morning.
Manchester United are home to Manchester United in the Premier League this evening, and Mikel Arteta has given little in terms of player availability for this match. There are some question marks for the game against West Ham, with Thomas Partey and Mikel Merino missing, and Gabriel and Riccardo Calafiori missing for half-time and the first half of the second half respectively.
Arteta said this at a press conference yesterday.
We are scheduled to have a meeting this afternoon. We ran a training session. We monitor certain activities and have banned some. After that meeting we will decide which people are suitable and available and who will start.
They all want to play.
With Partey and Merino available, the obvious place where changes are needed is in midfield. One of the two can replace Jorginho if the manager so wishes, with Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard making up that trio. If Calafiori is fit at left-back, I think it will be Oleksandr Zinchenko’s first Premier League start since the 2-0 win over Wolves on the opening day of the season.
United’s new three-at-the-back system under Ruben Amorim gives the wing-backs the power to get forward, so this could be an area they are looking to exploit. So the only other change I can imagine would be for Gabriel Martinelli to start on the left, providing stronger defensive cover on that side and still the ability to get forward and use the space left by the wing-backs.
United went into this game buoyed by the confidence of their 4-0 win over Everton. But I think they will find the Arsenal defenders much less receptive to them this evening. Some of the goals Sean Dyche’s side have conceded have been downright poor, making things easy for United. It’s also a bit of a free hit for them, a new manager has arrived and they’re not necessarily expected to come to Arsenal and win, so there’s not the same pressure on them.
The flip side of that, of course, is that we have scored five goals away from home in our last two games and three goals without reply in the home game against Forest. So we found a way to attack and tonight they had gaps in their defense and hopefully we can use that to our advantage. Also, our recent home record against them has been very good. We will try to extend it again later.
Asked if his side need to find another level to catch Liverpool, Arteta responded:
Yeah well, the level is win, win, win, win, win, that’s it. So we haven’t done that yet this season. We’ve won a lot of games that aren’t at Liverpool level, so there’s definitely another level.
Home games are very important as we try to keep track of a Liverpool team that is completely successful this season. But I don’t think that’s the case, with players like Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard having a huge impact on results and performances in a positive way. It would be wrong to be quietly confident this evening. Although on paper this was always going to be a tough game.
Okay, I’ll leave it there for now. Don’t forget that a preview podcast is available now on Patreon. Later you can join in on the live blog coverage and get match reports, goal clips, reactions, player ratings and more from Arseblog News.
Until then.
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