When teams found themselves in a spot of bother last season, you could rest assured in the knowledge that Arsenal would provide them with a way out of their rut.
Goalless in 10 games? Have a hat-trick! Winless in a calendar year? Have one on the house! A bad run, streak or record that needs snapping? Consider it snapped!
I used to dread hearing or reading about this particular statistical anomaly or that one, knowing full well that Arsenal would do everything in their power to give a struggling side a helping hand. Everton at Goodison Park or Southampton at St Mary’s stick in the mind as two especially shudder-worthy defeats that should have been wins.
And so we arrive at this season and tonight’s opponent, Aston Villa, whose boss, Steven Gerrard, sits on the cusp of the worst start to a managerial tenure in the club’s 140-odd year history. We couldn’t possibly, could we?
I’d like to think that Mikel Arteta’s fast-maturing side would know better than to fall into the psychological trap of taking a side as out-of-form as Villa for granted nothing is ever certain. We’ve seen on innumerate occasions already this season that any side, on its day, can cause an upset.
Ours is a fiercely competitive league and any drop in level is being punished.
Arsenal must show no mercy. Villa and Gerrard are currently down and we must give them a kicking.
Though we are currently in good form and have all the momentum behind us, a growing list of midfield injuries might yet prove troublesome.
There was already a makeshift feel to our lineup at the weekend as Mohammed Elneny filled in for the perpetually injured Thomas Partey in midfield but it has since emerged that Egyptian is in turn injured and looking set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
However you slice it, that leaves us short in a big way.
If Gerrard has nous at all, he will pack his midfield and seek to dominate what is likely to be a make-shiftier looking midfield. The obvious replacement in midfield is Sambi Lokonga but the manager’s reluctance to field him at the weekend has placed some doubts in my mind.
He does have the option of shifting Ben White into the midfield and slotting the returning Takehiro Tomiyasu in at right back but it is an imperfect, short-term solution to a problem that may yet persist and, indeed, is an area that requires some attention in the longer term.
With the continued absence of Oleksandr Zinchenko, this all makes for a rather larger headache than any of us might have liked at so early a stage of the campaign.
Mercifully, we still have plenty of options in attack and a midfield captain in Martin Odegaard who is in arguably the form of his life. If the manager can’t find a good solution for the midfield tonight, it is to our attackers we will have to turn to win this one.
This weekend sees us travel to Manchester United for a game the hosts are likely to be baying for. Despite their erratic, often comical performances of late, I would expect the size of the occasion to make it an intense and tough encounter. It is perfectly possible that we come away from that encounter having dropped points, which makes a good performance and a good result against Villa tonight all the more important.
This is just the sort of game we would have dropped points in over the last two years but tonight we must show we have learned from our mistakes and really turned a page. It’s time to make it five!
Blog on You Gunners 