Watford (a) Thoughts & Predicted Line Up: Decisions At Both Ends To Be Made As The Arsenal Return

My interest for International football is slim to none really, it has been since I was a kid. Even though this is the case, I accepted two VIP tickets for the England vs Slovenia match at Wembley as I thought my 10-year-old son may enjoy the experience. No joke, the most entertaining part of the evening came in the second half as fans deciding to try and land paper aeroplanes on the pitch was a far more enjoyable way to pass the time than to pay attention to the dour football down below us. I did my very best to ignore the rest of the football until now and have decided to wait for the Arsenal to return to get my football juices flowing once more. Usually, I’d be rocking back and forth in a darkened room, fighting for my Arsenal fix but for some strange reason I am not feeling it, I don’t have the same excitement as I have felt in the past. Hopefully, that changes when I read the confirmation of the team line up, that usually flicks on the pre-match nerves

Bournemouth (h) – Danny At The Double, Adds To Cherries Troubles

Lacazette is a rather interesting striker, not exactly the player I imagined he was before this season. I assumed he was more of an off the shoulder of the last defender type of number 9. But he definitely enjoys having the licence to roam around the front line, finding spaces between the lines to link up with others. The move in which the referee decided to blow for the foul instead of playing on was beautiful to watch and Lacazette was heavily involved in that

Eternal Sunshine of the Trophy-Filled Mind

The culture of extremes makes it difficult to create a nuanced image of what is happening at Arsenal, or whether the journalists are intentionally disregarding Arsenal’s success as failure, because it doesn’t match up to their idea of success. After all, no matter what, if Arsenal doesn’t win the league, someone else will, and Arsenal will always be compared to them, not the teams that finish below them with more resources, not the teams that have never finished above them under Arsene, not the teams that won the league last year but are fighting relegation this year.

Watford (h) Thoughts & Predicted Line Up: A Lovely Selection Headache for Arsène tonight

I hope we fly out of the traps as we did at Southampton and given how much Arsenal are creatures of habit, I think that is ex`actly how we will approach the game tonight. At the start of the season we were quite front footed and it is only in recent weeks we have begun to start games slowly only to turn up the heat in the second half. I do wonder if some of that is by design to some extent. Arsene is big on the last twenty minutes of games and you can see that with his substitution methods. How many times has he said post matches that ‘we took over when they became tired’

Burnley (h) – One Of Those Rare Moments

As Alexis turned to his left to play the ball to his left, I am glad it was Mustafi in Monreal’s position instead of the left back because more than likely we would have had a cross into the box headed out before the final whistle. Instead Mustafi decided against using his left foot and played it back to Alexis who arched a dinked ball to the far post, to be fair it was a very good ball given just how many Burnley shirts where in the way and Mee booted an offside Koscielny in the face. Penalty!

Burnley (h) Confirmed Line Up: Ramsey & Xhaka Continue While Bellerin Makes The Bench

Arsene has kept the faith with the side that beat Swansea 4-0 last weekend. Bellerin, Gibbs and Coquelin have all returned to the squad but all three are on the bench rather than forcing their way into the starting line up. I thought we may see both full backs come into the side but maybe that was expecting too much so soon

Burnley (h) Thoughts & Predicted Line Up: Arsenal Must Succeed Where Liverpool Failed

It gives Arsene a few decisions to make before kick off. We expect Burnley to come and sit back and attempt to stop us from playing/scoring so if sharp and fully fit, I’d like to see Kieran Gibbs come back into the team for this game, I would imagine that both of our full backs will be pretty advanced which will allow Alexis to play much closer to Giroud assuming he starts