Arsenal kick off the new season under Friday night lights

The countdown is over, the new Premier League season begins tonight as we take on Coventry City at home.

After a strange summer, impacted by the World Cup and players feeling the effects of a long season before, it will be interesting to see what kind of team the manager puts out tonight. I think we can probably pick most of it, but with some doubt over Bruno Guimaraes, who picked up a knock in the Community Shield, it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw Declan Rice start tonight – which probably wouldn’t have been in the plan. The Brazilian was brought in to help us ease him back into action, but Mikel Merino and Martin Zubimendi – despite not being overly burdened at the World Cup – have barely had any pre-season and Rice looked solid enough against Man City in Cardiff.

I guess the other option is to ask Myles Lewis-Skelly do to that job, as he has in pre-season, and pair Martin Odegaard with Eberechi Eze higher up. I expect to see a back four of White, Mosquera, Gabriel, and Calafiori. Christos Tzolis has impressed since his arrival and the starting berth on the left is his, I think it’ll be Noni Madueke on the right, leaving room for Bukayo Saka to come on in the second half to build his match fitness. Up front, this might be seen as more of a Viktor Gyokeres game because of the opposition, but Havertz scored on Sunday, he combines well with Odegaard and Tzolis who are probably the two most creative outlets in the team, and I think he’ll get the nod.

The bench will be light defensively, with Ezri Konsa expected to sign today but not necessarily in time to be involved, and then we’ll see who doesn’t make it after Gabriel Martinelli, Ethan Nwaneri, Gabriel Jesus and others were left out of the Community Shield squad.

As for Coventry, I can’t say I know too much about them, but they won promotion by finishing top of the Championship by 11 points, scoring nearly 100 goals in the process. And, as Lewis pointed out in our preview podcast on Patreon, they got an eye-watering 29 goals from set-pieces, so there’s something to be mindful of there. They’ve spent some money this summer, and for them this is something of a free hit. You get promoted, draw the champions in your first game, and nobody really expects you to get a result, so it takes some of the pressure off. We’ll learn about them as the season goes on, but you can be sure Mikel Arteta and his staff will have already done their homework.

You take nothing for granted in this league, but a Friday night game against a newly promoted side is as good as it gets really. The last time we played at home was the 1-0 win over Burnley on May 18th, and as someone who was there that night, I can tell you it was tense. Since then, we’ve been crowned Premier League champions, the scenes of celebration we saw were incredible, and this is the first time the fans will be in the stadium with the players who won the title.

We’ve said for years that the new stadium has needed a league win to really feel like home, and I’m sure that will be part of a fantastic atmosphere later. The way it all transpired was a bit strange, with the Bournemouth v Man City game on the Tuesday night, and the trophy lift at Selhurst Park. So, as we continue to hear questions about how this team motivates itself again to retain the title – something we haven’t done for so long – perhaps part of that is doing it to ensure that the celebrations happen inside the stadium next May.

That was a line of questioning the manager dealt with throughout this week in the build-up, and in his press conference yesterday. He sounds in no doubt that these players want more, saying:

Immediately after doing that [wining the league], they were already talking about what is next and what they want to do. I think they enjoy the company and the journey so much that they want to keep this momentum and they wanted to do it with the group of players that we have right now and that’s great.

We need to start from day one, and we need to realise that it’s going to be something that’s going to demand a lot from everybody, but we have the ability to do it, and we can go through that again.

And on the role of supporters throughout the journey to the title, he said:

I think it’s been an evolution in terms of the atmosphere three, four years ago, then two years ago, then last year. When you are so close as well at some point, that atmosphere and the feeling of not doing it again can restrict you. But when I see the celebrations and the parade and those emotions, I’m very confident that we’re going to have, in my opinion, the best stadium in the world and the best atmosphere in the world, because if we do that, we’re going to be much closer to achieving what we want to do again.

So, if you’re one of the lucky ones there tonight, enjoy that moment when you see the champions take to the home pitch for the first time. I’m sure after a few early evening pints, coupled with that anticipation and excitement for a new season, the place will be rocking. Any anxiety about transfer business etc can be put to one side, because the most important thing is what we do on the pitch for the 90 minutes. I think we have the quality and the depth to kick off this season with three points, so let’s hope that’s exactly what we do.

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Elsewhere, it was good to hear Arteta be definitive about the future of Myles Lewis-Skelly, saying ‘100%’ he’s going to stay. He also made it clear that Martin Zubimendi would be going nowhere, insisting he deserves credit for the role he played last season even if the second half of the campaign saw him fade away a bit:

Without him, we would never get into the position that we got in the last few weeks and he deserves massive credit. A lot of people end with the taste, ‘No, but this player played the Champions League final!’. Yeah, because this guy did it for 10 months. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be playing in those finals. And I think he deserves a lot of credit for that.

I have to say I find it slightly counter-intuitive that people would move him on. Part of the reason he faded was because we didn’t have the depth and played him to the point of fatigue. Now, with him, Rice, Guimaraes, Myles – we have the ability to keep those players fresher throughout the season, so perhaps when we get to May, key players aren’t running on fumes. Imagine a Champions League final where we have people whose batteries haven’t run down, and who aren’t carrying injuries and struggling for fitness. Only a deep squad can do that for you, and it’s incumbent on the manager to use it in ways which might take him out of his comfort zone slightly.

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If you need more to pass the time until kick-off, we have our big Arseblog Season Preview post, with thoughts from me, Andrew Allen, Tim Stillman and Lewis Ambrose on the squad as it stands, and its readiness for the new campaign. Check that out here.

We also have a preview podcast on Patreon, and if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, there’s a bumper Arsecast for you below.

Not to mention that, as ever, we’ll bring you live blog coverage of the game later, as well all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News like the match report, player ratings, manager reaction, quotes round-up and more.

So, plenty to get your eyes and ears into before we kick off this new season later. Come on you Reds!

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