Sunderland preview: get at them

Howdy.

It’s been a gloomy couple of days for the Arsenal faithful. Earlier in the week Guardian reported Cazorla suffered knee ligament damage, which is likely to keep our ambidextrous regista sidelined for around three months. This news, coupled with a long-term injury to Coquelin, means our central midfield pairing of choice for almost the entire calendar year is out of the equation.

I won’t go into detail why this is bad. I’ll simply leave you in the safe hands of @7amkickoff, who examines just why this unlikely duo is one of the best in the league and why it will be fiendishly hard to replicate what they do with different personnel.

The other bit of news that has people worried is Alexis’s injury. Varying reports say the Chilean will be out for the period of 3-4 weeks, which is not that bad, I guess. I mean, there’s nothing pleasant in losing one of your leaders, but at least that way he’ll get a much-needed break and won’t miss a lot of football. The only team which can cause us real trouble before January 13th (the Liverpool game) is Manchester City on the 21st of December. Naturally, I would prefer (as all Arsenal fans would) if Alexis were fit for the game, but if he isn’t, there’s no point in rushing him back. Word has it the Chilean travelled to his home town to get some R&R (and treatment, of course).

There was a hailstorm of criticism coming Wenger’s way in the immediate aftermath of the Norwich game, but I was still a bit surprised our manager stood up and defended his decision elaborately. Maybe it has something to do with today’s presser being public.

“We have medical tests. We are quite sophisticated in testing our players. I had a chat with Alexis after his injury and he was adamant he felt perfect before the game because we tested his strength, stretching, all the signs we test every week were perfect. There was no obvious sign or alert before the game - it happened, do I have to take the blame? I do, but there was not an obvious mistake to select him before the game.”

As they often do, Wenger’s arguments make sense. There’s a certain type of people who would have been dissatisfied anyway. Imagine we rested Alexis and lost/drew the game. I’m certain some would have said we should have risked Alexis, especially since he had a marvellous performance in midweek and a five-day-break after it.

Arsene gave no update on Wilshere, Rosicky and Welbeck, so here we can only hope for the best. The best being Jack in the squad around mid-December (maybe the City game he can make?), Rosicky early January and Welbeck around mid-January. Here’s to their respective returns on time.

Meanwhile, we have an actual game of football to get on with. If you fancy a bit of reading as to why we suffer injury crises each year, you can check out my own thoughts on the matter, or these of my colleague. Fascinating stuff from him. I’ll get back to the task at hand, though.

Team news update

We can’t count on any of those I’ve mentioned above, naturally, but there is a chance Gibbs, Koscielny and Walcott will make the squad:

“The players injured in the last two weeks will not play tomorrow and who is back maybe in the squad could be Laurent Koscielny and Theo Walcott. That will be a decision tomorrow morning (Friday).”

Gibbs’ availability Arsene addressed earlier. Seeing as all three took part in full training today, I expect them to make the squad, the question is in which capacity. By the way, Arsene didn’t have anything concrete to say about Arteta, which is a bit worrying, so add the Spaniard to his compatriot Santi, and also Alexis, Jack, Rosicky, Welbeck and Coquelin on the injured list.

Squad

The optimist in me wants to count in Kos, Gibbs and Theo, so I’ll just go ahead and do that. It means we’ll have an 18-man squad and can put together a decent bench on top of a decent starting XI. I wonder whether we can find a place for Jeff, though. Otherwise our bench will look defense-heavy with no nominal midfielders on it.

Supposing Theo does come back, it’s highly unlikely he’ll be reinstated straight away. We don’t want to rush a player who spent 6 weeks on the sidelines and on whom we’ll be dependent in Alexis’ absence to bang in some goals in the coming weeks. That means another start for Joel Campbell. Not the most exciting of prospects, but our options really are limited.

However, I’m also interested in whether Theo’s return means he’ll start games on the right consistently, upon regaining match sharpness. As Tim Stillman nicely put it, playing Oxlade, Theo, and Ramsey in their respective positions provides us with “plenty of ebb but not much in the way of flow”. In simple terms, it means we have quite a few players who are good at dribbling or off-the-ball movement, but aren’t that good at setting a rhythm to our game. This heavy burden will fall on the shoulders of Mesut Ozil and I fear this is too big an ask even for him. Arsene will have to come up with something, though, as none of our pace-setters (Cazorla, Arteta, Rosicky and Wilshere) are currently available.

What that means for Theo, however, is that I see him rotating with Giroud, but not on the wing. Though I’d say having Oxlade and Theo either side of him with Ramsey making runs from the deep is heaven for Olivier Giroud and his clever flicks, we run the risk of unbalancing the side this way.

Another question regarding our line-up tomorrow and in the near future is whether Arsene is willing to give Calum Chambers a shot in the middle of the park. The Englishman completed 90 minutes in this position for the U21s in midweek, maybe it was a kind of preparation of what’s to come.

I doubt Wenger sees it as a long-term solution and will be highly surprised if he’s not looking at the market in search of holding midfielders, but who knows? If the lightning really does strike twice and Calum excels in midfield, it’ll be way easier to find a good centre-back in January than it will be to find a central midfielder.

With that sorted, here’s my provisional line-up: Cech - Bellerin - Mertesacker - Koscielny - Monreal - Flamini - Ramsey - Ozil - Oxlade - Campbell - Giroud

Approach and head-to-head

Why do I get the feeling every time I write a head-to-head section we can’t seem to get a result which would have been logical looking at the stats?

Anyway, the best bit I can give you is that Sunderland has never beaten Arsenal at our place in the Premier League - that means in 14 games, of which the Black Cats lost 9. The Gunners are also unbeaten against Sunderland in 11 league games, winning 7. Something that is even more satisfying, Sam Allardyce has lost 7 consecutive away games against Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. The fat bastard.

And now the bad news. Of the 7 last home game against the Black Cats, 4 ended in goalless draws. Moreover, we are not exactly firing on all cylinder at the Emirates this year, scoring just 8 goals in 6 games, though we have only lost one during that run - the opening-day defeat to West Ham. Furthermore, we are on a winless streak of three games, while Sunderland have won the last two, something which allowed them to climb out of the relegation zone.

What approach will they take and what can we do about it? I’m pretty sure Fat Sam will order his men to get behind the ball and restrict space. Unfortunately, this might just work. As @7amkickoff points out in his “By the numbers” section, teams seem to have found us out. They restrict space and watch us try and break them down. Were it not for our newfound defensive fragility it might not have been such a big deal, but that’s not the case, alas. Twice in our last two games we allowed our opponents back into the contest after scoring first, dropping points on both occasions. These were the first points dropped from winning positions since our loss at White Hart Lane in February. Before that, only the Swansea game in November comes to mind.

Tim offers two solutions: individual skill (i.e. dribbling) and distance shots (“poke and hope” as he labels it and I have to agree that’s not really a solution. Without Jack, Alexis and Cazorla we’ll be hard-pressed to implement the former, though.

There is a silver lining, however. In Oxlade-Chamberlain, we have the best dribbler at Arsenal, I kid you not. He averaged 3.6 successful dribbles per game in 2014/2015, which amounts to a 67% rate. That’s more dribbles per game than Sanchez (3.3) and Cazorla (2.4), though the Spaniard has a slightly higher success rate at 72%.

However, it’s where the dribbles were made that’s important and, though I don’t have the numbers to back it, I’m pretty sure Cazorla attempted most of his in the middle of the park (he is an escape valve, remember?), while the Ox dribbles in the final third mostly. Or carries the ball from the deep, but you get the idea.

The verdict

It feels like it will be another game where the opponent sits back and restricts space while we try to pry them open. The question is whether we have learned from our past two games and whether we’ll get the needed result if we did.

Fingers crossed, I’ll say “yes” in answer to both questions come tomorrow 5 p.m.

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