What’s going on your sick freaks? Just here for a little hit of Arsenal to get your daily grind going? Good work, good work.
Mikel Arteta gave full credibility to the news that we’re now at the phase of the project where training is more dangerous than playing games. I totally understand the idea of making training harder than games to make it easier for players, but warm downs taking out talent? Come on!
We had a training session planned after the game for the players that didn’t have enough minutes to give everybody the recovery day on Sunday, and to get everybody in the right rhythm. In two very unfortunate actions, we lost two players, and yeah, not great.
You lose players in games; we know that’s going to happen, but it’s really tough to stomach that warm-downs are jeopardizing our 1 game’s worth of momentum. Hincapie bothers me the most, mainly because he should have been more protected considering the issues he had with his time with the Ecuador team. Even Zubi is a bit weird, the man has played next to no minutes for Arsenal, and we still lost him. What were they doing in this training session? Casual bit of MMA to get into the mood for Lille?
Arteta’s view on it all?
Far from ideal.
Very easy, you don’t train. Never train, and they don’t get injured. That’s why the consequence of that is when they have to play, they have no rhythm, and when you ask them to play, they’re going to have no impact in the game. That could happen at the Emirates. It never happened in the seven years that I’ve been here. It could happen the next day in the training session, and that has happened before, and hopefully, [it’s] happened now, and doesn’t happen again. But what can you do? If I knew I had a crystal ball, I’d say, guys, go in the jacuzzi, everybody, and see you tomorrow.
I know we had plenty of issues last year, but this does feel like the learning curve pains of having a new fitness group. Maybe the agitation in the response is a slight acceptance of that.
What do I love the most about Mikel Arteta? He adds to the footballing lexicon.
‘Emotionally dominant’
If you’re accused of this in the office, boy, you are in trouble. But in football, I like it. Not sure what it means, I have to say.
We have to be emotionally dominant regardless of what the context is. It's easy to say, very difficult actually to do. We did it in the majority of the matches, which is great. We didn't do it in Brighton and we paid the price for that. There are always lessons and evolutions to make for the team and that's something extremely important because at the level that we played every three days, things will happen and you're going to have to be able to adapt and resolve those ones.
Still not sure, but I like that it’s something we’re working on. I guess when you get to a certain level in sport, the margins of your greatness include things like mood, personality, and how you go about your business. There was a steeliness in the way we played against Leeds in the second half that wasn’t present at Brighton. We almost gave up before the break, against Leeds, there was no chance we were exiting that home game with anything less than three points.
Emotional dominance can be epitomized in certain players. Bruno was almost the sole source of emotional dominance at Newcastle, but now he’s playing with players like Declan, Calafiori, Big Gabi, Konsa, Raya, and Saka… his personality fuels those around him. Spectacular stuff, you have to say.
We’ll be facing up to Olivier Giroud, one of the most handsome players to have graced The Emirates turf. Underfamed for his footballing abilities at Arsenal, for sure. His career grew once he left. He won all the trophies, putting in a goalless performance at the World Cup and winning it.
He bagged a lot of trophies in his late-blooming career. 4 FA Cups with Arsenal to be clear. He scored 105 goals for Arsenal, with 38 assists. He was far better than you remember, particularly for getting the best out of Ozil and Sanchez. I do sometimes wonder to myself how he’d have been in an Arteta system. Could he have unlocked him the same way he elevated Xhaka? Probably.
It was amusing that he totally tanked in America. Too many players come over here thinking it’ll be easy and it’s not. Back to Ligue 1 to bully teenagers in his latter years.
The game today is going to be interesting because although Lille are topping Ligue 1 at the moment, you’d imagine this represents the sort of side that you could bring big names in from the cold and give them minutes. Do we really need to see Kai out there when we have Gyokeres in need of minutes? Can we see Merino and Eze gets some game time. What about Mosquera?
Many questions… all evicerated by the reality that Arteta likes to go hard, early, in this comp. I just wonder if that approach has been complicated by the injuries post-Leeds, and the impact this strategy had on our freshness at the backend of last season? PSG are already resting their biggest names so they are fresh when it counts; will Arteta borrow some of those ideas when he can?
Doubtful, but we can dream!
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A massive night of Champions League football for Arsenal in their second game of the campaign.