It might be utterly preposterous for anyone to suggest, but a City win this late afternoon / early evening would put both sides on the same number of points; whereas an Arsenal victory would put our hosts 6 points ahead after just 5 games played.
Of course, regardless of the outcome, we’re still only in September.
v Arsenal
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| Emirates Stadium |
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 9/11.
A fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-5-1 (occasional 3-6-1):
____________________Haaland____________________
Doku_____________________________________Silva(C)
_________Reijnders_____________Foden____________
_____________________Rodri______________________
O’Reilly________________________________Khusanov
__________Gvardiol_____________Dias(VC)___________
__________________Donnarumma__________________
Subs: Trafford, Lewis, Ake, Stones, Gonzalez, Phillips, Nunes, Bobb, Savinho.
Gigi stays in between the sticks.
It appears to be working so why change it? Well, Pep might have his reasons for tweaking the defence but I’m going for the same back-4, occasional 3 but maybe less so today, of Nico-O-, Josko, Ruben and Abdukodir.
Rodders in front of those.
In form, when he switches on both his afterburners and head, Jeremy, alongside Tijjani, Phil and Bernardo.
Erling up top.
James is reserve stopper; Rico, Nathan and John to provide defensive cover. Nico-G-, Kalvin and Matheus are a trio of midfielders in ‘the 9’, while Oscar and Savinho give us two attacking-wing options from the side.
Notable absences:
- Marcus Bettinelli – Not selected.
- Steffan Ortega – Not selected.
- Rayan Ait-Nouri – Injured. The nature of the injury and length of time out is still unknown.
- Mateo Kovacic – Information from our manager on 17th September was that the Croatian international will be returning from injury soon.
- Rayan Cherki – Out for a 2-month period from the date of the announcement on 30th August with a thigh muscle tear.
- Omar Marmoush – Out with a bruised knee ligament issue. Unknown return date but it will be a matter of weeks by the sounds of it; possibly returning either just before or just after the next international break in October.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Yep. However, away against a very strong Arsenal midfield it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider a ‘double pivot’ of both Rodri and Gonzalez. 🤔
Result?
Prior to the derby and on the back of two consecutive defeats, I can honestly tell you that I had a small amount of focus on this game and was fearing the worst.
After that victory but prior to the Napoli game, I had half my mind on our trip to North London but was still viewing this fixture with a degree of trepidation.
Of course, the Italian side were down to 10 men after just 21 minutes and that was a real game changer - there’s an argument that we should have scored more. However, I think we have to acknowledge that their keeper had a good game.
So, I was at ‘fearing the worst’ and then we go and win two games; scoring 5 goals and keeping 2 clean sheets in the process. Has it changed my mind? Well…sort of.
I did look, however, at Arsenal’s midweek Champions League result and I heard that they had chosen to rest 3 or 4 key players (I haven’t looked that fact up to make sure) and yet still managed an away victory as well as a clean sheet. Impressive.
So I’m wobbling – I’m swaying between managing a good away draw and suffering a defeat; hoping that if it’s the latter it won’t be by a big score.
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It would be remiss of me not to mention the clear fact that, ahead of a big clash such as this, our hosts have had an extra 2-days to rest, recover and prepare following European ventures. That clearly isn’t fair and, despite the fact that we travel to Huddersfield Town for a League Cup clash on Wednesday night, a game that is likely to see us utilise a near-full starting-11 player rotation; this Arsenal fixture could / should have been played on Monday night in my opinion.
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Does this fact have any bearing on my predicted outcome? Well…yeah, it’s a fairly big item.
Our manager said after our game in midweek that he’s hoping we can make it a little bit more challenging for them [than we did in last season’s corresponding fixture] and that he’ll have to wait and see what we can do to prepare; looking at how well-recovered the players are following Thursday night. I suppose that’s all he can do and say, really. 🤷♂️
Considering all…IF we play with the intensity we showed against Manyoo and, perhaps even, find another gear above that performance; we are capable, with the quality that we have, to get something out of this game. I recognise how much stronger Arsenal look this season and, so, when I say “something” I mean a ‘share of the points’.
It’s a ‘fingers crossed’ that we can find that level of performance in us this afternoon and a fairly bold, draw prediction from me. 🤞
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result:
Prediction: Draw
Result: Lost
(Pre-match blog posting from that game)
Expected weather conditions during the game: On Friday in North London at 5:00pm (BST), the ‘feels like’ temperature was a whopping (for September) 27C (just over 80F)! For the match, around the same time of day, it’ll be just 13C. ☹️ The direction of the wind will have swung roughly 180-degrees from a southerly to a northerly in those 48 hours and that much cooler breeze really will make a difference. However, at least it’ll be dry – it’s largely grey skies but the sun does try to break through towards the end of the game for players and fans alike. 🧥🕶️🥧🍺⚽
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| Solidarity |
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