulham at home, West Ham away, Burnley at home and Palace away. If we’re within touching distance of the league around that time, I’d really fancy our chances.

James and I are going to have a chat about that tonight on the Same Old Arsenal show this evening, if you fancy joining us – you can watch here.

Elsewhere from a news perspective, we have Carlos Cuesta bidding Arteta farewell, as he heads off to Parma to be their manager. At 29 it is mad to me to think how quickly this bloke has risen up to the top, but he’s clearly got something about him, because being number one in a league like that at such a young age takes some cajones. Arteta will be gutted I suspect, because he was highly rated at the club, but perhaps there will be an opportunity to bring in somebody equally as good or even better? Changing up the back room staff every once in a while is not the worst thing in the world. We know that this has happened in elite sports all the time, so I don’t suspect there will be much moping around by Arteta – instead he’ll be looking at what he can do to improve his coaching staff and get more marginal gains than he did last season.

Other than that I don’t really think there’s much else going on. The rumblings about strikers keep on keeping on and at this stage I’m just becoming a bit shoulder-shruggy over it. It’s going to become a saga, I’ve accepted that, so we just need to be mindful and acknowledge that ‘gentleman’s agreements’ mean nothing and that Arsenal are going to – eventually – pay more than they probably should for one of the striking options.

Catch you all tomorrow. Maybe we get some kind of breaking news today (here’s hoping).

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.