It’s Slavia Praha away this evening in the Champions League. Not an ideal destination to be heading to, but the relative weakness of the Czechia side in the Champions League does take the edge off the match-up, a slight bit… no win in 22 CL games. This from Arsenal.com.
Slavia meanwhile are on the brink of an unwanted piece of Champions League history. They’ve gone 22 matches in the competition without tasting victory, stretching back to their first-ever fixture back in 2007.
Striking, wouldn’t you say? A DAMNATION, if you will. How can you be that bad in Champions League? SHOCKING.
The bulk of the pre-game chatter has been focused on the return of a true king of global football… William Saliba. The big Frenchman took a leave of absence post-World Cup to fix his back. The worry was he’d have to have surgery. The club opted to NOT do that, instead just going the good old-fashioned rest-up route.
You cannot begin to imagine how tough that must have been for the player. He’s just won a Premier League, he’s coming into his prime performance-wise, and he just had to sit there and wait for his body to heal, while watching Ezri come in and cover for him with ease. That’s a lot of time on your own, a lot of time with your thoughts, probably a lot of not feeling particularly great.
No doubt Arsenal have done their best to keep him in with the group, but it’s hard regardless. The thing I always failed to conceptualise about football is how intense the life is… you’re with 40 people what feels like every waking hour. It’s especially prevalent in the Premier League. Three games a week from September through the end of January. No real let-up over December.
Then you get injured… and it’s all quiet. A real shock to the schedule, and the toll on mental health is tough.
But lucky for us, Bill Saliba is a monster of a human, and he has overcome his issues a little ahead of schedule. He’s been training with the players; he took some minutes at the weekend at a special friendly, and the hope is he’ll get some important minutes this evening as he works his way into contention for the big games we have coming up.
Really, we’ve got to be thinking about that Man City game for a start, haven’t we?
Slavia are on a rotten run in the Champions League, they haven’t won a game this season, and their run has included Sabah, Lens, and Fenerbahce. Their league form is scintillating; they are topping the table, 7 points clear. These are the matches that the big teams use to rack up goals. We beat them 3-0 away last season, with Mikel Merino scoring two and Saka a penalty.
You just tend to not imagine there’s a world where you lose these games, the gulf in class is monstrous between the haves and the have-nots in the Champions League, and you feel Mikel has a very extreme focus on the Champions League this year. The only condition you have to consider is the reality of rotations. These are the games that you can get caught up in for beasting purposes that cost you later in the season. Mikel really needs to be bringing players in from the cold in games like this. It’s Big Vik, Merino, Zubimendi, Ben White, and Hincapie territory. Put minutes in rusty players, but more important than that, make good players feel like they’re part of the mission.
There have been some rumblings about Max Dowman getting a start, and I would agree with those noises… we’ve already had a scare with the excellent Noni Madueke this season, so we should make sure he’s put on the bench so he’s ready to maul the tigers at the weekend.
Same should be said of Eze. He was also a doubt for the weekend, but he pushed to be in that game, so reward him with some minutes this evening so he can work through any issues he might be carrying.
The name of the game is to be emotionally dominant… why? Because that’s the thing you have to say now to show you’re in tune with modern football vernacular. But really, the outcome you want is to beat teams like this without a stretched game. We are patient, we are packed with top talent looking to fight their way back into contention, we have the tools to make this a fairly standard night.
No drama, no injuries… that’s what we want. The form we’re in, hard to believe it’ll go any other way.
Ok, that’s me done, see you in the comments, and On The Whistle a little later. Also, apologies for putting the wrong video in for the ratings show, that’s been addressed, so we’re good to go now! x