It’s a big deal tonight in the Premier League when Aston Villa comes to town. Leave aside the whole Unai Emery story, it’s so irrelevant at the moment, but we’re facing a team in tremendous form, who have won eleven games in a row in all competitions, and who beat us with a late goal at Villa Park earlier this month.
Mikel Arteta was asked what he could learn from that match at Villa Park, and said:
We’ll watch it again. I have a few ideas and things we need to do better. It was quite brutal too, the way we lost it, but we will learn from it.
I thought it was a relatively even match, but the obvious difference between tonight and then is the availability of William Saliba and Gabriel. At Villa Park the central defensive partnership consisted of Jurrien Timber and Piero Hincapie, who I think are right in saying that they had never started together as a partnership before. While it wasn’t terrible, I do think it left us open in ways we rarely have with that first-choice duo on the pitch, and if all goes well, we’ll have that at our disposal tonight. There is simply more security, and in turn I think this affects our availability to attack the opposition with greater efficiency.
We don’t yet know what the situation is with Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori, but it would obviously be very important to have the former in the starting line-up for building the rest of the team. Declan Rice did a fantastic job at right-back against Brighton, but in a game like this you want him in the engine room, especially if Villa are without Boubacar Kamara – who has been a very important player for them this season – through suspension. Villa are strong there anyway, but Rice at full-back isn’t ideal, and if he’s back in his normal position I’d expect him to be up there with Martin Zubimendi and Martin Odegaard.
Where I think an interesting decision needs to be made is up front. I have seen that Kai Havertz is in the squad, but if he is included there is no way he will start a game of this intensity after such a long absence. Villa are also missing Matty Cash due to suspension, and Pau Torres is also out, so their defensive options are not as deep as they could be. That makes me wonder if this could be a match for Gabriel Martinelli on the left, and that factors into the decision you might make with the striker.
I might really be tempted by Gabriel Jesus tonight. His relationship with Martinelli is excellent, and I don’t think Viktor Gyokeres is in the kind of form that would make him undroppable. The Brazilian also offers something more in terms of his all-round game. He tends to combine with others for greater effect, and while I can’t say he offers significantly more goal threat, I do suspect that the way he links play could earn him the nod later on. And if it doesn’t work, we have serious options in the bank to change things.
Then it’s about managing the occasion and the high stakes that come with this fixture. It’s the first against the third, it’s a chance for Arsenal to make a statement and put some distance between us and Villa. Not to mention Man City don’t play until Thursday, so the back and forth of the title race and the pressure we can apply is all part of this too. And of course there is a feeling that some revenge is in order after what happened in our last match against them.
Losing on the last kick of the game is cruel, and you could see from the players’ reaction how much it hurt. You can be pretty sure Arteta will use that as extra fuel for what will hopefully be an Arsenal fire tonight. This feels like a huge game, one where a good performance and victory not only brings the points advantage, but also some reassurance after a few games where things were almost too tight to properly enjoy.
But first and foremost, and most importantly, it’s about the points. If it ends up being a sloppy 1-0, I would assume so, but if we can win this convincingly, there is a lot to be gained from it. That is far from a foregone conclusion: we will have to work very hard and play very well to achieve it, but I also think it is within our power to do so. Fingers crossed.
Okay, I’ll leave it at that for now. We have one preview podcast on Patreon if you need something to listen to, and as always we will have it live blog coverage and all the post-game stuff Arseblog news later.
Come on you reds!
#central #defensive #duo #key #exacting #Villa #revenge