FINAL DAY
Well, well, well my dears.
The season draws to a close and the major battle is who finishes 5th or 6th (a distant chance at 4th). My money would be on United. They have an easier game, they don’t have a European final to play, our manager has a history of fielding weak players when he has the vivid taste of Europa in his mouth.
At this point, who really cares?
The objective of the season was Champions League football, so there’s no way Emery is going to do anything damaging in this game for the sake of a few million in prize money.
What I’d like to see is some of the kids given a game. I’d have hoped the manager was going field a few more younger players this season. The age-old banter years conundrum of ‘should I blood a player that’s maybe not ready, or an experienced player that’s shite.’ Today, it’s clear, give the kids a go.
Emery is being clear that his selection is about fitness and preparedness after landing at 6am after the Valencia game… WHICH, my brother, dad, brother in law and his dad went to… and were furious I didn’t mention (photo from brother, who is a DJ if you like trance). Anyway, back to Emery.
“Tomorrow we are going to prepare for Sunday’s match but I am going to decide with the players who are hungry and in good physical condition to play this match.”
The gameplan is simple.
“We are going to play with the idea of imposing our gameplan, our capacity and our team against them. We know it’s going to be a difficult match with long balls, second actions and set-pieces, so we need to defend well in these situations.”
Yep, we’re going to impose the game plan.
Key output of today is that we don’t pick up any injuries… then we can prepare with as much of our squad available as possible. Then it’s with the gods.
I’ll keep this post brief. If you want a great podcast to listen to, jump on the SECOND Arsenal Opinion of the week, this latest was done with guest star, Demian Arriaga. He grew up in Venezuela, so he has some great stories about how he got into Arsenal, and there’s a nice piece on the time he met Edu. He also played SNL last night, pretty epic.
Follow him @DemianArriaga