It Won’t Be Easy Despite Experts’ Predictions – Suburban Gooners

We’re on watch today and tonight, with our game tomorrow, but I’d be lying if I said I was expecting some sort of surprise in Manchester. Brighton are a good team; they picked up a win in their last match, but their recent visits to some of the so-called ‘big clubs’ haven’t exactly caused any surprises. They came close to us at Christmas, but to me it looked very much like a ‘on paper’ result, because we all saw it and they basically scored with their first goal, and even after that we should have buried them. Two weeks before that, they lost 2-0 to Liverpool at Anfield, and 10 days before that, they lost 3-4 at home to Villa. So expect them to get something at Emptihad is probably pretty fancy, I’d wager.

To be fair to them, though, they already did their bit earlier in the season by beating City at the start of the season in August with an 89th minute winner. So you have to say “thank you” for that.

In other games that are semi-relevant, we can hope to have a laugh at The Scum’s expense as they travel to Bournemouth, and hopefully the Cherries can have a final product before Semenyo leaves for City. It’s odd, though, because as much as I always want the Tiny Totts to lose, we want them to keep Frank on the job as long as possible, because it makes them all so unhappy. So they should probably win a few games. At some point. Maybe not today. Villa travel to Palace and it goes without saying that we want Palace to try and pull a number on Villa, while the new Chelsea manager has the small matter of a west London derby against Fulham. I actually think Chelsea are a lucky team with their derby, because let’s be honest, it’s so low-key that the intensity doesn’t really exist. No matter how shitty The Scum can be, these two matches every season often have so much build-up, so much intensity, that there’s a lot of danger with them even when they’re playing in pants. Yet Chelsea are having none of that. Ahh, well, “it is what it is,” as the saying goes.

Leading up to our game, we’ll have a press conference today at some point, and the big thing we’ll probably want to confirm is that: a) we don’t have any new injury concerns from Bournemouth, and b) maybe there could be a return for Havertz and/or Calafiori?

We’ll also have a press conference from Slot this morning, apparently at 9:45, so if you’re reading this later today you’ll know what he said with his update and whether Ekitike is fit or not. I’ve been listening to a few podcasts over the last few days, and the discussion was about how Slot talked about Ekitike not playing against Fulham due to a hamstring problem. As the pods I listened to pointed out, no hamstring problem in the world recovers in a few days, so we’ll find out if he was just lying to save him for this match. That’s my intuition, anyway.

So, speaking of Liverpool, how do their fans feel ahead of this one? Well, I read a blog post this morning basically saying that even though they are on an impressive nine-game unbeaten streak, it “feels like the worst nine-game unbeaten streak ever.” Ouch. This article also highlights how they are not very happy with form, they think the team is buckling under pressure and they are not as smooth as they were at the start of the season. I think this last comment is probably the most telling of what we will see tomorrow. I don’t think Liverpool will be open at all. I think they will try to be solid defensively and give us very little. This is a Liverpool team whose priorities have changed this season, and they are now firmly in the accumulation of points for a top four/five place this season. If you look at it that way then you’re probably thinking as a Liverpool fan: ‘yeah we’d love an Arsenal scalp, it would be a huge confidence boost, but a draw and then going back to winning ways after that is nice too’. For us, because we are in title race mode, the margins are not as fine, and so my hope for tomorrow is that we have more desperation to put down a marker than Liverpool.

I find it interesting that the article above talks about how Liverpool’s pressing is ‘non-existent at times’, which seems very unusual for Klopp’s team or the team that won the title last season. A question of trust? Perhaps, that’s why this game tomorrow needs to be treated by all of us with a bit of caution, because as the article points out, it would be very Liverpool to turn up and look great tomorrow. But in fact, we “owe” them some. At the start of the season it was a draw, and they edged it by an instant on that free kick they scored. At the Emirates last season we were the better team by far, but we ended up one down, Liverpool emerging from our blunder with a point they didn’t really deserve in a 2-2 draw. So I hope Arteta uses this today in training and the team talks as motivation before this massive game.

What about the experts then? What do they say? Well, first up is Merse, who predictably is aiming for an Arsenal win and says we’ll win 3-1. I like optimism, Merse, but I think it might be closer than that and I went for a 2-1 at the post-Bournemouth show last weekend. Chris Sutton predicts Arsenal 2-0, which I can’t see yet, but interestingly the BBC’s AI engine is aiming for 2-2. I can see it – this game was two last season and Liverpool did something crazy like 20 games against us in scoring. So I expect them to do that tomorrow as well. Sports Mole also went for a 2-0, and you can read a little more about that preview here; I always find them valuable and interesting.

I’ll leave it at that for today and come back tomorrow to take a closer look at what we could do, but for now, have a good day.