Hello and how are you? The 30th of November sees the Mighty Cannon make a visit to west London and take on Chelsea FC at Stamford Bridge. Kick off is at 17.30pm central European time (4.30pm UK time) Expected weather is clear with some cloud and temps 6° (feels like 2°) and 0% chance of rain.
After the successful mid-week Champions League victories for both sides, this fixture has now been elevated to another level of importance. A win would put the Gunners way out in front (to the disgust of many) but a loss would mean the furious glee of keyboard and pundit schadenfreude vlogging us in the social media square of justice for the next week or so. How nice it must be to know everything and tell others exactly how it is and how it should be?
The words I’m reading online are putting Chelsea into the driving seat, especially after the Barca game, but two of Chelsea’s goals were utterly unusual keystone-cop capered mistakes by Barca, and certainly despite all the goals disallowed for offside, the scoreline flattered Chelsea somewhat? And as we saw (heard) with some voices from the Bayern camp after their loss, whatever you say or do, someone will criticise it.
The pursuit of perfection mostly means going down a rabbit hole of eventually failure (he wrote not bothering to give any examples) and a state of total perfection exists in utopia, a place where we can’t. It might mean weathering a storm of expected parasitical criticism, but pragmatism (at least to a degree) mostly yields a good harvest and the Gunners are quite capable of playing dynamic football and scoring exciting goals as much as having a grabba from set pieces. But who needs facts when aggrieved egos are upset?
Anyway enough of that crap, Chelsea are still without Mudryk (suspended) and Levi Colwill (ACL) and Romeo Lavia (thigh) out for the Blues, and the pundits are frothingly excited that Cole Palmer is available for the first time since 20th of September but perhaps Maresca will play him as a sub rather than risk him as a starter?
Big Vic is still not available ( hamstring) and neither is Kai (knee) but may mysteriously turn up on the bench, but def Gabriel Magalhaes (hamstring) and Gabriel Jesus (fitness) be not available at all.
Hopefully Trossard might be able to bounce back after his tumbles against Bayern and let it be a happy Advent hunting ground for Madueke who returns to his old neighbourhood.
Statto HQ have reckoned up the hot facts and figures and calculated that the Arsenal have a 43.1% chance of winning and Chelsea are at 28.3 %. Next up Brentford at the Emirates. So COYG!
Mills
Mikel keeps us guessing about who will or will not be fit to make the bench so wo knows, the good thing is our squad strength means we can cope. If Trossard makes it I expect the same starting eleven that demolished Spurs. Despite Chelsea being put forward as our main rivals it’s difficult not to feel confident a bad result will come, they always do, but if it’s not today we will holding te high ground running up to Christmas.
Exciting times. Chelsea will I suspect , have a go, and that will do us nicely.
Enjoy the game.
Pedantic George.