After Arsenal dispatched Vorskla Poltava (say it out loud and somebody will say “bless you”) we can turn our attention back to domestic fare for the rest of September.
And what a spread it is for Gunners fans – three more home games in a row as we look to continue our run of victories, and we’ve got every chance. First up at The Emirates is the other team from Liverpool, Everton.
The Toffees started the season strongly under Marco Silva with creditable draws at Wolves and Bournemouth and beating a somnambulant Southampton before putting three past Rotherham in the League Cup.
Things started to level out this month with a home draw against Huddersfield before they got a proper “doing” 3-1 at home to West Ham – WEST HAM! A team so anaemic away from home their players aren’t allowed to take the field without travel sickness pills.
It might be a good time to play them.
Despite losing Michael Keane to a fractured skull, their central defence looks slow and ponderous. If Phil Jagielka was any less mobile he’d need planning permission and the full backs will spend so much time haring up the field after the carefree wingers like parents pursuing sugared up kids around a fenceless playpark, there will be so much space for us to get in behind them.
Yes they can be dangerous – Calvert-Lewin has looked impressive in patches and Sigurdsson can put them in from range, but the two we need to be worried about are Walcott and Richarlison.
Like seeing your partner squeeze into an outfit two sizes too small for them, seeing Theo in blue shirt on Sunday just isn’t going to look right. I think we can all agree in house that Theo didn’t quite hit the heights we all thought he was going to after Sven called him into the England squad back in 2006. That was a month after Twitter was invented!
We know he wanted to play centre forward but like our partner rolling around on the floor trying to fasten those buttons in the previous metaphor, it just wasn’t going to happen.
When he did have the opportunities he didn’t score enough goals and would always look around like it was someone else’s fault the ball didn’t find him. Be good to see him back and hope he gets a good ovation because he did give us everything he could, which is enough really.
The other danger man is Richarlison. Currently in the form of his life and scored twice for Brazil in midweek when they beat El Salvador 5-0, we recall he did exactly the same thing last season before going AWOL so quickly Watford must have thought he’d been kidnapped.
A friend of ours calls Richarlison “the donut” – because he has a tremendous beginning, a fantastic end and there’s nothing in the middle. Let’s hope it stays like that this weekend.
We welcome one of the London teams we’re happy to see on Wednesday when Brentford arrive. The Bees have made a sterling start to a permanently tough Championship and are third on merit behind juggernauts Leeds United and Middlesbrough. They have the league’s top scorer in Neal Maupay with 8 goals.
Realistically expecting to progress, it depends on how seriously the Bees are going to take it as well as us. They have got three-game weeks for 14 weeks in that division so why risks your top guys at all?
Finally we welcome another in-form team in Watford. Our training ground neighbours come down the M1 in good form despite losing at home to Man United last weekend and have inspired something of a revival of the 4-4-2 with two monsters-in-harness up front – Andre Grey and Troy Deeney.
The guy catching the eye in midfield at the moment is Roberto Pereyra and not just for his “I let an 8 year old loose with my hair clippers” barnet. He’s always had a wand of a foot and we can’t give this guy an inch or we’ll end up like Spurs did when they took them lightly the other week.
Meanwhile Deeney is back scoring and looking like the beast we know he can be. The recent interviews all focus on the fact that he’s lost a stone but we could’ve used a centre forward like him last season before PEA arrived.
We all love the silky stuff we play but we’ve lacked real menace, especially up front, for a little while now, and Deeney looks like a man who would take a defender’s pocket money in front of his parents before battering and bullying them from pillar to post for 90 minutes.
If we can shackle him then we’ve got every chance of keeping the record going but we need to watch this guy because he can give you nightmares. Just look at him. They say people resemble their pets – well if that’s true he must keep a Great White Shark in his bath! Let’s just hope he doesn’t take a bite out of us on the 29th.
If you think we can stretch our winning or unbeaten run to six games in a row or better or think that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang can score in three consecutive games of more than investing in matched betting with your superior Arsenal knowledge could land you a profit, as well as the points the boys are racking up in the EPL.