A rather poor showing by the boys in all red on Thursday, but ultimately it was the poor finishing by the home side that validated Shen-Odamus and his bold prediction. Thus, 2 more Europa League fixtures have been added to the calendar, and the sprint toward the ultimate goal of Champions League football next season looks like this: 7 games in 3 weeks (22 days to be exact), 5 in the league and 2 huge semi-finals in the Europa League, that could very well end with one mega-fixture at the end of May vs. Chelsea, the meaning of which I'm not even going to dive into at this point, there's too much football to be played. With so much riding on each of these games, it's frustrating that nearly all of them (the Leicester game being the exception), WILL NOT be easily available on TV. We will be bumped from NBCSN this weekend for Liverpool, as well as Wednesday for the Manchester Derby, and likely for Chelsea v. Watford on the 4th. The Europa games are the Europa games (Spanish language / BRLive), and who knows which cable channel we'll end up on for the final game of the season. So much to play for, and yet sadly Rambo may have played his last game as a Gunner in Napoli, coming up lame with another hamstring strain. I hope it wasn't his last game, but we won't know more for a few days at least. So onward towards the weekend, one sec while I Google a less controversial graphic: This one will be on NBC Sports Gold in the US, anything less than 3 points at home will be a disaster, I'm afraid. Take care of business and let the rest of the cards fall where they may. COYG!!!
Will use this to throw out once again... I wish they would make the League Cup an event for those teams not competing in Europe, and play some of those early rounds the same week as UEFA events. Would relieve fixture congestion for everyone as the top 7 would have fewer games to play and then some of the subsequent League Cup dates could be used for either league play or FA cup. Which might lead to 1-2 fewer midweek dates at this point in the season. But that's just me.
Disappointing TV coverage for our run-in. But at least my Gold subscription is starting to paying off. One bit of extra incentive for us to cheer on our boys in the EL tie vs Valencia, is that the Final is the only EL match which will be aired on a mainstream English TV channel (TNT).
Just saw the Leicester game has been moved from Monday 4/29 to the early Sunday slot (7:00am ET) , giving the boys an extra day and a half prior to the home Europa league Semi-final match!
Looks like tomorrow will be the first game I can't watch , in some capacity, this season. Stupid nbc gold.
Arenal team: Leno, Jenkinson, Mustafi, Koscielny, Mavropanos, Kolasinac, Elneny, Guendouzi, Ozil, Lacazette, Aubameyang. Subs: Cech, Mkhitaryan, Torreira, Iwobi, Monreal, Nketiah, Maitland-Niles.
Jenks, Kos, Mavro & Mustafi... well that surely inspires a ton of confidence! Back 4 I guess? Or maybe Jenks as RWB and a back 3 of Mavro, Kos, Mustafi? At least Everton & City did us big favors. It's in our hands now.
UE needs to have the team in a must win mentality. If they don't come out full of aggression I'm going to be nervous.
Don't know who are the commentators on the Gold feed, but the color guy is that lovely kind of bloke who's main tool seems to find fault with whatever the player are doing and pointing out what they should've/could've done better. Will do my best to tune him out.
Ugh. Edit: Maybe it's a meme, but why does it seem that Mustafi is too often at the center of our defensive gifts?
Shot of Per in the directors box. Damn if he doesn't look downright managerial... maybe even professorial.
My understanding was that Denis is a winger. Thus he wouldn't be considered at DM. Perhaps the more telling thing is that he didn't even make the squad. Something must be up with that.
HT 0-1. Not good overall. But we did create good chances. If we'd buried one or two of those, we'd be singing a diffferent tune. Mesut is trying. But it's just not his thing to take over a game, take it by the scruff of it's neck, etc. Hopefully he'll produce some amazing assist in 2T
Even better! He scores a goal within 1 minutes of the restart!!! Edit: perhaps my previous post earned an assist on that goal.