Howdy folks, hope we’re all in fine fettle this Tuesday morning?
The Arsenal ‘squad’ are in the US now and Arteta was interviewed ahead of the Bournemouth game tomorrow, as we prepare to take on Bournemouth in the early hours of the morning on Thursday UK time, which is the first time we’ve heard the boss for a few weeks. There was a load of stuff that was added to the official site which is nice and you get the feeling that everyone – not just us fans – are really eager to get things up and running for the new season, which is weirdly less than a month away.
I liked reading and hearing Arteta speak about the eagerness of the players to get started. There was of course questions about how difficult it was to come so close and yet not achieve any trophies last season, in reference to Arsenal being so near to perfection, but Arteta and his mindset once again shone through; he simply batted it away and said “that’s what we have to do!” when asked about going that extra step. I love that. Mikel is a mentality monster and ever since he took over at the club you could just tell that. He’s constantly looking for us to evolve, to grow, to do something different, never resting on his laurels. Elite football is so much about consistently having to re-invent yourself as a team and even a few week’s ago Mikel was talking about us having to do things a little differently than last season; sometimes it isn’t even visible at first, but he is looking for any tweak that means we can change a game with the tactical approach and the quality of players he has at his disposal.
In a way having this young team out with him now might well be a good thing in that respect, because he’s going to get closer to players with whom he probably knows, but hasn’t immersed himself in their training and approaches all of the time because he’s so focused on those first team players. The opportunity for some of these young players to have the manager therefore think differently about them whilst they are in the States is therefore massive. If some of them can impress, then maybe Mikel might at least consider them for League Cup duties, or maybe even if we can get a few results in the bag and qualify for the new format of the Champions League earlier than the last game in the group stages, there’d be an opportunity for some of these kids to experience European nights too?
He was asked about Tomiyasu’s injury, which I spoke about yesterday, but you can hear from Arteta’s words that he is gutted for Tomi. We all are. We all love him as a player but, as we all know by now, his body just doesn’t seem to be as robust as we’d all wish it to be. He also spoke about Timber and not for the first time, he talked about him being a ‘leader’, which I think is interesting. Given this kid is so young, he’s barely played for us, he missed essentially the whole of last season, yet Arteta has referenced this a couple of times, I think Arteta is going to give him a lot of game time this coming season (providing he stays fit). I just have a feeling that Arteta is going to love him. Of course absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that jazz, but it just feels to me like Arteta has some big plans for him. I have no inside track, I’m not any kind of expert, but just looking about the way Arteta talks about him, about the praise he has given him about the way he trains, his eagerness to learn, plus that leadership reference I already mentioned. Of course the big challenge for Arteta is how he’s going to fit all of these players in, because if / when Calafiori comes in, he’s going to have quite the stockpile of ‘registered’ defenders. Whether he gets some of them playing further up the pitch in terms of starting XI’s remains to be seen, but I am at this point in time really curious to see in which parts of the pitch Arteta asks players like Timber to operate in. He’s also spoken of his technical ability too, so perhaps there’s some thinking that he could play a little more advanced in the team? We know Arteta loves flexibility and adaptability of his players to play multiple positions even in one game, so seeing how Timber is deployed is probably something I’m most intrigued about next season.
There was also some stuff about the Euro’s and Mikel offered some soundbites, but now that it’s well and truly over I’m not really minded to bother speaking about international football any more. It’s done, it filled a void for a short period of time, now the real stuff starts and I can’t wait to see how we start to perform in the next couple of weeks. Especially given our start to the season and it feels as though we really do have to make the most of this pre season in order to get ourselves in a position where we can hit the ground running in mid August.
Right, I’ll leave it there for today. Off to do some more tapping away at the laptop, only in work mode, rather than the more fun football mode.
