Morning all, a fast Saturday round-up for you.
Forward of Crystal Palace tomorrow, we await an damage replace on William Saliba who went off with a again downside. Sadly, Mikel Arteta mentioned Takehiro Tomiyasu’s damage appears to be like severe, so it’s a double whammy in that sense. Underneath regular circumstances, if Saliba bought injured you may transfer Ben White again into the centre-half place, and Tomi may play proper again, however that appears most unlikely now.
What issues me is how innocuous wanting it was. He slipped a method, then the opposite, which appeared to stretch out his knee, and it’s so usually the case {that a} participant can choose up a major problem when it doesn’t seem like very a lot occurred. I can’t inform you how a lot I winced when Manuel Ugarte got here steaming by means of Bukayo Saka late within the sport, however after the Uruguayan was despatched off, Saka was okay. Tomiyasu had a little bit of a slip and I reckon we’d not see him for some time.
From an opposition perspective, the information that broke yesterday morning concerning the dismissal of Patrick Vieira instilled in all Arsenal followers one other dose of our biggest worry. Not mega-scorpions. Not Maroon5 protecting North London Endlessly. However the brand new supervisor bounce. The one factor is that they don’t have a brand new supervisor but, and it could be a case that they flip to an ex-manager, Roy Hodgson, to handle the tip of the season. How bouncy is Roy as of late?
Tomorrow it’ll be Paddy McCarthy, to date boss of the U21s, who will take cost on a caretaker foundation. Patrick was sacked on St Patrick’s day and changed by Paddy. Whether or not he can present the brand new supervisor bounce, we’ll have to attend and see. For Vieira, it’s a little bit of a disgrace as a result of whenever you have a look at the fixtures Palace have within the subsequent couple of months, they’re all way more winnable on paper than a lot of the ones they’ve performed just lately, however clearly the board misplaced religion, and at most soccer golf equipment when that occurs there’s just one consequence.
Anyway, extra on the Palace sport tomorrow. Yesterday, the draw for the Europa League was made, and had we made it previous Sporting, we’d have confronted Juventus within the quarter-finals. These video games would have taken place April thirteenth and twentieth, which means our schedule would have been:
Sunday ninth: Liverpool away.
Thursday thirteenth: Juventus away.
Sunday sixteenth: West Ham away
Thursday twentieth: Juventus house
And our sport subsequent in opposition to Southampton which is scheduled for Friday twenty first would, I assume, have been moved to the Sunday twenty third. On Wednesday twenty sixth, we play Man Metropolis away. Make it by means of in opposition to Juventus, and we’d face the winners of the Sevilla/Man Utd tie. For the sake of argument, let’s think about United went by means of. That might give us:
Could sixth: Newcastle away
Could eleventh: Man Utd 1st leg
Could 14th: Brighton house
Could 18th: Man Utd 2nd leg
After all you may assume that may be a schedule to relish, and that’s truthful sufficient. Huge golf equipment must be concerned in massive video games on the enterprise finish of the season. That’s what we’re aspiring to. It’s additionally price mentioning that not being concerned doesn’t assure something both. We nonetheless have some very troublesome video games, and we’re going to need to be at our greatest to get what we’d like from them.
Within the preview for the Sporting sport, I wrote about how in some methods it was a approach of testing the depth of our squad and its skill to compete on two fronts. I don’t assume we performed notably effectively on Thursday, however I believe among the criticism has been a bit excessive. On one other night time a kind of extra-time possibilities goes in, their keeper is just not as impressed, and we’re having a distinct dialog this morning. However, the fact is that we’re out, we didn’t do sufficient in opposition to a good Sporting facet, and perhaps that tells us we now have a bit extra to do by way of squad constructing earlier than we may be as aggressive as we would like.
On that foundation, and whenever you have a look at among the Premier League fixtures we now have to cope with, it’s not too troublesome for me to compartmentalise our Europa League exit within the context of this season. Like I mentioned, there are not any ensures, however that additional time between video games we now have for preparation, recuperation, organisation, and all the remaining, may effectively be a bonus if we benefit from it.
Let’s see.
Proper, I’ll go away it there for now. We’ll have a Patreon preview podcast for you later at this time, chatting with Lewis as common and Dan from HLTCO I’m recording {that a} bit later after I get to London, and it ought to drop round late afternoon.
For now, have a very good one!
