Against City, at Etihad… For the Title!

Well, it isn’t exactly the title decider yet, because there are games left and City can go on to lose some of them. But it does feel like one. Arsenal competing against Manchester City, with 5 point lead having played a game more. Beat City and we will most likely win it after 20 years. Lose against them, and we would have to involve Gods.

Premier League is ruthless! I was drafting article two weeks back about how going to Etihad with 11 point lead would be immense and even if we drop points against them, the league would still be ours to lose. Since then, we shared points with Liverpool, West Ham and Southampton. We have 6 more games left, some of them are tough – Chelsea (H), Newcastle (A), Brighton (H), Forest (A), Wolves (H). Only the last 2 can be termed easy ones, but then Southampton was bottom of the table and scored 3 past us at Emirates. Our run of games is surely tougher than City.

And this makes our game against City this Wednesday, a must WIN.

We have some problem going on, in our defence. Saliba is out injured, and we are leaking goals. Twitter wants Thomas Partey as an inverted RB and Ben White moved to CB. I’m not sure how useful that would be, when your midfield is gone and Ben White, who haven’t played at CB this season will suddenly have to face Haaland. In my opinion, Holding is what we have, and should start at CB. He wins headers, he is good defensively and his lack of pace needs to be covered up. How? I don’t know. Probably the same way Xhaka’s has been done whole season; it’s for the manager to think.

I doubt we will change anything. Arteta will stick to his playing XI. Tierney won’t be playing at RB, no it’s not going to happen. And rightly so. To fix one position, you are not going to ruin 3 more. Best way would be to give extra classes to Rob and hope he sees Diego Costa in Haaland.

One change I would like to see, is Trossard starting. He has been brilliant for us since January and he needs to be there in our most important game of this season. He can replace Vieira, can’t do any worse right? Though Xhaka would be back and everyone and their grandmother can guess who will start.

We need the best of Partey. The one where he was playing a single pivot, distributing beautiful passes to the front 3 and delivering a constant 8.5/10.

Lastly, we need Jesus. We spent 45million on a CF to score goals against big team, in games when it matters. Use your City departure as a motivation. Jesus wanted to have more game time as a CF, which was primary reason he left City. He needs to deliver when he is getting chances because I have seen Eddie doing equally well. If it’s only about the linkup play and dropping deep to support midfield, what changed between you and Lacazette? CF needs to score goals. Someone had to say it.

We have progressed this season. Even if you are Arteta hater, you will acknowledge that some of our games has been magnificent to watch. Our football has improved and the players have grown from 19 year boys to 22 year old men. Even if we don’t make it at the end, these players will have our support. Those songs in the away ends won’t die irrespective of the outcome.

We needed a fight to begin with, we have seen our lot fighting and winning. It’s a battle reduced to Master v Apprentice.

Right, that’s all I have for the City game. It’s not the size of the dog in a fight but the fight in a dog…

If you are feeling low thinking about our dropped points and about the rest of the season, here’s a news – Spu*s have appointed an interim manager in place of the sacked interim manager who was appointed after their manager Conte was let go.