Morning Gooners and may the happiest of Friday’s be bestowed upon you and yours. Yesterday evening we continued our good form with a functional, if not very thrilling, 1-0 win over Bodo/Glimt. It wasn’t the prettiest thing to watch, but hey, I think there are some mitigating factors here, such as:

  1. Bodo/Glimt hadn’t lost in 14 European ties before last night on their own turf (they are used to the stadium, ground, conditions, etc, which puts them at a distinct advantage
  2. The team were playing on a pitch north of the Arctic circle  (the cold is not a valid excuse for a defeat or poor performance, but in elite sport where marginal gains are everything, playing conditions could maybe impact 1  – 2% and that will have an impact)
  3. The artificial pitch would have played an impact on our passing game (and I think I saw evidence of that on a number of occasions)
  4. We are in the middle of a hectic period of games (and so rotation is key. Rotation which then impacts the fluidity of the team).

So on a night in which a potential banana skin could have tripped us up in this competition, we have come away with three points and we now go in to the game against PSV next Thursday knowing that a win will effectively put us through as top of the group leaders (PSV are on seven points so if we beat them the most they could get is 13 points which would mean we’d only need a point from our final two games to secure it I reckon). That’s a great place to be in and would mean Arteta can think long and hard about rotating the team even more when the group stage reaches its end.

So in a way I guess I can understand why he played  as strong a team  as he played last night. Personally I’d have rotated more, but in hindsight this feels like a much more sensible approach; split the team between rotation and first teamers, get the job done, then play all the kids when the top spot is confirmed. And with top spot meaning you don’t have to play an extra round in the competition now, the incentive is there for all to see when we get in to the new year.

So in came Saliba, Odegaard, White and Saka, an interesting choice of first teamers, with the rest rotating in, although you could make a case for KT at the weekend if Zinchenko still isn’t fit. But it was a strong team and after an initial excited flurry in the opening exchanges, the game settled down to the pattern of the evening with us looking and feeling like we were in control, without really going full ‘hell for leather’ at a Bodo/Glimt side who last season beat Roma 6-1. It very much felt like we were in third gear for most of the match; we popped the ball around, we had more territory, we limited them in the first half and when Saka got his fortuitous goal after it rebounded back off his face, it felt like the better side was deservedly ahead.

After that goal I expected us to go on and maybe get one more to secure the game, maybe in a similar fashion to the way we did against Palace for the opening game of the season, but it never quite clicked and never quite came. It looked like we were massively playing within ourselves and there were some performances from players who looked like they just wanted to get the game done, get back on the heated plane, then focus on Leeds on Sunday. And hey, I get it, we’ve all been there. The most important thing on a night like last night is to secure all the points and we did that. We kept them at arms length and aside for one or two iffy moments in the second half – for which I thought Matt Turner made some decent saves and looked much more composed than last week in the home game against Bodo/Glimt – it felt like this was an Arsenal team that knew it could turn up the heat if it needed to, we just didn’t  bother overly stretching themselves.

Perhaps the players have it in their minds that it is a condensed period until the shut down of the league for the World Cup and therefore just fancied doing what was required – being functional if not fantastic – so we could all get on with our lives  without much worry. And when you get the result then nobody cares. And I think nobody will care too much about this game now. The job was done, we move on.

I also think that perhaps the rotation of some of the players has impacted our fluidity. We need to all remember that these players who haven’t been playing as much will not have had the run of games to get in to the swing of top flight football as those players who have been playing regularly. For some players it takes a few consecutive matches to get up and running before they are really firing on all cylinders and so perhaps that explains why Nelson didn’t quite look 100% confident, for example. I thought he had the beating of his man in 1-on-1 situations, but he never quite found the final ball and he seemed to find himself going down the line having done the right back, then checking back, rather than driving in to the box. Perhaps that’s a confidence thing and with more games he gets a better feel of the ball and has the confidence to drive forward. It was his first game of the season having been injured so you can forgive him for not being at 100%.

But there were some other performances that weren’t great. I thought Fabio Vieira could have been better than he was and I thought Odegaard was quiet. He didn’t impact the game as much as you might think a Norwegian returning hero would, but hey, maybe that’s just another example of a player doing the required minimum and not over-exerting himself too much.

I thought the rest was just ‘ok’. Sambi was good in patches, less good in others (I do like how he is able to glide past his opponent on some occasions with the ball) and Saliba was his usual “make everything look really easy” best without really being troubled. Up top Eddie was busy but not really effective. Then Arteta made a number of changes with a third of the game to go and he brought off the likes of Saka, Odegaard, whilst giving minutes to Martinelli and Xhaka, just to keep them ticking over. Hey, nobody picked up a knock so you have to say it was good rotational decision making in that regard.

So the game was one, a functional performance as I said in the title and the top of the blog, we move on and forget about this game with all eyes on Leeds and the need to pick up three points on Sunday.

Job done.