Well that series of results was a turn up for the books last night, eh?
I mean quite how we find ourselves clinging on to fourth after a laboured 2-1 victory over Cardiff City on Tuesday is beyond me if I’m honest. But thanks must go to Sarri and his Chelski side who got absolutely pummelled by Bournemouth away, which also helped the goal difference swing, shifting us up to the Champions League spot on goal difference.
What with United drawing at home to Burnley, we are now surprisingly well in the mix and with a probable defeat to Man City at the weekend on the cards, I must admit I’m just pleased that despite the results at the weekend we’ll at least be within reach of the top four challenge.
What we need is for United to channel their inner Mourinho team and have a little blip. It’s probably doubtful because Solskjaer has them all actually enjoying their football again but hey, we can all hope, right?
Like we can hope that reinforcements will arrive today. Well they kind of have to given that it’s the last day of the transfer window but given Denis Suarez is already over the line it’s more a case of whether they’ll be any other incomings between now and when the window slams shut tonight.
I think that’ll be it for us. I have no intel, I can’t tell you if there are machinations going on behind the scenes at Arsenal, but what we do know is that one guy is in, the club want another attacking player and some have even speculated on a central defensive import.
That’s a lot of business to do on one day and a lot of paperwork that needs to be pushed. Rarely have we been that good at that and so my gut tells me that the club might manage one more at best, but two will be a stretch, although again quite why we’re leaving it until the last day of January is a mystery.
Couldn’t we have done with an injection against Cardiff? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have a different options against United? Or how about after the limp attacking set up against West Ham. Wouldn’t it have been great to see something new in that second half?
I know Arsenal aren’t the only club that prefer a transfer deadline day deal but it never smacks of any clear and thought out strategic planning and that’s why the deals often don’t work out as well as you’d hope.
But still we won’t get too hung up on it. Ultimately Arsenal have at least one player at the club coming in and we’ll see if they do the business during today.
My hope was a cheeky little go at Carrasco on loan. He scored a pretty tasty goal against us for Monaco a few years back and we know he’s a player who can add that drive in the final third. At the moment we have Iwobi in the squad who is the only first teamer with that directness and drive but he can’t even finish his dinner so I doubt we’ll get in to the Champions League with just him as that option. Suarez will add a little more variety but someone like Carrasco will get us off our feet.
It sounded doable this time yesterday, but then we all got Ornacled last night, which is essentially the equivalent of the club speaking about a particular deal so I guess we’ll have to accept that a bid for the Belgium international will not be happening. Neither is Perisic as the same article explained so the hope turns to this young kid from PSG Nkunku to be an option to bring in. That sounds a little more feasible but again if it happens we should probably not put too much expectation on a lad that has impressed at PSG but is still just 21 and I expect will still look a little raw at times.
My hope – however unlikely – is that some form of reinforcement in central defence appears because right now it doesn’t look like Unai trusts Mavropanos because if he did he would have played on Tuesday. Cardiff were never going to offer that much going forward and so it would have been a perfect opportunity to ease him in, but I guess we’ll just have to see, and hope that he starts to get some game time soon. There’s a lot of hope riding on his shoulders.
And that’s about it from me today. Let’s hope for some confirmations and then we can slam this infernal window shut and focus on the good stuff.
Laters.
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