It’s only November but a failure to take some points from Stanford Bridge today could be terminal for Arsenal’s title hopes this season.
I don’t want to be alarmist or reactionary but a gap of 10 points, even this early in the season, would be unrecoverable. It’s simply too much.
That is the scale of the challenge that faces Mikel Arteta’s men today (Sunday). They need to find a way to turn around what has been a marked slump in form while seeking to contain a Chelsea side which is starting to realise its potential.
It’s an unenviable task and extremely ill-timed.
Sometimes, seasons are forged in fire, though, and this might be the week we turn things around…..please God!
What the manager can’t do is persist with the formation that has seen us struggle badly for almost a month now. Fielding Leandro Trossard and Kai Havertz together up top doesn’t work, that much has become clear.
It’s not for want of trying but the combination simply makes us slower and makes us easier to defend against. We have struggled quite badly to score goals and create good chances and it’s obvious to all of us that it isn’t going to win us games.
Add to that an overly-cautious midfield, and a defence pot-marked by injuries and a loss of form and you have a maelstrom of misfortune that we have to navigate our way out of.
Hopefully, the return of Martin Odegaard can be a turning point.
It’s probably too simplistic to say our whole system relies on his presence but we have certainly missed him these last two months. It really has underscored how good he is as a player and also how ill-equipped we are as a squad without him.
I’ve said it again and again but allowing Emile Smith Rowe and Fabio Vieira to leave in the summer was foolish.
There’s nothing we can do about that now, though, we have to hope the captain can give us at least a half of football today and build from there.
We also have to hope for more from a number of players who we can say have underperformed of late. William Saliba and Gabriel Martinelli are favourites of ours but they can’t be immune from criticism, both need to be sharper.
In terms of selection, the question is whether Arteta opts for Odegaard from the start or not. Everything else will flow from there.
If he decides he can’t risk it, he’s going to have to reach deeper into his bag to find a solution. Enzo Maresca is going a good job with this mess or a Chelsea squad and you can sure that any mistakes will be severely punished. It could very quickly get away from us.
We can’t sit back and hope again that set pieces will bail us out. I think we absolutely can make hay from our corners and free-kicks, don’t get me wrong, but they have to be part of the plan not THE plan.
In terms of predicting the outcome of this one, I can’t say I’m confident. We have an excellent recent record at Stanford Bridge and against Chelsea but it feels like the stars are aligned a little differently this time around. I don’t have a good feeling.
Somehow, though, we have to find a way because a failure to do so means a top four challenge rather than a title challenge.
Blog on You Gunners 