Arsenal have carried a very heavy piece of baggage into this season. The knowledge that they lost their nerve last spring.
I’m sorry, but you can’t dress up what happened to their last Premier League campaign any other way.
They were in the box seat heading into the home stretch of the season and they didn’t perform.
That little seed in their heads will be there until they win that competition.
But I like the Arsenal squad I see — and although it doesn’t always follow that they will get better year on year, they’re a group of young men who should do exactly that.
We’ll have a far better picture about Arsenal and Tottenham by 5pm on Sunday.
The intensity of a huge north London derby and two teams playing with great confidence adds up to the first proper test that either of the clubs have faced this season.
They’ve each played only one team in the top 10, so far — and given Manchester United’s early season form, we really can’t read too much into the fact that both teams have beaten them.
I like the fact that David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale are competing for the goalkeeper’s jersey and certainly do not subscribe to this modern view that you ‘make the goalkeepers nervous’ by having them vying for the spot.
Nervous? Oh diddums! Are you seriously going to tell me next that Ramsdale, who’s missed out in the past two matches, should be heading straight to Arsenal’s HR department? If someone challenges the established goalkeeper, then so much the better.
Not all of Arsenal’s spending makes sense to me. They’ve laid out £65million on Kai Havertz.
Surely you’re not spending that kind of money on what he’s shown at Chelsea in the past three seasons?
They’ve shelled out in the hope that Mikel Arteta can get a very, very different tune out of him than Frank Lampard, Thomas Tuchel or Graham Potter ever did. Good luck with that one, Mikel.
We live in a world where stats have become a very popular part of the game for the anoraks. But historically only two stats provide a judgment in black and white terms.
For a goalkeeper: how many games have you played and how many clean sheets did you keep? And for a striker: how many games have you played and how many goals did you score?
Havertz has scored 19 Premier League goals across the entirety of three seasons for Chelsea. Please draw your own conclusions.
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