Few of us could seriously have imagined we’d be heading into the break for the World Cup top of the Premier League table.
The target for this season was to force our way back into the Champions League places and, to a large extent, that remains the case…but circumstances have offered up a rare opportunity.
One more win, just one more, and we’d be certain of our place at the league’s glorious pinnacle before the world’s best and brightest make their way to the Middle East. What an achievement that would be and what an opportunity for the manager and his staff to sit down and reassess just what is possible for the team this season.
But, before we can let our heads drift away into the clouds, we’ve got one more job to do: we must overcome Wolves.
Our record at Molineux in recent years has been mixed; there have been some timely wins and there have been some disappointing defeats. To be sure, it’s not an easy place to go and play football these days and we can expect a difficult night’s work again this weekend.
Evening kick-offs are almost always contrived by TV broadcasters to generate a certain sort of outcome. They have no interest in a run-of-the-mill 5-0 win for the favourites, they want a ding-dong tussle, a big atmosphere and plenty of drama. Moving this fixture to 7.45pm has been done entirely to help facilitate those outcomes, which is an increasingly irritating part of being among the bigger teams in the league.
But that’s just how it is.
For Arsenal, retaining their place at the top of the table should be motivation enough to get the job done. This will be the last of a truly exhausting run of matches and they are hopefully planning to sign off in style.
Last weekend’s win at Chelsea was a truly landmark performance for Mikel Arteta’s emerging side and any sort of repetition of that form will, I have no doubts, result in a convincing win. For all our improvement and development as a side this year, though, we remain capable of the sort of performance we witnessed against Brighton in midweek.
We can be wasteful in front of goal, feckless in possession and susceptible to quick turnovers from the opposition. If we’re not on our game, we can struggle – some tired performances against Southampton and PSV – as well as Brighton – are testament to that.
If we trying to be positive, though, we can be glad of the rest afforded to many of our first-team stars in midweek. The manager went with a much-changed side for the Carabao Cup and, although the outcome was perhaps not what we wanted, it did afford some the opportunity to rest after a pretty relentless run of games. Fresh(ish) legs will stand us in good stead.
Aside from Emile Smith Rowe and Takehiro Tomiyasu, we also have a pretty healthy compliment of players at our disposal, having so far avoided the sort of injury crisis that can derail entire seasons. At full strength, we’re a match for anyone so that will be of vital importance in the immediate term, or at least until we can get to a transfer window and a chance to add some depth and quality to this squad.
For all we’ve come through this season, it would be immense if we could clear this final hurdle. It is obviously unrealistic to expect that we’ll take points from every single fixture this season and there will be disappointments to come but getting to the break at the top of the table would be a huge victory in and of itself. I don’t think it’s beyond us or, indeed, too much to ask for this squad.
Picking up again after the World Cup will be difficult and is sure to be a complete momentum killer. So, while we have that momentum, let’s squeeze every last drop out of it. If we can keep Manchester City’s cyborgs at bay until the World Cup break, we’ll have changed the landscape of our season.
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