Morning all.
The players had a day off yesterday, and will return to London Colney today to begin preparations for Sunday’s game against Liverpool. Thus far we haven’t heard anything solid about Riccardo Calafiori, although I saw some second hand reports from the Italian press about how there’s a ‘fear’ he has suffered some ligament damage.
I don’t think that’s out of the ordinary. I feared it when I saw it happen. I’m most of you feared it too. And still do. It’s about what the results of the scans say, so let’s keep everything crossed it’s not a serious problem. As it stands though, we have a big worry about him; we’re unsure if Jurrien Timber can make Sunday (although he’s likely to be needed on the other side if fit because of William Saliba’s suspension); Takehiro Tomiyasu is out; Oleksandr Zinchenko was deemed not ready to play 20 minutes the other night so I can’t imagine there’s any way he’s ready to start a game where he’ll be playing against Mo Salah; so it could be a toss-up between Jakub Kiwior and Myles Lewis-Skelly for Sunday.
That’ll certainly be an interesting one for Mikel Arteta to consider. My guess, if it comes down to it, is that he’d go with the experienced option, because that’s what he tends to do. Obviously Kiwior made a bad mistake against Bournemouth, but it’s not which which needs a huge amount of analysis. He’ll know fine well he should have done better, and to be fair, the Polish international had a run of games at left-back last season which included a 3-1 home win over Liverpool. In the 9 games he played there from January to April, we won 8 and drew just one, which was the 0-0 away at Man City.
Perhaps though, it’s easier to accommodate him in that position when the team is in a good run of form. You have to acknowledge he was part of that, but in that run we had players like Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard available and contributing in a big way. We had two 5-0 wins, two 6-0 wins,…
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Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-10-24 06:55:23
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