The headline pretty much says it all about today’s Emirates Cup Friendly against Lyon, as Arsenal play their final pre season game, before we face off against Neto-less Wolves next weekend (had a word or two about that yesterday).
This one will be one that I’m expecting Arteta to be taking the most serious of all of the pre season friendlies, although I still think the second half will give us plenty of rotation at some stage, but for at least 60 minutes I think we’re likely to see the best XI that we can put out as a pre-screen before the big kick off and I’m weirdly excited about this friendly. I think it’s because it gives us the biggest indication on how ready the team is for what is a bloody difficult start. Normally I place absolutely zero stock in these games and yes, in terms of the result, it doesn’t really matter. But we want to see Arsenal perform well, play with an attacking spritz and keep it tight at the back, because we all want that sense of comfort that what we’re going to get this coming season is more of what we’ve had last season and the season before.
And that’s the irrational fan in me coming out now, because I’m suggesting – and have a slight fear of – us not being as good as last season. Perhaps it’s my natural self-preservation of not wanting to get my hopes built up high only for them to be knocked down, but despite what my eyes have shown me for the last two seasons, I still worry that we aren’t going to be able to repeat what we’ve done in recent memory. Despite looking at the squad and thinking we are better, despite liking what we’ve done in pre season, despite the fact that some of the young players are now a year more experienced, despite the fact Arteta has shown he is adaptable and innovative in his tactical approach and set up throughout seasons, I STILL have a fear that our footballing world will come crashing down.
That’s probably why I’m excited and maybe a little apprehensive about today, despite it being a friendly, because I want to see this Arsenal team play well and do what they were doing last season. Even in the Leverkusen game I found myself saying “yeah but Leverkusen are a couple of games behind us, their fitness isn’t as good, so despite the fact we trounced them we need to take it with a pinch of salt”. To be fair that thinking came in post game rather than in the moment and I’m sure as soon as kick off comes at 2pm today I’ll ignore all of that and just get wrapped up in the match. But what I hope to see is a strong Arsenal XI to start, a side that takes the game to Lyon and one that shows that we are ready for Wolves and ready to see if we can steal City’s crown.
And whilst Leverkusen were a bit behind from a fitness and match perspective last week, the same cannot be said for Lyon, who start their season next weekend like we do and who have played four pre season friendlies already. Their last one was a 4-0 drubbing of Union Berlin in Germany and wouldn’t you just know it but our old friend Ainsley Maitland-Niles bagged a goal from midfield too. I suspect he’ll get on, but we won’t see Lacazette, who was part of the French team that lost in the final on Friday at the Olympics. Whether he’s in the stadium to wave to the fans is probably unlikely, but apart from Maitland-Niles the familiar faces we will remember in that Lyon team will be Nemanja Matic and Said Benrahma, who also scored against Union Berlin and missed a penalty against us at The Emirates in that West Ham game at Christmas last year.
In terms of a tactical set up, I’m loathed to really bother looking in to this too much, because quite often in friendlies team experiment and so we don’t really know what Lyon will do today. It’s unlikely they’ll sit back and park the bus, but equally I don’t see them leaving us with acres of space to exploit. They played a 4-2-3-1 against Union but against Torino they went for a 4-3-3, which they also did against St Pauli in the friendly before that and even on the official site in their preview of this game they say that you can’t really pin Lyon down to a particular approach. I think that Arteta will therefore see them as a perfect final friendly opponent before we start the proper stuff next weekend, because depending on how the game plays out in the initial stages, he might want to adapt his style and our set up if it is or isn’t working. And that’s one of the things that you’d say is Mikel’s super power, because he has got better and better every season at spotting where we have problems and rectifying it, so perhaps a bit of adversity today against an unknown quantity in Lyon might be a good thing for us.
But as a fan of course you want to see goals and so if it’s an absolute drubbing in which we learn absolutely nothing but we get to give a team a pasting on our own soil would also be a lot of fun.
I’ll certainly be finding a way to watch it today somehow, then tomorrow inevitably I’ll be over-analysing every last moment as if it’s a cup final. Well, to some extent, I guess it is!
I’ll leave it there for today. Enjoy your Sunday, let’s hope it’s a lot of fun this afternoon, then I’ll be back tomorrow for a match review of some sort.
