Norwich 1-1 Arsenal: naughty November

Well, that didn't quite work out as expected, did it? More dropped points against opposition we shouldn't be dropping points against, 3 new injuries to vital players and a no-wins November. I won't even bother counting how many points Arsenal averaged this November, despite less than hectic schedule and more than manageable opponents.

Simply put, yesterday's disaster could only have been made worse had we actually lost the game and believe me, we were very close to doing just that. Were it not for the brilliant Petr Cech, we would have drawn blank against the Canaries.

The game

The starting XI sprung no surprises, with Flamini keeping his place alongside Cazorla and Ramsey being preferred to Campbell on the right. It was, on paper, a very strong squad, more than capable of running out comfortable winners. Yet we didn't.

We looked leggy right from the off, devoid of ideas, unable to spark ourselves into life. In fact, our goal came quite unexpectedly and was basically a gift from John Ruddy. The keeper cleared the ball in the most unconvincing manner possible, Alexis robbed the defender, sliced open Norwich's defense with one pass to Ozil and the German dinked the ball over the keeper to make it 1-0.

That was when we should have extended our lead, yet we continued passing the ball at the back. Alarm bells set off when Hoolahan made Cech work hard with a long shot, but the Gunners didn't heed the warning.

And so it came as no surprise when two minutes later Grabban equalised. What drove me up a wall was the manner in which he did it: by controlling a simple pass inside our box (in-between our centre-backs!) and slotting the ball past Cech.

Norwich actually came close to going into the break in front, but, mercifully, Hoolahan fired over from an absolute point-blank-range position.

If we looked bad enough in the first half, then the second set an all-time low: despite dominating possession again, Arsenal only took 5 shots, 3 were blocked and the other two were off target. Norwich, meanwhile, had at least two golden opportunities to go in front and only a combination of luck and mad reflexes from Cech saved us a point.

The injuries

We sustained 4: a calf injury to Gibbs before the game and hip, knee and hamstring injuries to Koscielny, Cazorla and Alexis respectively. We lost three crucial players inside one game, having only just lost Coquelin. Our injury count reached double figures. Our season is on crash course already because we have so many injured players.

There's a silver lining, though: Arsene said after the game Kos and Cazorla can make the Sunderland game, while Walcott has a chance to recover before the Olympiacos showdown. Arteta also shouldn't be too far away, while Sanchez and Wilshere can play vs City on the 19th.

But it's a very positive scenario from yours truly. I fear the situation may be worse than this. Which begs the question: why is it happening to Arsenal and what should be done about it?

The way I see it, there can be three basic reasons to our ongoing injury woes: luck, wrong preparation/training methods/rotation and predisposition. Let’s look at all these in detail.

Luck

Or lack of thereof? We currently have at least three walking wounded who sustained their respective injuries as a result of contact: Wilshere, Coquelin and Cazorla. I’ll get to Wilshere a bit later, because, while his injury is a result of an unlucky collision with Gabriel, Jack isn’t exactly the toughest player on Earth.

Coquelin and Cazorla are accidents, these you can’t really account for. Coquelin went into a rash challenge, Cazorla had his leg smashed at Norwich. Don’t think either injury could have been avoided.

Training methods/preparation/rotation

While some like to paint a picture of archaic “dinosaur” Wenger with his ancient training methods, I doubt highly there’s something inherently wrong with these. Wenger is a trailblazer in many respects, I don’t think he stands still while others evolve. I can’t remember whether there was an elaborate piece on his training methods, but I do know that, not long ago, people blamed Arsene for being tactically naive and unable to adapt to opponents, only for Cazorla to blast these rumours into space.

Preparation

That’s where most of the work seemed to be done in the last year or so. We brought in Shad Forsythe last summer and hired a whole bunch of conditioning coaches this. Either they are all complete morons unable to do their job properly (a possibility still, look at the number of muscle injuries we have. Currently 4) or we move to point 3 of point 2.

Rotation

That can well be the issue. All of Koscielny, Cazorla, Coquelin, Alexis played a lot of football this year. However, for various reasons, Arsene couldn’t/didn’t drop any of them to give them a breather.

Cazorla and Coquelin formed an unlikely, but very effective pivot at the base of our midfield. On top of that, we don’t really have an alternative to Coquelin, while Cazorla’s best potential stand-in (Wilshere) has been injured most the time. Ramsey (the next best thing) either didn’t seem to work out as well in the couple of games he played alongside Coq, or was deemed too important a cog on the right.

Koscielny’s injury, meanwhile, can more or less be dubbed a contact one, however, it also has to be said defenders aren’t generally at the same level of exhaustion as midfielders/strikers, and as such don’t require to be rotated constantly. It can even be detrimental if they do. Just look at how bad our back four fared from August till December last year!

Ultimately, Wenger, maybe more so than others managers, rely on cohesion too much. He finds a perfect system and plays it into the ground. Changing even one component carries the risk of putting the entire fragile set-up in jeopardy. And ultimately, Alexis fell prey to this philosophy. He was deemed too important to be given a rest. The result? The Chilean pulled his hamstring.

Our inability to rotate stems not only from Wenger’s perseverance with the same system, but also because we have a lot of injured players at any given time. It’s a vicious circle. We play the same guys till they get injured as we have no one else. Then the situation repeats itself, only with the other half of the squad.

Predisposition

Last, but not least of the possible explanations. We just have a bunch of extremely fragile footballers on our hands. Ones we can’t rely upon for the entire season. Just look at this list. Seriously, have a look. There are a lot of familiar names on it (credit to arsenalreport.com, amazing site)

Theo Walcott, who is yet to return, is second only to Abou Diaby, in days lost lost to injury since January 2013. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Jack Wilshere aren’t far away. Rosicky and Arteta are on this list. Alarmingly, Danny Welbeck is there too, despite only joining last summer. Finally, even Aaron Ramsey made top 10.

Notice a trend, one which can be tracked even now? Almost all of our injured are Englishmen. Diaby was a professional hospital patient, Gnabry didn’t play a lot, so we didn’t feel it, while Sanogo was never really relied upon. Finally, Arteta and Rosicky are in their 30s, neither are likely to be at the Club next season.

It’s not the case with our English core, though. Unlike all of the above, we count on them. They are important to our success. We really, really need them.

But they are just not there most of the time. They can’t be called reliable, none of them, even Ramsey. And that begs a very simple, very harsh and very unlikely to come from Wenger, solution: sell them.

“What?!” I hear you say. “Have you gone off your boiler? Sell Jack, Aaron, Theo?” Now, calm down a bit. I’m not saying sell them in January. I love all these guys just as much as you do. I want them to succeed just as much as you do.

What I think needs to be done is give them till the end of the season, see how they fare. Give them a run, see if they can stay for even half a season. And then make a decision in the summer. Even if is a harsh one.

Bottom line is this: we wouldn’t have found ourselves in such a mess right now with Wilshere, Welbeck and Rosicky fit. Even without the other 7 we would have coped. Jack would ha slotted in for Cazorla, Rosicky would be at hand to ease Oxlade into action/ give Ozil an occasional breather. Welbeck could have played on the left to rest Sanchez. Or centrally to rest Theo/Giroud. Having these 3 available from the off would have probably seen us avoid a couple of our current injuries, maybe most of them.

The verdict

Despite dropping points again, we remain within touching distance of the top. Much more worrying are the injuries which can cause us to drop further points, but I’m praying we will be cut a bit of break with returns for Kos, Cazorla, Arteta, Theo and Sanchez within the next 3 weeks. Before we play City that is. Fingers crossed we’ll manage until then.

Norwich preview: a chance to bounce back

We travel to Carrow Road to take on Norwich and this is our chance to record the first league win in November (in three attempts).

Frankly, I find the correlation between time of the year and points haul a bit strange, yet the facts tell us November is Arsene’s worst month as Arsenal’s manager. The Gunners average only 1.6 points per game and, whether this parameter takes into account league matches only or all competitive games, our tally will be even worse this year, even if we best the Canaries. We’ll have 1.3 points per game in the league and 1.4 overall. Hardly something to aspire to.

Yet for even that to happen we have to first beat Norwich. Mercifully, the Canaries aren’t the strongest side out there. Alex Neil’s side has amassed only 12 points in 13 games, 2 worse than Chelsea and we are all familiar with the quality of Chelsea’s football nowadays

Thus far Norwich only managed to beat Sunderland, Bournemouth and, surprisingly, Swansea away. However, the Canaries came close to robbing both City (1-2) and Chelsea (0-1), so perhaps there is more to Norwich than meets the eye.

Head-to-head

The game brings about good memories: Ozil’s goal, Ramsey’s brace, Jenko’s strike… And very few bad ones.

Arsenal have won 7 out of the last 9 meetings with Norwich, losing only once. This defeat came about in 2012 (and I have absolutely no recollection of it). Further encouraging signs are our away form (10 wins in 13 games, 2 losses) and Norwich’s overall record this year - only one win in the last 8 league games.

Finally, it has to be said Norwich kept only one clean sheet in 13 league games. Arsenal, meanwhile, failed to find the back of the net only 3 times in 13 games and only once away from home (cheers, Mike Dean).

Team news update

“We should have everyone available [from the Zagreb game], the players that played on Tuesday night plus maybe Oxlade-Chamberlain should be back in the squad.”

Alex will most likely slot in for Jeff (who shouldn’t be overhyped before he actually makes a debut at the very least), but everyone else should be the same.

Wenger also gave an update on Arteta and Coquelin:

“Arteta is short-term but Coquelin as I told you is much longer. The scans are positive because he does not need any surgery but it will be 12 weeks.”

And Walcott:

“Not for Sunday. He goes through a few tests and steps but the first one was successful. He started running again on Tuesday morning and had no reaction.”

The Coquelin conundrum

The question that has everyone’s minds right now is as follows: how do we survive in the post a-Coq-alyptic world? The manager has spoken about external solutions, saying he’ll keep his eyes open if the right player becomes available in January, but from what I’ve deduced, he doesn’t sound very optimistic:

“We are in a position where we want to do something. If I find the right quality, I will do it.
It’s nearly impossible to find in January a top, top player.

But you have your eyes open. You never know, you can have a surplus somewhere or players who do not play and who have the quality. We’ll see."

For now, it seems our options are Arteta (currently not an option), Flamini (who talked how glad he is to be back in the saddle) and Chambers, whose cameo in central midfield against Zagreb might have been the first step to learning a DM’s trade:

“That’s why I played Calum Chambers, as well, for 10 minutes in midfield to see how he positions and we are happy because he can do it”.

However, it seems Ramsey is out of the equation to step in for Coquelin:

"Ramsey is more an offensive player. I will use him sometimes there [centrally] when the game demands, but is he naturally with Cazorla a balanced pair? Defensively, certainly, it's a very adventurous one!

...to balance a bit defensively, I use Ramsey on the right. That's where I will certainly continue to use him”.

Uh-oh. No Ramsey back in the middle it seems. Can’t see Arsene omitting Cazorla and it’s highly unlikely the manager will move the Spaniard wide, having himself admitted earlier in the season Cazorla is a better player in central positions.

Squad

Frankly, I expect no more than one change (Ramsey for Campbell), especially in the light of everything I’ve said above. Wenger is unlikely to rotate either the keeper or the back four, I’m also pretty sure Cazorla, Ozil and Giroud will keep their places, while about Alexis Wenger said the following:

“Spontaneously it might not be the best moment to rest Alexis but I don’t know. He had a little hamstring alarm but we will see how he recovers from that. 

As long as the guys are in confidence, they score goals. It is always difficult to rest them.”

So we basically have two questions regarding selection: whether Ramsey dislodges Campbell and whether Arsene is willing to give Calum Chambers a shot at the holding role. With reports emerging Chambers trained there this week and with everything Wenger said about Calum, it won’t come as much of a surprise if he starts.

Predicted line-up: Cech - Bellerin - Koscielny - Mertesacker - Monreal - Flamini - Cazorla - Ozil - Alexis - Ramsey - Giroud

The verdict

Despite our November’s hit-and-miss form I will be mightily surprised should we fail to win the game. You just don’t drop points against a team which gets hammered by Newcastle 6-2.

Jokes aside, however, we looked much better vs Zagreb. This, coupled with Ramsey’s and Oxlade’s returns should see us have enough to grab the three points.

A win will see us go second, level on points with City (who have beaten Southampton) and Leicester (who drew vs United). Now we just need to get this win.

Come on you Gunners

Arsenal 3-0 Dinamo Zagreb: staying alive

Well, that was fun. A sound thrashing, order restored and a great performance on top. Also, Bayern thrashed Olympiacos at at Allianz, which means the second team to go through will be determined in Greece two weeks from now.

Wenger made two changes to the side that went down to West Brom on Saturday: Flamini for the injured Coquelin and Campbell for Gibbs. It looked to be Joel's last chance to make an impression and, while I still think we'll see either Ramsey or Oxlade on the right come Sunday, the Costa-Rican performed admirably. It was probably his best outing in an Arsenal shirt, hands down.

At always, I'll guide you through the points of interest.

The goals

All of them were sublime. There is no other word to describe how we put the ball in the back of the net.

The first goal happened in the 29th minute after we escaped Dinamo’s press in our own half through a neat interplay involving Bellerin, Campbell, Giroud and Cazorla. The Spaniard then sent Alexis down the flank, Sanchez waited for Giroud's decoy run to divert the defenders’ attention and then lofted a cross towards the unnoticed and unmarked Ozil. The German headed the ball home.

Our second came four minutes later, after Monreal intercepted a poor pass deep into Dinamo's half, burst past the defender and squared the ball to Sanchez who sidefooted home what would his first goal in eight games.

We had to wait for the 3rd for half an hour (plus the break), but the goal was worth every second of that wait. It came about when Campbell split open Zagreb's defense in one neat pass, Alexis got onto the end of it, rounded off Eduardo (who had a good game and saved his team on multiple occasions) and powered the ball into the empty net. 3-0 and game over. We could have snatched a 4th right at the death after Sanchez found Ozil in the box, but the German's headed effort looped over Eduardo and just wide of the goal.

Alexis is love, Alexis is life

That's the second time inside the week that I'm asking myself the question about how such a level of performance is possible from the Chilean. He should be on his last legs by now, after all the games here played, but he isn't.

In fact, he improved on his already stellar performance at the Hawthorns by adding end product to his game.

What's even more amazing, every time Sanchez scores he becomes even more active, more willing to chase the ball, help his teammates, assist, score. Alexis once again went into full beast mode yesterday after scoring his first and didn't drop his performance levels until the last seconds.

Arsenal fans voted Ozil MoM and, while I'm very happy for the German who put in another great performance, I think Sanchez deserved the award more. Without him we would most likely have found ourselves hard-pressed to get through Dinamo’s defense.

Mesut Ozil

Even if he completely messes up the game against Norwich, the German will once again snatch the Player of the Month award. He was outstanding in all games this month (even the Bayern debacle), he was consistently brilliant and yesterday he showed again how vital he is to us.

I won't bore you to death with the German numbers, however I'd like to talk about a quality I first noticed developing during pre-season, namely: the directness to Mesut’s play, one that wasn't there before.

Ozil seemed much more willing to make runs into the box and shoot at goal and, as we could see for ourselves, he's pretty good at shooting when he sets his mind on it.

The German took four shots, three of them were on target, the only one which wasn't went narrowly close. Of these three shots one Mesut tucked away, the other two efforts made Eduardo work really hard. Even Wenger seemed surprised by such incisiveness Ozil's game and was full of praise after the game:

“He had an outstanding first half, he has got the taste for scoring now. I’ve never seen him in the box so many times this season, especially in the last five or six games.”

Joel Campbell

As I've mentioned above, it was his best performance for us. Joel looked much more involved in the game, competing 36 passes out of 44 attempted, one of these was a sublime assist to set Alexis up.

Joel also hustled and bustled down the right flank helping Bellerin out and, indeed, completing 4 tackles.

Sure, his attacking display still lacked end product a bit, as Campbell only had one shot which he really should have put away, but still, this performance represented a marked improvement on everything he's done up to this point. While he’s unlikely to be given the nod ahead of Ramsey/Oxlade on the weekend, I’ll sleep much better knowing Joel can produce performances like this one.

Mathieu Flamini

He is French, he is free...and he is much better than given credit for. No, Flam didn’t do anything spectacular yesterday, apart from grounding the bloke who knocked Ozil off his feet moments before that, but I’m not looking for spectacular things from a DM. We have Ozil and Alexis (with a sprinkle of Cazorla) for flashy passages of play, from someone like Mathieu Flamini we need a tidy performance with minimum fouls and maximum output. We got exactly that yesterday.

Flam was tidy on the ball (dispossessed only once, no unsuccessful touches), notched a 93% passing accuracy (he outdid both our centre-backs in this regard, Ozil and Cazorla) and on top of that provided some steel in sticking up for his teammates. Well done, Mathieu.

I don’t know whether Flamini will continue deputising in that role until Coquelin’s return/acquisition of a new holding mid, while Wenger’s yesterday’s experiment with Chambers showed he may not be completely at ease with starting Flamini in every game, but I’ve seen enough not to fret over our central midfield for the time being.

Ramsey on the left? Sanchez up front?

When Ramsey came on for Giroud, I was baffled a bit. I thought he’d either play on the right with Campbell on the left, or in central midfield, with either Cazorla/Ozil shifted to the left side of the attack.

Imagine my surprise when he did neither of those things, instead setting camp on the left. For me it looks like a sign Wenger is unwilling to introduce two changes at once in central areas (Flamini for Coquelin and Ramsey for Cazorla) - which is not unlike the Frenchman and which is what ArsenalColumn ponders here. I think it means we’ll see Rambo return to the right flank on Sunday.

However, another experiment caught my eye, one which may point to the fact Ramsey WILL STAY on the left, with Oxlade coming in on the right. The experiment I’m talking about? Alexis Sanchez up front.

We know Giroud is no winger, we know Wenger is reluctant to upset the midfield dynamic by introducing several changes at once, so should the Frenchman proceed with Alexis up front (and I think he ought to try it out, luckily the run of games we have allows us to), the only options for the flanks would be Ramsey, Oxlade and Campbell. With the latter likely consigned to the bench soon, the motive behind Ramsey on the left can well be in place.

The verdict

It was a great game for us, a great win, a much-needed boost after a pretty atrocious November and, finally, it leaves us with a very real chance of qualifying. Even Mamic said after the game this Arsenal side is well capable of beating Olympiacos by two goals.

The situation is not new to us, twice in the last two years we played away needing a win of a greater margin and, with all due respect to Olympiacos, our opponents were tougher. Despite that we almost got the job done. Now we need a lesser feat against a lesser opponent? Is it possible? Yes.

Phew, I feel like I’ve written enough. Back with a preview of our weekend game.

Until then

West Brom 2-1 Arsenal: it wasn't meant to be

This game can be summed up with a phrase “it was one of those games”. Everything went against us. We’ve made some uncharacteristic individual errors, were not helped in the slightest by Clattenburg and, basically, looked doomed to lose the game especially after missing the penalty.

I’m not inclined to blame the manager for this loss. Arsene selected the strongest side possible. Even his decision to drop Campbell proved, in hindsight, the correct decision. Could he have kept Alexis on the left and played Bellerin as a winger? Would it have yielded better results? I don’t know, but it looks a very fine margin from starting Gibbs as a winger. There’s no guarantee Bellerin would have fared better or that, indeed, Debuchy would have coped.

I’m not inclined to blame the players either. Who do I blame who really deserves it? Arteta? But he doesn’t. He got the ball in the build-up for West Brom’s equaliser, only for Clattenburg to give the free-kick anyway. As for the 2nd, Mikel found himself between a rock and a hard place; his own goal looked more of a deflection and it appeared almost innocent compared to what Mangala did later in the evening.

Or maybe Bellerin? Granted, the Spaniard didn’t look his usual self and was at least guilty of letting McLean sprint past him for the 2nd, maybe even for losing Morrison for the 1st. However, this is what @7amkickoff said about Morrison’s finish and I agree with him:

“This match against West Brom had a huge element of bad luck for Arsenal. The goal they conceded was a strike that Eduardo, one of the most technically gifted players I’ve ever seen play for Arsenal, made once in his career. My honest opinion is that Morrison was just trying to get a boot on the ball. There is no way that he tried to samba that ball in off the volley using the side of his right foot.”

However, there are still bits I’d like to discuss in greater detail. Let’s start with the positive one(s).

Alexis Sanchez

Our Duracell bunny had his best performance in a while. He pulled off one of the only three shots on target, created three chances for his teammates, completed 11 dribbles out of 16 attempted and got us a penalty.

In short, he put in a performance highly reminiscent of Sanchez we all know and love and lacked only a goal to his name (preferably, the winner) for his comeback to look complete. However, he still got his MoM award.

I have no idea how Alexis pulled off such a performance under the circumstances. The circumstances being his (supposedly extreme) levels of exhaustion. He plays and plays and plays. Amazing from the Chilean, hope he has enough energy left in his tank for the Zagreb game. Then Oxlade should return for Norwich, so Alexis will finally be able to get some rest. Not sure he’’l want to, though.

Tony Pulis and his orcs

Orcs aren’t tied to location, it’s the way of life. Wherever Tony Pulis goes, orcs appear out of nothing and follow his lead.

It seems Pulis once again deployed his dirty tactics of time-wasting and hacking our players down at every opportunity, but it wasn’t the most disgusting thing about the whole situation. The most despicable thing was…

Mark Clattenburg

If you asked me before the game to rate the referees in order of competence, I’d probably have put Clattenburg into 2nd, behind Michael Oliver. After the game he slid down to somewhere in-between Anthony Taylor and Mike Dean.

Frankly, he had a nightmarish performance, however what boiled my piss the most about his incompetence was that the ref seemingly gave in to the fans, the players, Pulis and the whole disgusting atmosphere. Like Mike Dean vs Chelsea, he was too busy avoiding the wrath of the home fans to be able to control the game and make correct calls.

He didn’t punish Yacob for his foul on Coquelin, the one which will see the Frenchman sidelined for two months, he didn’t book whoever slid in-behind and almost killed Monreal seconds later, he allowed Ollson to manhandle Giroud in the box… I could go on, but I’m sure you don’t need me to.

Coquelin and Arteta

It’s the thing I hate most about our defeat. Not so much the defeat itself, these are unavoidable, but injuries to further two players, one of whom was absolutely vital for us since starting the game on the 28th of December against West Ham.

Unfortunately, Francis Coquelin has suffered a knee injury, the full extent of the damage we don’t know yet, but he’ll be out for at least two months. Arteta’s injury was labelled “short-term”, but this makes the situation only marginally better.

Wenger now has to come up with a solution at DM, one which will allow us to get through the month of December as unscathed as possible, before snatching a new holding mid on the 1st of January. Fingers crossed he will find one.

Coq’s injury also potentially leaves us with another midfield dilemma: can Cazorla maintain his level alongside Flamini, Ramsey or even Chambers? I’m not sure he can, so I’m awfully relieved we got Ramsey back. Just in case Cazorla’s contribution will plummet with his trusty Coq by his side.

The inability to create/take our chances

We looked absolutely listless in the first half, devoid of ideas. It was a miracle we went ahead (cheers for the 7th consecutive assist, Mesut), largely because we seemed off the pace big time. We seemed capable of only conjuring something up from set-pieces, so it was no surprise 2 of our 3 shots on target came from free-kicks.

We got better in the second half, but that was where our inability to finish kicked in. Alexis failed to pounce on a good cross, Campbell spurned a glorious opportunity to make it 2-2 and Cazorla put the icing on this horror show’s cake by putting a penalty horribly over. He slipped on the spot and, while I suspect some West Brom player tampered with it right before the kick was taken, that just cast the result in stone and summed up our day. It wasn’t meant to be.

The verdict

Such things happen in football. In fact, they happen all the time. The underdogs beat the overwhelming favourites. Big teams will put it weak performances, they will get punished for it and it’s naive to think it only happens to us. It’s football, it’s unpredictable, this unpredictability is one of the reasons we love the game.

And look, we could have been much worse off. We didn’t lose 4-1 at home (hats off to Liverpool. A masterclass of a performance), we don’t sit in 14th after barely scraping past Norwich.

In fact, we are just 2 points off league leaders Leicester. Both Leicester and United have tougher runs than we do. Nothing was lost in terms of the title race on Saturday. Now we just need to make sure it stays that way in the coming weeks.

Until later

West Brom preview: a chance to go top

So, after a two-week international borefest (made worse tenfold by the events in Paris), the real football is back. The players are returning, none of ours seem to do so in pieces and the next break is four months away. Four months of uninterrupted football at club level.

The weekend will kick off with Watford hosting a United side with Martial, Fellaini, Carrick and Rooney, but, naturally, our eyes will be trained on Arsenal. The Gunners take on West Bromwich away at the Hawthorns and this one for me has a distinct feeling of playing Stoke or Palace away, back when Pulis, now the manager at WBA, headed these clubs. I’m pretty sure we’ll be up against a physical side, concentrated more on time-wasting antics than playing actual football, and this is something we’ll have to work around. For a better understanding of what West Brom can offer, I thoroughly recommend you to check out this article by @7amkickoff. Fascinating stuff.

For now, though, I’ll try to figure out what we can offer. The first bit of business is, per usual, finding out the personnel at Arsene’s disposal.

Team news update

The only one back is Hector Bellerin. Ramsey and the Ox should be back on Monday though (I presume back in contention, for they have been training with the main group for a while now). Further news which I find a bit alarming concern Theo Walcott, about whom Wenger said:

“He is doing well, he could be a bit ahead of schedule but still you count a few weeks more”.

Which means Giroud remains our only option for the time being and I hope the Gunners faithful will back him fully (naive from me, right?). We should also factor in Giroud can be not quite in the state of mind to play football right now, same applies to Koscielny, whom Wenger mentioned in the presser:

“I will talk with him. It’s a big game for us. I have not talked to him yet, but I will talk to him to see if he’s completely recovered and focused.”

I do hope however both Frenchmen are okay, we badly need them. It sounds selfish, I know, but Giroud is our only real option at centre-forward, while Kos is simply undroppable. Yes, I know we have Gabriel, though as someone rightly pointed out to me, the Brazilian doesn’t seem to be particularly effective alongside Mertesacker. My gut feeling too.

Head-to-head

Quite frankly, we have a good recent history against the Baggies, losing only 2 games out of the last 19 (away) and losing none of the last 9 (home and away). Moreover, we have a near-impeccable away record this season, winning 5 of our 6 games, which includes 3 out of the last three with a goal difference of +9 (11 scored, 2 conceded).

This is coupled with West Brom’s atrocious home form this season, winning only one game and drawing another. West Brom are also a direct opposite to us attacking-wise: they attempt the fewest shots per game (at 9.5) which led to them finding the back of the net only ten times (league low, tied with Villa and Stoke), while we attempt the joint-most shots (at 18.4), though sit only fourth in goals scored with 22 (behind City, Leicester and, surprisingly, West Ham). That can partially be explained by our wastefulness in front of goal early on.

We are like chalk and cheese with West Brom, simply put. Their game is all about defending in numbers, time-wasting and staying up, while we prefer expansive attacking style of play and fight for major honours.

Squad

Arsene has quite a few things to ponder. Firstly, should he give Alexis a rest? The Chilean played 8 games in 31 days, featured in both international matches and looked jaded in the extreme even before he went away. As Tim Stillman brilliantly put it, Alexis is surviving rather than living right now. He surely will need a breather at some point, now seems as good a time as any. Better than during the Boxing Day frenzy anyway.

However, I won’t be surprised should Alexis both start and play the entire game. The reason is simple: we don’t have enough options up front to give Sanchez a break. Unless we want to try something radical at the Hawthorns, like Ozil on the right and Campbell on the left, I don’t think we’ll see Alexis omitted from the starting XI. Wenger is more likely to do so on Tuesday, by which time we should have both Ramsey and Oxlade back.

Another question is Campbell. I know it’s kind of stupid to say we lack options up front to continue playing Sanchez and then going on to ponder whether Joel should be involved, but I still think him starting is a res judicata. Why? Because I think it’s fair to say the Costa-Rican hasn’t blown us away with his performances. Him on the right is a mixed back: Joel is worse at dribbling than the Ox, but he is also less involved in the build-up than Ramsey. That explains why he’ll go back to being third-choice upon the return of Rambo and Ox, unless he pulls of a worldie of a performance.

In the light of Bellerin’s return, coupled with Debuchy getting back into form (something that shouldn’t come as a surprise, we know the Frenchman is a better player than his performances this season suggested), I wonder whether Arsene might be tempted to use Bellerin as a winger. The Spaniard will give us some directness, which the squad without Wilshere, Rosicky, Oxlade and, potentially, Alexis badly lacks, while such a role is not altogether unfamiliar to him.

Such a scenario still seems a bit far-fetched, though. At least it possesses an element of surprise and allows us to have an attacking option (Campbell) on the bench.

Finally, Arsene should decide on the mental state of our Frenchmen and Cazorla’s levels of exhaustion. I discussed Ollie and Kos above, so won’t stop on them here. Cazorla will most likely play, seeing as the international break wasn’t too challenging. Santi featured as a sub against England (scored a lovely goal too), while the game against Belgium was called off. As a result our diminutive playmaker returned a bit earlier.

Predicted line-up: Cech - Bellerin - Mertesacker - Koscielny - Monreal - Coquelin - Cazorla - Ozil - Campbell - Alexis - Giroud

The verdict

We have a very good chance to do what we failed to before the break: go top of the league. United have a tricky away game at Watford, while City face a much sterner test in Klopp-led Liverpool. Leicester have an easier ride (Newcastle), so as much as wanting to go top, tomorrow should also be about ensuring we don’t fall behind.

Here’s to the three points later on. Come on you Gunners