Last weekend’s Community Shield win over Manchester City was a superb way to sign off what was a pretty encouraging pre-season campaign…but now it’s time to deliver.
While friendly fixtures now are much less friendly than they used to be, the return of Premier League football means the return of truly serious, competitive football; punches will no longer be pulled and the margins for error are drastically reduced.
You have to be in good shape from the first minute of the first week and that means going into Saturday’s clash against Forest with concentration and energy at full throttle. Slow starts in this league are no so easily overcome as in the Emirates Cup.
Thankfully, we have a manager in Mikel Arteta and a group of players in this squad who are hyper focussed on the job at hand. Delivery is another matter, of course, but we shouldn’t expect to see the sort of complacency and laissez-faire approach that was once typical of our early season fixtures at the Emirates.
We can’t rely on teams being shit and rolling over now and Arteta knows that as well as any.
Our visitors are no fools, and they have a manager in Steve Cooper who has bested us on a couple of notable occasions. This weekend, however, I feel like this Arsenal have more than enough to claim the win. Their biggest enemy will be the sort of momentary lapses of concentration early in games that give the opposition something to hang on to. Sharpness and attention will be key.
In the absence of Gabriel Jesus, it will be interesting to see how Arteta shapes his side. Will he try Kai Havertz again in the number nine role or has Leandro Trossard done enough to earn a starting berth? In midfield, will we see Thomas Partey and Declan Rice paired or will the latter be asked to hold the fort in favour of a more attack-minded quartet higher up the pitch?
Personally, I think the manager will stick with the same team that started against City last Sunday but the variety and depth we have at our disposal means he could change three or four players in and out of this side without losing too much of the thrust and intent required.
However the game pans out, I think that depth will give us the options we need to change things or respond to the game state as it occurs, and that is undoubtedly a positive – now and in the months to come.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, we have to get the job before us done. Forest may look at this fixture as something of a free hit. There isn’t a tremendous amount of pressure on them to get a result at this stage of the season and that is the fertile soil from which the seeds of surprise can sprout.
It may only be Forest but full focus will be required to ensure we start this season on the front foot.
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