Dinamo - on the bus. Breathe in, breathe out…
A home Champions League night has given Arsenal fans a breather, at last! Rotated squad, confident victory, a clean sheet, Ethan back in the mix. What a blessed evening!
The squad I wanted to see in this game was almost there - Kiwior at RCB, Zinchenko, Sterling and Jorginho getting a nod. Some of the players received much needed rest, although some, like MLS, were apparently forced to be out. And it was not all bad with the rotation players. Defence was a bit shaky in the first 25 minutes, but they grew into the game and were pretty spotless in the second half.
The only weak spot was Sterling. Again he somehow was completely out of sync with the team. One of the theories that is floating around and sounds very reasonable to me is that as soon as you start slacking on the pitch, you lose confidence, sharpness and it's very hard to get that back. You have to break yourself once again into working hard and start improving step by step, which is a tough thing to accept for a multiple PL winner.
It's a good thing we have Ethan on our side. Hopefully he can start or at least play a good thirty minutes against Wolves to get into shape. It's really very hard to have any expectations from Sterling when we are in the second half of the season, but we haven't seen a single great game from him.
The Irreplaceable Ones
The only two regulars that played all the difficult January games were Raya and Odegaard (also Havertz, but we are about to get a striker, right? ;) ). And that’s a bit concerning. Aren’t we putting all our eggs in one basket again? I sincerely hope nothing happens to them. But don’t we want to give Neto some gaming practice, just to make him feel the team in case he needs to come in for Raya? And with the FA cup out of the picture, these two Champions League games were our only chance.
The Odegaard situation is also worrisome. We need to sub him out as long as we are two goals up. It should be either Ethan, or Trossard or a new signing, but we should be giving him a breather as much as possible, simply because there’s no replacement. What about that Norwegian wunderkind we were about to sign for 10 million? Honestly, the transfer makes all the sense in the world: both for the club, who doesn’t need a replacement for Odegaard, but also needs someone who will be happy with the limited gaming time, but also for the player, who will get support and learning from the compatriot. Odegaard not only speaks the same language and might have similar habits, but he also made this difficult journey of moving out of the country at a very young age to end up in a club of much higher level.
Judging by his celebration, he was left on the pitch to score the goal and get more confidence in legs. To be fair, the way he scored was a bit clumsy. In general all our midfielders needed some confidence and got it yesterday - Rice, Odegaard, Havertz (he’s a midfielder, because we are about to get a striker, right? ;)). And now we stand on 16 points with 99.99% of making it into the top-8. Back after the draw, I wrote that we needed 17 points, so we need to take 12 home and 5 away points. Well, we took 12 home points and 4 away ones and have one game in hand. Which apparently we can even lose, since to net into TOP-8 need 6 teams below to win with two compensating for the goal difference (5 or more goals). And if I can see Bayer winning 5-0, I can’t picture Villa doing it, and it doesn’t even make sense to talk about the ones below.
So the job is done and even at the press-conference the journalists are asking for a Dubai trip. Whatever it is, we need a break to get freshness in the legs of our most important players.
Kai debate
Kai scored and now his tally is up to 14 goals in a season. This resurrected the believers saying that we already have a top striker on our hands. I think this is a dangerous narrative. We have a good player in our hands who does a lot of legwork, makes smart runs into spaces and gets probably more chances than a classical striker would. I start to faint by just imagining how many goals a clinical striker would get in our team.
Kai is good against teams that leave some free spaces. However, none of Kai’s goals came against the top-7 teams. He’s not very efficient against an organized deep block and games against Inter and Atalanta only confirm that. It’s imperative that we bring something different into a squad. Just a new tool in the toolbox.
The top targets we’re apparently after are: Cunha and Sesko. Both of them offer something new. Sesko is not a goal scoring machine, but he has a physical ability that is unmatched in our team. And that might enable the likes of Martinelli, Nwaneri and even Havertz to get into better positions with fewer defenders.
Cunha has the ability to launch a cannon from the edge of the box. He has 10 goals in 21 games, but he has had only 4.2 xG, while Kai had 9.5 xG. Arsenal's system will create for Cunha at least 1.5 more chances and get more goals from him. This season he plays as a second striker, but most of the previous one he played as a CF. I think this experience made him a better player and gives more versatility to our formations.
It should not necessarily be those two. I recently learned about Samu Aghehowa, the power tank from Porto, who even scored against Man United this season. Looking at the compilation he also looks like a very interesting powerful forward. Any prospective striker that can bring something different would be helpful (but not that Brazilian Igor with 5 goals to his name), but we can’t exit this window without signing a striker.
If we don’t, it will bring down the mood of players and the home crowd. If we do, no matter how many goals he scores or matches it will decide, it will lift everyone’s spirit. It will be a simple message that we didn’t give up on the season and are trying to fight for the big trophies. With a top signing, I’d say that the League Cup is still on the plate. Football is an emotional game and strong emotion can blow everything away.
And the Champions League looks like a realistic shot today. There’s not a single team that we should be afraid of. There’s not a single team that would give us no chances. Yes, I don’t want to face Man City or Real Madrid, because those would be very nasty games with dirty tricks and possible referee calls not in our favour. But the group leaders in the likes of Liverpool, Barcelona, Inter or Atleti are not scary at all. And all of them we can beat at home.
Next stop Wolves
Our first away game in weeks comes at Molineux stadium on Saturday afternoon. We don’t have a long break, but given that players like Partey, Timber, Trossard, Nwaneri, Merino were given some resting time we shouldn’t be too exhausted.
Wolves this season fight for relegation, but the most important thing is that they don’t face teams in the deep block. They create chances themselves, but also give the opponents some space. And that’s the type of teams that Arsenal is very comfortable with. Our defence is better equipped to deal with fast attacks and our attack usually needs several good chances to score.
Wolves are the 5th worst by created chances and have the best conversion rate thanks to Cunha.
The Cunha question is very interesting. It’s guaranteed that even if Wolves accept our bid, they will most definitely do it after the game. In the last two games: Cunha was either left on the bench or didn’t show much motivation to play.
And with the Forest 60 mln offer on the table, he’d be even more tempted to leave. It’s weird that after Edu left for Forest, they started to bid for our potential targets. First Wissa, now Cunha, very very weird.
On one hand it seems unlikely that Wolves will sell one of the main forwards, since they bought him for 44 mln. However, from the accounting perspective they amortize the part of his transfer fee every year. In their accounting books he costs them not 44 million, but only 27. So a sale for 57 million would mean a pure 30 million accounting profit, which is not something to sniff at.
Do I think Arsenal should pay 60 (+/- 5) million for him? I would say - yes, considering how much psychological weight gives a massive transfer. Even if his valuation is 45, an extra 20 million is a difference between first and third (or second and fourth places) in the Premier League and that’s exactly the impact we might be looking at. We can always promise a hefty bonus if we win one of the major competitions.
It would be fun if Wolves take our 60 million and use 40 of them to buy that Porto striker.
As for the line-up it’s hard to understand who would we have available for Saturday? Are White and Calafiori available? Or it doesn't make sense to risk starting them in the first game? My choice would be Raya - Timber, Kiwior, Gabriel, Zinchenko (or Calafiori if Zina is out) - Partey, Merino, Oegaard - Nwaneri, Havertz, Trossard.
And we might be able to bring Martinelli, Rice and White from the bench which is already starting to sound more and more decent. But not decent enough without a new striker! COYG!