Morning all.
After a midweek journey to the north-west for the EFL Cup, we’re back in that neck of the woods today to face Liverpool in the Premier League.
The team news from the press conference was relatively promising, with Declan Rice, Riccardo Calafiori and Christos Tzolis all in training ahead of the game, and Mikel Arteta sounded relatively positive on Noni Madueke who missed out on the trip to Fleetwood Town. With Bukayo Saka out, and Max Dowman obviously suspended, he’ll start on the right and hopefully this run in the team will see him deliver a little more in terms of end product.
He got the backing of the manager beforehand, who said of him reaching his potential:
He has all the potential to do it, he has all the attributes to do it. He certainly has the will to do it because when you see him train every single day, he’s one of the players who enjoys the practice the most and wants to expose himself to all kinds of situations and actions. Now he needs to put the performance on the pitch.
Eberechi Eze should start on the other side, looking for his first Premier League goal contribution of the season, and I think the only other decision to be made is the construction of the midfield. Will it be Myles Lewis-Skelly or Bruno Guimaraes with Rice and Martin Odegaard? My own preference for a tricky away game is probably for Myles, because if you need to change something the Brazilian has attributes you can count on for that. However, he started him away in Munich, brought Lewis-Skelly on in his place when we were 2-1 down and that turned out all right. So, let’s see.
My guess is we’ll see: Raya, Timber, Konsa, Gabriel, Calafiori, Rice, Guimaraes, Odegaard, Eze, Madueke, Havertz
After two goals in the first three games of the season, Kai Havertz has gone five without a goal in the Premier League, so today would be a good day for him to get back on track and to find some form again. I’d like to see him stay more central, to be something of a focal point rather than drift around the way he likes to. Perhaps when you face good centre-halves as he will today that’s part of how you disrupt them, but right now there’s real focus on our strikers and what they’re delivering (or not delivering as the case might be), and I hope that he, and Viktor Gyokeres when he gets a run later in the game, can produce what we need.
As for today’s opposition they’re still a bit of a work in progress under Andoni Iraola, but they seem to be getting to grips with what he wants. It took him a bit of time at Bournemouth, and the same seems to be true at Anfield, but Liverpool’s only defeat of the season was to Man City, collapsing late on after going down to 10 men. They have a couple of injuries, but in Alexander Isak they have a dangerous centre-forward in good form, and a player who has caused our central defenders plenty of problems in the past. Gabriel and Konsa will have to be at their best today, the sharpness of his movement in the box is really tricky to deal with.
It’s been 14 years since we last won away at Liverpool in the league, something Arteta views as a record to change:
It’s an opportunity. I came here and in many places we were 20, 22 years, 18 years without winning, and we’ve been doing all these things, so on Sunday, that’s the opportunity that we have.
Regardless of how you might feel about going out of the League Cup, you can be sure Mikel Arteta’s pride will have been hurt by both the defeat and the gleeful reaction to it in certain quarters. He will demand a response from his team today, and if that brings about a win at a ground that hasn’t been favourable for us in recent years, then you wouldn’t be at all surprised. Nevertheless, I think today will be a real test for two sides, neither of whom are in tip-top form right now, and two excellent coaches whose connection and friendship goes back years to add an extra dimension to proceedings.
Let’s hope we can do the business.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. As ever, we’ll bring you live blog coverage of the game later, as well all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News like the match report, player ratings, manager reaction, quotes round-up and more. There’s also a preview podcast on Patreon if you need something to listen to ahead of kick off. Don’t forget the updated Arseblog apps also have a cool new matchday centre, full of stats, alerts, and much more.
Catch you later for the game.