Saturday 8 November 2014

Swansea (A)

Arsenal have it all to do in Europe now after catastrophically throwing away a 3 goal lead against lowly Anderlecht. For 60 minutes the gunners played like champions, with pace and intent and quite frankly a cool penalty from Arteta, a superb volley from Alexis Sanchez and a very tidy finish from the OX should have put the game to bed. The tactics from us were bizzare. Most teams at 3-0 would hold the ball and invite pressure from the opponents then break on the counter. We continued to throw men forward and in the end that cost us. 

Anyway we move back to Premier League football this weekend as we travel to Swansea. We need to put in a solid performance to boost confidence ahead of the international break. A win would send us above West Ham into fourth (it seems so weird writing that). A loss could leave us languishing in the pack and with tricky games against United and Southampton to come some points would be very handy. 

So in team news Jack Wilshere is available for selection after illness, but we are without Arteta who went off midweek with a hamstring injury. Away from home I'm not sure we'll break out the 4-4-2 formation and Wenger may favour the 4-5-1. Theo Walcott will be pushing for some more minutes having returned from injury but I can't see him starting following Wengers comments yesterday.

Swansea are going to be awkward at home and are a team we've struggled against in recent seasons. They're playing well this season and we know Wilfred Bony and Sigurdson will be a handful.The defence will need to be on form in order to keep them quiet. Gary Monk has them playing good football and we need to retain possession well and they are good with the ball.

Tomorrow is going to be a tough game. Things need to to start clicking sooner rather than later cause it still doesn't feel like we've really got going this season and with some tough games and the busy Christmas period coming up we need to hit some form sooner rather than later.