Elneny

11th March 2016: Wenger on Elneny, Giroud and Watford forwards

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. Arsene Wenger’s pre-Watford press conference was streamed live on the official site this morning (a nice surprise and I hope this real-time relaying becomes the norm rather than remaining just for FA Cup games) and in it, the boss revealed Aaron Ramsey would be out for around four weeks with the thigh injury he picked up at Hull.

Given Arsene had labelled it a ‘small alert’ only yesterday, the Welshman’s prognosis is longer than anticipated, but with Jack Wilshere and Santi Cazorla penciled in for returns at the start of April, we should be far better stocked for options in the middle of the park pretty soon, so that’s some consolation I suppose.

For now though, Francis Coquelin and Mohamed Elneny are the most likely partnership to be picked at the base of our midfield and when asked if the latter was ready to play regularly, and if he’d consider a change of formation to cope with our injury list, the boss said:

He looks like he is ready to play. I consider every formula that is possible to give us a balance. At the moment I think Elneny in central midfield can cope. We have Flamini, we have Coquelin who can cope as well. They have shown [that] already. The formula can change as well if needed but that depends on the games. Every game will be different now. In our job, you want to perform in the next game and the next game is an important one because we have fought hard to get there and that is our purpose. After that we deal with the next one. If you have a good run, you sometimes absorb them without any problems. If you have a bad result, of course there is no time to digest sometimes and to get the belief back in the squad. We want to do that and what is very important is to be in there and have a chance to show how good you are.

Arsene was also asked to assess the qualities of Sunday’s opponents Watford and highlighted the Hornets’ striker partnership as being particularly impressive, saying:

They have two strikers who are very efficient in Ighalo and Deeney and we worked very hard to control the game [last time we played them]. They have a very good understanding between their strikers and the quality between our two centre backs will be vital on Sunday. Watford have done extremely well. It looks like the Championship teams that come up now deal very well with the Premier League regime. The difficulty [for us] is that Watford have a team who are very solid defensively. They are also a team who are athletically very strong and the basis of their game is on efficiency and waiting for the right moment to be very dangerous.

Finally for today, the boss also had some words for his own strikers and revealed he expects Olivier Giroud to deliver more goals in the coming games having broken a 12-match drought by bagging a brace in our win at Hull earlier this week. He said:

Look, it is a weight on the shoulders when the players don’t score. So the fact that they score will of course take that weight off. Overall, I am pleased that [Giroud and Walcott] scored. But it is a bit cyclic always, especially for Giroud. Giroud has cycles so it was a weight off his shoulders. You know this season for example, he has had games where he has gone boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and after he had a little spell where he didn’t score. Now I hope he has a repetition of his former spell and starts to score again. Between what he says and what is real, even I don’t really know what is going in there. You know that if you don’t score and you are a striker, somewhere you are not happy.

Right. A bit brief this evening but that’s your lot. See you on Saturday for a Watford preview.

Laters.

4th March 2016: Premier League Preview – Can we find the right recipe to topple Tottenham?

Posted on by TremendArse

Friday greetings. We face Sp*rs in the early kick-off tomorrow of course and after three defeats on the bounce, I suppose the big questions are: who will Arsene Wenger choose to start the game? And can we put a stop to our recent rot by winning at White Hart Lane to make ‘power-shift’ proponents think again, whilst hauling ourselves right back into title-winning territory?

In terms of team selection, we know that David Ospina will come in for the injured Petr Cech, who Arsene confirmed today would be out for up to four weeks with the calf injury he sustained against Swansea on Wednesday, and Gabriel will retain his place in central defence alongside Per Mertesacker, as Laurent Koscielny is still sidelined.

You would assume Hector Bellerin and Nacho Monreal will remain at full back but given the latter’s made 33 starts in all competitions so far this season, which is exceeded only by Mesut Ozil’s 34, I do wonder if Kieran Gibbs’ fresher legs may be a way the boss feels he can add some energy to his side – particularly against Mauricio Pochettino’s hard-running outfit.

I do view Monreal as our undisputed first-choice at left-back, but this will be his fourth game in 12 days were he to start. The former Malaga man’s not the only one who’s endured that demanding recent work load though, so I’ll guess we’ll see. That said, even with all the effort and determination in the world, if we don’t come up with a game-plan that works better than ours have done in our last two games at least, we’ll be in trouble.

I think Arseblog hit the nail on the head in his post this morning, when he suggested that we don’t know what we’re doing as a team. We have no discernible style of play and in my opinion, that’s down to our central midfield area, as regular readers will already know and possibly be a tad bored by.

At risk of sounding like a broken record then, with Aaron Ramsey and Francis Coquelin as a midfield pair, we have nobody to dictate our play. In that duo, Coquelin is the specialist ball-winner, but what role exactly is Ramsey fulfilling?

Now I have no idea if Mohamed Elneny will be good enough to hit the ground running as adequate cover for Santi Cazorla’s sublime distribution from the middle of the park, but with Jack Wilshere also injured, he’s our only candidate. Unless you drop Mesut Ozil in there, which is not as bad an idea as it may sound at first in my opinion.

In fact, I’m torn between Ozil and Elneny as to who should partner Coquelin, but if we went with the former, the fact we would then have nobody obvious (don’t say Ramsey – he’s even less a number ten than he is a deep-lying play-maker) to fill in for Ozil further forward, makes me lean towards the Egyptian.

The only alternative I see is to contain and counter, like we attempted against Barcelona last week, and like we succeeded in doing at home against Bayern Munich earlier this season. I have no doubt at all that our lack of cohesion in this area of the pitch is adversely affecting out performance both in defence and in the final third. A lack of control, composure and coordination in our midfield spreads to both ends of the pitch and to my mind, if we remedy that issue, we’ll start looking and playing like a team again and the wins will follow.

So with all that in mind, I’d go with: ‘play Elneny, look to control possession and take the game to Tottenham’, over, ‘stick with Ramsey in the middle, and either produce another disjointed display, or sit back and hope to counter them’. And as such, my starting selection, fitness permitting, would be:

Ospina; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Gabriel, Monreal; Coquelin, Elneny; Campbell, Ozil, Sanchez; Welbeck.

I think with that XI, we would be fielding the strongest defence we have available, on paper our most complimentary and functional deep-lying midfield duo, the best goal-creator in the league in a free role, two industrious wide players boasting both a goal-threat and defensive diligence, all topped off with the best all-round striker at the club. A player who can stretch a defence with pace like Theo Walcott, and hold the ball up and link play like Olivier Giroud – our two other striking options.

But crucially, without Ramsey, Walcott and Giroud, we have ten outfield players, with the possible exception of big Per (although he is usually a very reliable passer), who are comfortable in possession and collectively, should much more easily find a common wavelength. It’s all in the chemistry and too often recently, our pH levels have been aimlessly sliding the scale.

It feels like every game we play at the moment is billed as a must-win, despite there being over a quarter of the league season yet to be played, but you can understand the sentiment.

By the end of tomorrow’s Premier League action, we could be any one of nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, or three points behind the leaders. So not only is tomorrow’s game a north London derby with a title-contesting difference, in a way, it’s potentially also a nine-pointer, in the countdown to the crown.

Back post-match.

COME on Arsenal. COME. THE. F*CK. ON.

21st February 2016: Watford at home if we beat Hull in Cup replay

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. So the draw for the quarter-finals of the FA Cup was made earlier this evening and we’ve landed another home tie, this time against Watford, providing we can beat Hull in our fifth-round replay.

So if we needed any extra incentive to turn over the Tigers at their place, here it is. Win and then beat the Hornets, and we’re in the semis and back at Wembley for the fifth time in three seasons.

Elsewhere in the draw, Everton drew Chelsea at home after the latter brushed aside Manchester City’s under 9s at Stamford Bridge earlier today, Manchester United or Shrewsbury will host West Ham, and Tottenham, oops, I mean Crystal Palace, will travel to Reading having eliminated Spurs this afternoon. All of which is to say we’re now surely favourites and a hat-trick of consecutive Cup wins really is on. Let’s DO this …

But back to yesterday’s game now and some reaction from a couple of the players. First up it’s Per Mertesacker, who says that though he’s happy with our defensive performance against Steve Bruce’s men, we’ll need to be more composed in front of goal versus Barcelona on Tuesday:

We had a couple of good chances and we couldn’t keep the pressure as high as we wanted, especially in the second half. We had enough chances to win, but we were unlucky at times. Overall it was disappointing, especially our finishing. We allowed [Hull goalkeeper Eldin Jakupovic] to make some decent saves because we were not that decisive. It is down to us, we produced a good defensive performance but overall in the final third, that little final pass at the end, we always rushed ourselves at times to finish so we need to learn from that. Overall, we missed a bit of something today and we have to come back quickly in three days time. We have a very important game, the first leg against Barcelona, and we will see the fans again, it will be another buzzing night but it is up to us how we perform.

Which is pretty much spot on. Rushed and a little over-elaborate at times is how I’d sum up our attacking yesterday, that and a little unlucky. Hopefully fortune will favour us a lot more against the Catalans because there’s absolutely no doubt we’ll need a healthy dollop of it to beat them.

One of the positives from the Hull draw I felt was Mohamed Elneny’s display. He’s still some way from being physically prepared to really stake a claim for a start ahead of say, Francis Coquelin, in our first-choice selection and was second best in one-on-one duels too often, but what I did like was his penchant for a first-time pass to the feet of team-mates. That suggests a quick and forward-thinking brain to me and that’s exactly what a pass-and-move style like ours needs from the centre of the pitch.

The Egyptian midfielder, and Alex Iwobi, certainly seem to have impressed the third member of our midfield yesterday, because Mathieu Flamini was full of praise for the pair when he spoke after the game. He said:

I think they both played very well. They were very good in their positions, very good technically and also in transition [both] defensively and offensively. It was a good partnership and I enjoyed it but we have to continue now. It was a very, very frustrating game. We had the opportunity a few times to close the game and win it. Unfortunately we didn’t so I think frustration is the main word of the game today. We were a bit lucky last weekend to score in the last second of the game against Leicester City, but it didn’t happen today. We had many opportunities and chances and this is not the first game that has been like that. Even against Southampton and Leicester it was like that and today we had plenty of opportunities. If you don’t finish it, it is not enough. Now we have to play away and win that game.

Every game that we endure where we create chances but fail to score does of course add weight to the opinion we need to buy an elite striker, but I don’t know if that’s true and if it is, who that player is. Suggestions welcome …

Right, a brief one tonight but that’s it from me. See you tomorrow, after Arsene’s held his pre-Barca presser.

Laters.

18th February 2016: Early Hull team news + Oxlade-Chamberlain’s contract

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. As we prepare to host Hull City in the FA Cup on Saturday afternoon, Arsene Wenger today provided a fitness update via the official site, with the standout news being Laurent Koscielny is on course to play.

Removed at half-time in our last game against Leicester, Sky reported the defender had sustained a dead leg so to hear the boss say he’s almost ready to return is obviously a big boost as we enter a difficult run of fixtures which includes games against Barcelona and Manchester United.

Arsene also discussed the fitness of Gabriel and Mohamed Elneny, as well as what sort of side he’ll select for the visit of Steve Bruce’s men. He said:

Koscielny is doing well. He has a test this morning and he looks positive. He (Gabriel) is running outside. He is out for Saturday. I will, as always, play a team who has a good chance to qualify. The normal squad is involved on Saturday. It is a normal squad and we’ll play a usual strong team. Elneny is fit. He is one of the players who could get a run [out] there. He’s mobile, he’s a very good player. He’s adapting at the moment and I think he’s there now. We’ll certainly see him against Hull. He has a chance to start.

I’ll discuss what I think our team for the game might look like in tomorrow’s post but two players who won’t be playing against us on Saturday are Chuba Akpom and Isaac Hayden who are of course on loan at Hull from Arsenal.

Arseblog news reported today that The Tigers’ press office say ‘both players are definitely out’ of the game which tallies with reports at the start of the month that FA rules prevent on-loan players taking the field against parent clubs regardless of any agreement on the matter between the two clubs involved. It’s the right call in my opinion but having seen Sanchez Watt play against us when on-loan at Leeds during the 2010-12 campaign, there’s obviously been a rule-change.

Moving away from the Hull game now and a story that caught my eye today was one about Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s alleged demands for a vastly improved new contract. I’ve seen some people losing their sh*t over the Ox wanting to double his money because ‘he hasn’t achieved anything yet’ and ‘has it all to prove still’ etc, but I’m not sure what the fuss is about if I’m honest.

He’s one of England’s best young players, an international, and despite his struggles this season, a player of huge potential. People may say potential doesn’t deserve reward but the reality is if we don’t pay him the going rate for someone of his ability regardless of age and whether he’s currently got the tangible goals and assists to back it up, someone else happily will.

If you don’t rate him then that’s a different matter, but personally I think he could develop into England’s very best attacker with a little luck and so would give him closer to the money comparable contemporaries earn. Raheem Sterling, who I don’t rate as highly as the Ox, was transferred for £50m and earns a reported salary of £180k a week for instance.

Then there’s marketability value to factor in, with the Ox being a young English starlet and all that stuff so without wanting to pretend like I know exactly how these things work, I don’t think the player deserves some of the stick he’s been getting about this. Every player on the planet tries his best to maximize his earnings and basically it’s his prerogative.

Hopefully club and player can come to an agreement over terms sooner rather than later because this summer the player will have two years remaining on his current deal which is when things can start to get more complicated. Plus the thought of us ever selling another first-teamer in, or approaching, his prime is pretty galling. Sign him up Arsenal …

Arsene should hold his pre-Hull press conference in the morning so I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts on that, and also play Arsenal Manager again by guessing our starting eleven for the game.

See you on Friday.

1st February 2016: It’s dead on Deadline Day

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome to a brand new month on TremendArse. It’s Transfer Deadline Day today of course and as I write this at around 5.30pm, there have been no moves confirmed either in or out of the club as yet.

That’s not overly surprising, given we were always very unlikely to bring anybody in after signing Mohamed Elneny earlier in the window, but I was expecting Mathieu Debuchy and Serge Gnabry to have left in loan moves by now. There’s still time obviously, with the window closing at 11pm this evening, so we’ll see what happens.

But so far today, the biggest news has come away from Arsenal and indeed player trading, with Manchester City confirming Pep Guardiola will replace Manuel Pellegrini as their manager from the start of next season. Which is just brilliant – the Premier League’s wealthiest club has now secured the world’s best manager – outside of London Colney, that is. So the intrigue and excitement goes up a notch or two ahead of next season, even more so if some members of the press get granted their wish and a certain Portuguese manager takes over the reigns at Manchester United. 

Back to the current campaign though and as we prepare to welcome Southampton to Emirates stadium tomorrow evening, Arsene Wenger held his pre-match press conference this morning and was inevitably asked whether we’d be active in the market today. Here’s what he said:

At the moment it’s 99% no, but if Messi knocks on my door at ten to six I won’t tell him to go back to Barcelona!

Arsene also provided an injury update, including the latest on Danny Welbeck, Jack Wilshere and Tomas Rosicky, saying:

The team news is that we have all the players that played on Saturday available again. The only problem we have is that we lost Rosicky through injury. We have to assess one or two. Overall the situation looks quite good for everybody else. He (Rosicky) has a thigh problem – a muscular tendon problem, but we don’t know how bad it is. It happened three or four minutes after he came on and we have to assess him today. He’s not available for a while. We will know much more tonight. He (Wilshere) is looking good. I had a short chat with Roy Hodgson about him and reassured him that he is progressing well. I’m cautious but I will say four weeks [until he is back]. Danny has not played since April 2015 and will have to go through a game or two with the under-21s, where we can monitor him and leave him free to play at his level of commitment. That looks to be very soon, maybe this week.

So a mixed bag. Jack’s ‘looking good’ and Danny will be back playing football for the under 21s shortly but Rosicky’s now out for another sustained period of time. At this stage, as sad as it sounds, you have to wonder whether the Czech has played his last game in Arsenal colours.

Finally for today, the boss had a few words to offer on Mohamed Elneny, after the Egyptian midfielder made his debut against Burnley last weekend:

His first performance was very good in many aspects. He had plenty of passes, he made 84 passes and 98 per cent were completed. His movement was good, he had a high work-rate. He has to adapt to the toughness of the challenges and certainly gain a little bit in confidence to be more incisive in his passing, but overall for a first performance it was encouraging.

A quick check shows no  confirmation of Debuchy or Gnabry going anywhere, so if they do depart, I’l take at look at that tomorrow, when I’ll be back with a preview of the Saints game.

Until then.

30th January 2016: Arsenal beat Burnley to progress in FA Cup

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. Alexis Sanchez made a match-winning return to Arsenal’s starting line-up this afternoon by grabbing an assist before scoring our second, as we beat Burnley 2-1 at Emirates stadium to progress to the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Our right-back on the day, Calum Chambers, had given us the lead in the 19th minute when he finished first-time – Carlos Alberto-esque – with the outside of his right foot after latching onto Sanchez’s nut-megged pass following a fine team move. But the visitors drew level with half an hour played, when a sustained attack on our penalty area eventually ended with Sam Vokes heading Tendayi Darikwa’s cross past David Ospina.

Eight minutes into the second half however, Sanchez applied an emphatic finish to a breakneck Arsenal counter-attack, calmly half-volleying home Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s right-wing cross from close-rage. That settled the tie and keeps us firmly in contention to become the first club to win three FA Cups in a row since Blackburn Rovers in the 19th Century.

Those of you who read yesterday’s post will have noticed me playing Arsenal Manager by offering my prediction for today’s starting selection. In the end, I was just the one player wide of the mark, with Joel Campbell an unused substitute against the Clarets and Francis Coquelin instead making his first start since recovering from the knee injury he sustained back in November.

But Mohamed Elneny did start to make his full debut for the club and put in a busy, if unspectacular, shift in a box-to-box role. I tuned in on Setanta Sports and their commentators and studio pundits were blabbering on about how Elneny was ‘a typical Arsenal defensive midfielder’ because he was more a number 10, straying all over the pitch, running wide to provide overlaps and generally far too advanced and adventurous for their liking.

They wanted a defensive midfielder to be more disciplined, hold his position in front of our defence and not involve himself further up the pitch, which to be fair, is reasonable enough. Except it obviously escaped their attention that although Elneny’s best position may well be defensive midfield in the long-term, that wasn’t his assignment today, because, erm, Coquelin was doing that job. Elneny had clearly been afforded the freedom to play in more of a number 8 role by Arsene Wenger, and he did well considering this was his first game at a new club in a new country.

The Egyptian was industrious, kept his passing simple and successful for the most part, and showed he’s more than willing to shoot given a glimpse of goal – something too many of our players shy away from too often in my opinion.

I did think he looked a little weak in the one-on-one dual, but I’m sure once we get him on a personalized strength-building programme similar to the one Mesut Ozil benefited from, he’ll be better equipped for the physicality of the English game. Overall then, a very promising first outing in Arsenal colours for the former Basel man as far as I’m concerned and here’s what Arsene made of his latest signing’s display:

I felt he started a bit cautious, played a bit secure. He became more adventurous. It will take him some time to adjust to the power side of our game here, but the intelligence, the mobility and the technical level are good.

Elsewhere in our side I thought Kieran Gibbs was lively and played pretty well, Sanchez was his usual irrepressible self and Coquelin was understandably a little rusty, yet still as effective and aggressive in his defending as we’ve become accustomed to. Oliver Giroud on the other hand, apart from a good lay-off in the build-up to our winner, had a game to forget with little coming off for him.

Back to positives though and I thought Alex Iwobi was very impressive again, as he was in the last round against Sunderland, with the youngster heavily involved in the moves for both of our goals today. He’s quick, passes well, has great awareness and also showed great tenacity in competing for the ball in midfield.

A little like the Ox and Tomas Rosicky, he also appears to have the ability to ‘accelerate’ our play, by carrying the ball smoothly and directly forward to set us on the attack. Very, very promising indeed but as one of numerous young talents attached to the club and obviously striving to achieve regular first-team involvement, you do wonder how we’ll incorporate them all.

For instance, Chuba Akpom, who’s out on loan at Hull, grabbed his-ever first hat-trick at senior level today, as the Tigers beat League One Bury in the FA Cup, to provide a reminder of his talents. Then there’s Jeff Reine-Adelaide, Gedion Zelalem, Jon Toral, Dan Crowley, Serge Gnabry, our two new Nigerian starlets and despite being the oldest of the lot, the one I rate highest of all, Wellington Silva.

Still, it’s a good problem to have, as I’m sure Arsene will feel, and it’s good to know we have genuine quality bubbling under the surface of the first-team squad should we need it.

Until Sunday.

28th January 2016: Squad takes three steps closer to full strength

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. With the winter transfer window coming to a close in a few days’ time, it’s looking increasingly likely that Mohamed Elneny will be the only addition to our first-term squad this month.

But when you consider today’s update from Arsene Wenger on our injury list, which confirmed that Francis Coquelin, Danny Welbeck and Tomas Rosicky are all back in full training, it’s difficult to highlight an area in which we’re lacking in options, even if you could argue we can be improved in terms of quality.

That said, with Jack Wilshere and Santi Cazorla still on the treatment table, I suppose our best two ‘passers’ from the middle of the park are unavailable, if you assume that Elneny will be more of a defensive option and Mikel Arteta is no longer up to the task. So if pushed, I’d say that’s the one potentially problem-position we need to find a solution for in the short-term, until Jack and Santi are ready to return.

Who knows, perhaps Elneny will show he can step in and circulate the ball like Cazorla, or Aaron Ramsey can alter my perception that passing is his weakest attribute by playing it around like Andrea Pirlo in his pomp. However we look to cover for Cazorla’s absence though, I think our results in January suggest we need to try something other than the Mathieu Flamini-Ramsey combination in there.

Anyway, here’s what Arsene said about team news ahead of Saturday’s FA Cup tie against Burnley at Emirates stadium when he spoke to the official site:

Mertesacker is out because of the red card, and everybody else is available, apart from Jack Wilshere and Santi Cazorla. After that it is just a question of selection and decision-making, that is the key. Jack and Santi are progressing well but they are at least a few weeks away. But these two apart, it is just about competitiveness and match fitness. Danny Welbeck is not completely ready but he is not far. He needs a game or two because he’s been out since last April. The Stoke [under-21] game is too soon because he only had one session with the team, and that is too short. Francis is available to play now because he has passed two weeks of full training. Tomas is also available for selection.

I’m sure we’ll get more clues as to which players might start against Burnley when the boss holds his press conference tomorrow morning, but we’ll no doubt be rotating the squad quite a bit, especially when you consider we host Southampton in the league on Tuesday.

Elsewhere Per Mertesacker, who as the boss mentions above will be suspended this weekend after falling victim to Diego Costa, er, falling over thin air, has been speaking to the Arsenal Weekly podcast about leadership, energy, managing the loss of players to injury, the squad’s development, mental strength aaaaaaaaaaaand team spirit – i.e the usual. He said:

There’s always a balance between having good leaders and a good team, but everyone needs to lead. Everyone needs to lead, to talk and give energy to the squad. It’s a balance and you don’t want to do too much or exaggerate at times, you just have to get the team going at times. In general we have a good balance in the team and a good squad. We’ve still got players coming back from injury but we’ve never complained about it, that is the main reason for our success. Players have stepped up, brought their energy and we’ve got the results as well. We won¹t look back on players being injured as a negative because other players have stepped up, especially this season. We’ve kept the same squad and we have obviously made some great additions over the past two years. In general, the team spirit has grown a lot. We are competing at the top and that’s something that was not always the case when I joined. The team is much stronger and mentally stronger as well. There are a few steps to go, the season is always long and to get consistency is never easy. There are challenges ahead of us but they make us even stronger, and I must say that the team spirit in the squad is huge at the minute.

Hands up who instantly pictured William Gallas lecturing his Arsenal team-mates in a pre-game huddle some years back when they read “you don’t want to do too much or exaggerate at times”?

Well I did, and it just reminded me that even if Gallas was arguably a better centre-half than Mertesacker, he didn’t have half the personality the German does. Sometimes, that can be more valuable to a team than ability.

Back on Friday.

22nd January 2016: Elneny endears and promises endeavour

Posted on by TremendArse

Happy Friday folks. I’ll start today with our new signing Mohamed Elneny, who has been speaking with Arsenal Player about his move to the Gunners and the Premier League.

Encouragingly, the Egyptian midfielder sounds like he’s got his feet firmly on the ground, is eager to improve and impress, and endeared himself to Gooners everywhere by labeling his new club ‘the best team in the Premier League’. He said:

I expect it to be a massive shift in my career and a big starting point. I would like to achieve a lot and prove to myself and everyone that I am capable of playing in the Premier League and any league around the world. Hopefully I can develop my skills more and more. I always work hard to develop all aspects of my skills to benefit the club I play for. As I mentioned before, Arsenal is a big club and I have to live up to this responsibility. That’s why I work hard to develop myself continuously. I can see that Arsenal are having one of their best seasons, that makes me very enthusiastic to play with the best team in the Premier League, both now and in the past. That is why I am very keen to accept this responsibility. I am very aware of this and I am well prepared for this task.

Having been an unused substitute for our game at Stoke last weekend, Elneny is of course yet to make his debut for Arsenal and it would have been nice to hear what Arsene thinks of his new recruit’s physical readiness for Premier League football. I mean, because of the winter break in Switzerland, Elneny hasn’t played a competitive game since early December.

Perhaps that might have been a better question for reporters to have put to Arsene at his press conference yesterday, rather than ‘are Chelsea specialists in failure?’. But of course, an update on Elneny’s match-fitness isn’t nearly as important to some sections of the press (Sky) as trying to instigate bad blood between Arsenal and Chelsea before they meet on Sunday.

Even if Elneny is ready to compete for a starting place though, my guess would be that the FA Cup game against Burnley next weekend might be deemed a better time to hand him his full debut by the boss, rather than in a high-pressure London derby. Then again, who knows? If he’s ready, he’s ready, and he could be our secret weapon to catch Chelsea’s midfield off-guard and run rings around the likes of John Obi Mikel and Nemanja Matic. We’ll see.

Moving on and as we prepare to play the first of three home games in our next four Premier League fixtures, Laurent Koscielny has been discussing the importance for taking maximum points at Emirates stadium if Arsenal are to be crowned champions. The defender told Arsenal Player:

If you want to win the Premier League, you need to win all your home games. Our seven away games will be very difficult because we play against Man City, Man United, Tottenham, West Ham, Everton, so we need to do the job well at home so we have the points. We take each game and we will see. We want to play and win all games. We are in a period where we play many different competitions, we play the Champions League, the FA Cup, Premier League. This weekend is an important game and next weekend too, because it is the FA Cup and we won it twice and we want to continue like this. In February March, we will have Champions League so we need to take it game by game and that’s it.

You obviously don’t have to win all your home games to win the title but you know what Koscielny means. We have difficult tests ahead away from home so winning all our games at Emirates stadium from now until the end of the season would obviously help our cause no end.

Back tomorrow with a preview.

Laters.

16th January 2016: Premier League Preview – Stoke away

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome back. So after the last minute agony of Anfield on Wednesday, we travel to Stoke City tomorrow looking to secure what would be just our second Premier League victory at the Britannia stadium, having drawn two and lost the other four of the seven we’ve played at their place since they were promoted in 2008.

After Manchester City beat Crystal Palace 4-0 and Leicester picked up a point at Aston Villa earlier today, we’ve dropped to third in the table on goal difference, but do now have the chance to go two points clear at the top should we win against Mark Hughes’ men, so hopefully that will provide a little bit of extra motivation as we go into the game.

In terms of team news, Arsene Wenger provided an update when he spoke at his pre-match press conference yesterday morning, saying:

From Liverpool we have no injuries, so that’s good news. (Mohamed) Elneny is available for selection, I haven’t decided yet [whether I will play him]. I have to see how everyone has recovered. Elneny is a possibility to be in the squad for Sunday. Alexis (Sanchez) I would say has a 60:40 chance to be available and be back in the squad. He has two decisive days – Friday and Saturday. He is fit, he has worked very hard and the decision we have to take is whether to take a gamble or not on his injury. Tomas (Rosicky) needs first to have a game somewhere. We hope for maybe an under-21 game or at least a bit more training with the first team.

Even if they don’t start the match, based on the above it seems pretty certain both new signing Mohamed Elneny and Alexis Sanchez will be available from the bench, which is clearly great news considering we’ve been relying on the same 13 or 14 players for a while now, including the busy festive period.

Although I’d love to see him in action from the start against Stoke, when you consider that because of a two-month winter break in the Swiss league, Elneny hasn’t featured in a competitive game since December 13th, when he played (and scored) for former club Basel in the Schweizer Pokal, the Swiss domestic cup competition, it’s very unlikely he’ll be thrown in from the get-go at the Britannia.

As for Sanchez, despite also not playing for a similar amount of time, I wouldn’t be so sure he won’t come straight back into the starting selection. It’s Alexis, after all, and we all know he’d play whatever his physical condition, given half a chance. And if he does start, based on form over the last couple of games at least, Theo Walcott will surely be the man to make way, because Olivier Giroud and Joel Campbell are on fire, relatively speaking.

Whoever is selected to play though, we’ll have to make sure we start the game better than we did in this fixture last season, when Stoke took the lead in the first minute and we went into the interval losing three-nil. Arsene discussed that game, as well as the development of Stoke’s style-of-play, when he spoke to Arsenal Player:

Last season we had a very bad start and I think we have more experience now and we are more stable defensively. We have a good opportunity to show that. Stoke have improved their creative potential and we will want a really strong defensive display from our side because players like Arnautovic, Afellay and Bojan are all very creative players. Stoke is a team that is in progress. We have had difficulty there in the past. When you look at the results year by year we are not the only ones to have had difficulties. They produce top-quality performances against Manchester City and Manchester United and that shows it is a big chance for everybody. They have a strong record against us at home and they will have to maintain it but for us it is a good challenge to prove that we have made a step forward and can change that record.

If we’re honest, there’s no denying Stoke have certainly progressed from the long-ball, long-throw, leg-breaking merchants they were for so long. But they are still a very physical side, so first and foremost, we’ll have to match them in that aspect of the contest before our undoubtedly superior footballing quality has a chance to shine through.

Back post-match.

COYG!

15th January 2016: Elneny signs and targets treble

Posted on by TremendArse

Happy Friday and thanks for dropping by. So Mohamed Elneny is finally a Gunner after the club confirmed his capture yesterday, and providing we managed to register him by noon today, he’ll be available for our trip to Stoke on Sunday.

Here’s what Arsene Wenger had to say about his new recruit when he spoke to Arsenal Player:

Overall I believe he will be a good addition to the squad. First he has not come in straight to a big club, he had an intermediate stay in Europe so the adaptation is less of a question mark. He is 23 years old and has already got Champions League, Europa League and Swiss League experience. He is a player who is adaptable in midfield. He can be box to box and be a holding midfielder so that is for us very promising. We wanted a versatile player and I wanted a player who can play defensive but can as well play to box to box. His strengths are his technical level, his vision, his intelligence, his disciplined attitude and his physical attitude to compete at a high level. I think he has the physical qualities to play at the top level. Where he needs to adapt is to the challenges, the force needed in the Premier League to survive. I think that could demand a little bit of adaptation. But overall I think he has all the attributes to do well.

Whilst the player himself revealed his joy at joining Arsenal, his pride at having the chance to work under the management of Arsene, and also laid out his hopes in terms of winning trophies with his new club. He said:

It is an indescribable feeling, I am really glad of course. Arsenal is one of the world’s greatest teams, and I am very keen to participate positively with my new team, God willing, and to give my best for the team and for myself. Arsenal is one of those teams that everyone enjoys watching and of course I would love to play for such a great team. Mr Wenger is a highly respected manager and one of the world’s best managers. It is my honour to be trained under his management. It is one the biggest clubs in the world, I know everything about it and its players. I would like to tell [the fans] that, although you have not seen much of me, I promise I will contribute positively with the team. I am hoping that we win the Premier League and cup this season, and the Champions League as well.

One thing we can be sure of before he’s kicked a ball for the club is that he’s ambitious and by the sound of things, pretty confident in his ability, which is obviously great to hear. Obviously he’ll have to back his words up with performances but my guess would be that he’ll be on the bench on Sunday, unless Mathieu Flamini is feeling the effects of Wednesday night’s game at Anfield.

That said, it was interesting to read we dispatched strength and conditioning coach Sam Wilson to work with Elneny around ten days ago to keep him in shape while the transfer was being finalized, so if he’s deemed ready to play straight way by the boss, we may even see him start at the Britannia Stadium.

Although he’s said to be equally at ease playing as an out-and-out defensive midfielder or in a box-to-box role, with Francis Coquelin still side-lined, you’d imagine he’ll be asked to mimic what the Frenchman brings to the side – patrolling the space in front of our defence and providing the counter balance to Aaron Ramsey’s more attacking instincts.

Clearly Flamini has been asked cover for Coquelin, but considering we’ve conceded seven goals in our last two league games on the road, it’s safe to say he’s not quite doing the job as well as his younger compatriot.

Our recent porousness away from home was something Arsene was asked about at his press conference today and he suggested he was stumped as to why we’re suddenly less secure defensively, but I’m sure he’s more than aware our central midfield injuries provide an obvious explanation. Hopefully Elneny will help to remedy that issue as soon as possible.

Back with a Stoke preview on Saturday.

Until then.