Today Arsenal play PSV Eindhoven away with the aim to secure top spot in the group and to bounce back from an unnecessary drop of points at St Mary’s. To show must regain momentum and it will not be easy. PSV have seen enough last week to know that they will have a chance against us, especially if Mikel decides to give a few sure starters a rest tonight.
PSV are a well established club in the Netherlands who every season fight for the Dutch title, mostly with Ajax. They may be less famous than the Amsterdam club, but they have had some very fine footballers over the decades wearing the stripy red and white shirt: from the Van de Kerkhof brothers to Ronaldo (Brasil) and Romario, and from Koeman to Gullit and Hans van Breukelen. But the club’s top scorer and seventeen seasons long most loyal and loved PSVer is unquestionably Willy van der Kuijlen, who sadly passed away last year. He was prolific for them, scoring over 300 goals in 500+ games.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/14692611/willy-van-der-kuijlen-dead-eredivisie/
I have written before that I had my first away game at the Philips stadium with my boyhood team, Roda JC, as a small boy and have been there on three more occasions. It’s the home of Philips and they have always had the best lighting system in the Dutch league. They love their football there and we can expect a raucous atmosphere.
Lineup
Arsenal will probably lose if Arteta makes too many changes. We can afford to lose as we still have a good opportunity to win the group the week after at home to Zurich. But Arteta will want to finish top tonight and he will pick a strong team to do so. This is no doubt the hardest fixture of the six for us, so little chance to do mass rotation. Sorry PB.
Yet, there is space for a few non-sure PL starters…
Turner
BigTom, BigR, BigW, BigTier
Loko-Granit
Nelson, Ode, GJ9
Eddie
That’s my guess but I love to hear your suggestions for the lineup.
By TotalArsenal
Bergkampesque 
Vieira should start
And Tierney isn’t big…lol COYG!
Ramsdale
Tomiyasu Saliba Holding Tierney
Lokonga Xhaka
Vieira Odegaard Martinelli
Nketiah
let’s brace for some hypocritical statements about how hard Reiss has been working at Colney, how talented he is …
Anyway, COYG – hope I’ll get a stream to watch this
Here’s the team. No Turner so he must be injured.
Ramsdale
Tomiyasu
Holding
Saliba
Tierney
Ødegaard
Sambi Lokonga
Xhaka
Fábio Vieira
Nketiah
Martinelli
Substitutes
4White
Partey
Gabriel
Saka
Gabriel Jesus
Cédric Soares
Nelson
Hein
Cirjan
Smith
Ibrahim
You tell him that next time you see him, Josiah! 😁
Looks like Nelson is just not making enough impression, Le Gall.
Good morning fella’s. Looks a lovely evening in Eindhoven. Deep blue skies, lots of red and white, plenty of beer in hands, Neil Diamond on the tannoy…
Hi Stu,
Yes great atmosphere and good start to the game. Passing the ball round well ut keep slipping somehow. Also some poor first touches and passes early on. Still we are starting to purr.
thank you VAR
I genuinely feel sorry for Nelson, and I start to feel sorry for PSV, too.
Despite their 33% ball possession they scored 2 goals from offside – the second was a really narrow (yet correct) call.
I love Holding for trying to console Simons.
Our attack lacks any danger whatsoever, but maybe it will improve in the second half.
An “Ode to VAR”??
Gakpo’s 1v1 was a thing of beauty, as for this Xavi lad, he’d been a threat from the getgo, we were very lucky on that one, such a close call it was
If we don’t switch to “unfriendly” mode, these two will hurt us sooner than later in the 2nd half
Fabio’s had classy touches and inspirations, a bit too far from their goal for my taste – but this left foot of his is silky
Tomi’s done very well on his flank too, but Gakpo simply don’t stay put on his wing and seems to feel very comfortable in a more central position, we’ll need to address that imo
Most of the lads went through the motions, nothing more, only GabMart was way below par, but I won’t place any bet on the changes …
COYG
Saka and Partey on for the rescue mission
I feared this sort of performance, let’s hope we start playing now. Until now there is more evidence of the dip in performance when rotation is applied. But I also repeat that not having ESR, Elneny and Zinch available is a big disadvantage
Simons causing trouble today
Not great by Rams there now we are in real trouble not sure about trying to rescue this by putting on more starters
Half an hour of power play boys. CoyrrGs 🌋 🌋 🌋
The back line is our only positive until now.
They seem much more dangerous than us now and for me we are a little shaky defensively but again midfield has been most disappointing in that aspect even with Ode on just not enough for Eddie and Gabi to work with.
Very impressed with Simons had heard about him when he was at Barca and PSG he might be the real deal has outshone almost everyone
It’s the other way around: Eddie and Marti (and Vieira) gave Ode little to work with
Wow the quality is dropping off pretty disappointing performance and our form is a little worrying but I read the other day Man City has also had a drop off in their performances not just results and they have better quality in squad depth.
You may have a point there TA I am not likely to watch it again but one I will say I in the last couple of games I have seen our wingers marked out of games a more easily. It seemed earlier in the season Zinchenko with Gabi and Xhaka were getting involved into good combination play on the left and to a lesser extent we saw that with Ode, Saka and White. Ben has been overlapping to good effect but there has been a gradual crowding out of this supply line and would like to hear from you all if you think there is a need to tweek formation to counter this. I am not very tactically astute at reading such things but those are some of the observations I have made.
I think Arteta got this one wrong. The team were not fired up and the attack was a poor combination of skills and mutual understanding.
We lost deservedly and the subs could not change it round.
I expected this outcome as we could only have beaten PSV with the strongest squad and a totally focused mindset. Arteta went half way and it didn’t work.
Can’t understand the need to Play Ramsdale instead of Turner and it’s not due to Ramsdale performance. It’s more about the message that is being passed on to Turner. This is precisely the reason I am not convinced about Arteta man management and his team selections. What a dreadful performance? This was not an isolated performance, this was coming from the last 4 games. We won 1-0 and drew another which was indication that levels were going down. We are in serious zone right now and I don’t see players like Viera contributing much. The first team players look completely tired when we have only played 11 games.
Rotation eh, now we’ve gotta go big in the last game, just before Chelsea.
Makaya,
Martinelli plays much better when his pal GJ9 plays. Saka is always dangerous on the right. Lokonga is miles behind Partey and Vieira is struggling to establish himself.
We will be at our best again v Nottingham, I hope.
Lol, Turner injured. Not even on bench, Madhu.
I had heard someone say that Turner was not in the squad or might have a knock I ithink Mikel already showed he fully trusts Turner to deputize for Rams and interestingly enough one could say Rams made an error on that cross. Holding was involved in both goals and I just saw from highlights De Jong got another free header that could have resulted in a goal.
TA like you I am one who was not down on Bukayo when he was taking a lot of criticism but I do wonder if he can be moved around more which I saw him and Gabi doing last game because the opposition has rightly decided that he is too dangerous to leave with a single defender and doubled up on him which in key moments we see a third defender come in and neutralize him somewhat. I like inverted wingers but once in a while having one who is a natural right footer helps to shake things up or having him play on the left if Gabi is on the bench not necessarily switching them.
Madhu, Turner had a groin injury before the game. At least that’s what I’ve read.
Still, I don’t see if it could be worse with Hein between the sticks.
When the really challenging task would have been to have a good result AND keep the key players fit and energized ahead of Forest, and the decent task would have been to either have a good result OR keep the key players fit and energized for the game on Sunday we managed to achieve neither, gave no minutes to Soares, Nelson or Smith.
I’m not sure there is a silver lining here, but if any: maybe the team needed to have their @$$e$ handed to them before bouncing back; and this case it’s better to lose the game in Eindhoven, then our home fixture against Nottingham or the next one at Stamford Bridge.
I agree Makayah. It is also about effective triangles and Saka and Odegaard are brilliant at this. It was poor today but it was to be expected.
Yeah I would play Hein if I was Arsenal paid me to manage for one game with no pressure no way in hell where points are up for grabs. In hindsight we can all be a better manager than Pep I do not see any manager in Europe giving their third string goal keeper a debut in a meaningful game with an opportunity to cement first place. I get the impression some would be happy if we were fifth or eighth in the table but with a well rotated squad to their liking and having featured 5 academy players in the toughest league in the world.
Oops my bad then, but dreadful performance. It’s been coming though for the last few games we look bad
I wonder what everyone’s expectation was before the season started. If you looked at what Chelsea and Tottenham had done in the offseason in terms of bringing in new players versus our business you would have thought top four was going to be a huge battle. Lets not forget Newcastle’s bottomless pocket but here we are top of the league with a squad that is surely one of the youngest in the league.
I am overjoyed to be top of the table but I will be very happy with a top three finish as there are still some areas of the squad to improve. I am not ruling Arsenal out of anything but there has been great improvement and there will be setbacks but going in the right direction. I just hope the fanbase keeps up the positivity when the going gets tough. I fear expectations are rising a little too fast because of the start we have had. Besides top four all I want is for the transfer budget to be saved for Bellingham lol
Dear Gooners recommend you to watch Women CL game against Zurich. Women play really great brand of football. Jordan Nobbs scored an absolute beauty. A volley the ball wasn’t perfect she adjusted her foot and scored an absolute screamer. It’s live on Arsenal.com
OGAAT, Mayakah.
Cheers, Madhu
Hopefully it’s not too bad for Pablo. Crazy world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63421228
Wow that’s horrible
TA, I totally agree with you that the half cooked combination by Arteta was wrong. Not only can we not give a top performance but there was no real fluidity as the players were not used to each others positioning. Changes should only be minimum.
Sorry, guys, but I’m not exactly buying this half-cooked narrative. Or maybe I do, it depends on the interpretation. This game was not simply as half-cooked as the previous EL fixtures, but even less so. If we consider Turner, Holding, Soares, Lokonga, Vieira, Nelson, Marquinhos and Nketiah as the ‘B team’ players (academy lads and Elneny excluded), then out of these 8 Arteta started 6 against Zürich and the 2 Bodoe/Glimt game, 5 last week against PSV and 4 yesterday. Sure, I cannot say it was our first and strongest team, but not the full rotation either – which was never even tested. So if that was the half-cook metaphor then I can come on board, with the caveat that neither of the extremes were feasible alternatives, so basically all our EL games were half-cooked, and nobody seemed to be complaining about it.
TA, I appreciate being mentioned in the post. But the problem (or at least my pain) was not the lack of rotation against PSV in Eindhoeven. I am willing to accept is as a necessity. My pain is that we didn’t get the result (never really had the chance to snatch a point based on the display), but the bigger one as that Arteta will field a similarly strong line-up in the last group game, the home fixture against FC Zürich.
So from Nelson’s, Maquinhos’, Soares’ and Matt Smith’s point of view the disaster was not that they couldn’t play yesterday, but they couldn’t play much in the previous 4 fixtures either, and now they have seemingly lost their chance to play against bloody Zürich.
Feel free to disregard Smith, who is the cream of the academy bunch this year, but Nelson played in the CL with Hoffenheim, and reached the final in the Conference League with Feyenoord. And he is admittedly highly rated by Arteta: https://www.arsenal.com/news/arteta-backs-special-talent-nelson-shine
New Post 🙂
All good points, PB.
Re Nelson, I don’t know what is happening but it’s a shame we don’t see more of him. Yet I will not just blame Arteta for this.