The Warm-Up: Brace yourselves for Arsenal's biggest game of the season
/dnl.eurosport.com/sd/img/placeholder/eurosport_logo_1x1.png){kind=logo}
Updated 21/01/2020 at 08:59 GMT
Remarkably, the rolling calamity that is Arsenal could still qualify for the Champions League - but only if they beat Chelsea tonight...
David Luiz of Arsenal during the Premier League match between Arsenal FC and Sheffield United at Emirates Stadium on January 18, 2020 in London, United Kingdom.
Image credit: Getty Images
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Is this Arsenal’s biggest game of the season?
This, as you will already know, has been a weird Premier League season, in which one absolute colossus stands astride of the rest, laughing heartily at their puny efforts, while the remaining 19 clubs scrabble around for something approaching basic competence. Some of them even achieve it, some of the time.
But it’s such a weird season that Arsenal, this rolling circus of calamity who are on their third manager of the season, are still very much within a shout of making the Champions League places. Sure, they’re ten points behind fourth place right now, but happily enough for them that fourth place team is Chelsea, their opponents tonight.
Still, they’ll only have a chance of that place if they win this one. Not our words, but the words of Top Gear magaz…no, sorry: the words of Arsenal big dog Mikel Arteta. “It’s very, very important for us to win this game,” Arteta said. “The game we played at home could have made a big difference and we were very close to it. Tomorrow we need to win.
“If we are able to win three or four games on the trot, then we are right there. That’s the challenge we have and all the teams have at the moment. When you look at the results from the weekend, all the draws, and how one decision changed the whole game between Burnley and Leicester, the margin is not that big. So it is complicated. You have to dominate every aspect of the game.”
For their part, Chelsea are looking for a striker, and while Edinson Cavani’s transfer request at PSG seemed to be broadly designed to force through a move to Atletico Madrid, there is still some 2+2=5 logic to suggest that he could move to Stamford Bridge instead.
That won’t come before the game tonight, though, which is crucial for both sides. Chelsea can shut down a rival, but Arsenal can keep their domestic season alive. Should be a pearler.
Eriksen on the move: Conte says jump, Inter say how high
Most big European clubs are run in a theoretically sensible way these days. The coach deals with the team, and a variety of people are given the task of doing everything else, the most notable from a public perspective probably being transfers. That’s where you should have a proper sporting director, the sort of person who can guide the club’s longer-term vision and with the authority to say no to a coach, if he suggests getting some old pals in or demands unwise transfer moves.
Which brings us to Inter, and their transfer moves over this transfer window. The word is that the club are getting a little closer to Tottenham’s demands for Christian Eriksen, with clued-in Italian transfer matrix Fabrizio Romano reporting that they’re upping their offer for the Dane to €15million, still a little short of the €20million Spurs want but very much ‘getting there’.
But isn’t paying that much money for a player who will be out of contract in a few months, who you could therefore get for free with just a little patience, and who realistically will probably be ‘an option’ in your team rather than a guaranteed starter…well, isn’t that rather mad and the sort of thing that a well-run European club should be extremely avoiding?
This is Inter, though, a club that is now seemingly run to Antonio Conte’s whims: he wants Christian Eriksen NOW, then they go get him NOW. He wants Ashley Young, then they get him Ashley Young. He wants Victor Moses, then they have a quiet conversation among themselves and Google ‘Who is Victor Moses?’, but then gosh darn it they will go out and get Victor Moses.
It’s easy to see why they might be acquiescing to his every demand: he’s made them a serious football team after years of not being a very serious football team, despite their recent wobble in form, but it still doesn’t seem entirely sensible to have one man pulling the strings this much. But, of course, this is Inter, where logic and good sense disappears like a perfume spritz in the breeze.
IN OTHER NEWS
Not really sure what there is to add to this other than…bloody hell!
HEROES AND ZEROS
Heroes: The Championship
Bored of the Premier League? Uninterested in a procession as Liverpool saunter to their first title in 30 years? Not keen on the big time? Well can we recommend the Championship, as batpoo a division as you’re likely to see, where apparently nobody wants automatic promotion. A few weeks ago West Brom and Leeds United were riding high, so far ahead that people weren’t really talking about them much anymore and their promotion was a foregone conclusion.
Not so much anymore, though. On Monday night top-of-the-table West Brom lost to relegation-threatened Stoke, meaning that the previously imperious top two have now won just once in their last 12 games combined, and automatic promotion is now very much a live race again. Nottingham Forest face Reading on Wednesday night, and should they win that they’ll be two points back from Leeds. It’s a bananas division, but God love it: the Championship will never let you down.
Zeros: West Brom
Seriously though: Stoke? Come on, guys.
HAT TIP
Nine hundred and ninety-eight … 999… 1,000. And still it went. Jordi Alba played the ball to Riqui Puig, who played it to Sergi Busquets, who played it to Arthur Melo, who played it to Sergi Roberto, who played it to Gerard Piqué. Who, finally halted on 100, didn’t get the chance to play it to anyone else. Half an hour before his first game as coach of Barcelona, Quique Setién had sat on the bench alongside his assistant Éder Sarabia, empty seats rising around them, still barely able to believe they were here, and silently contemplated the players – his players – warming up with a ball at their feet. Two and a half hours later, standing now, collar turned up against the cold, when the final whistle went it was still there.
Sid Lowe was there to see the start of the Quique Setien era at Barcelona.
RETRO CORNER
It’s Arsenal v Chelsea tonight, so what better way to reminisce than with the ‘It’s Only Ray Parlour’ FA Cup final of 2002.
COMING UP
Football never stops. Or at least it doesn’t seem to, whether you want it to or not. So of course there’s a full round of Premier League games this midweek, regardless of whether any of us asked for them. The big one is of course Chelsea v Arsenal, but Aston Villa v Watford should be good, Sheffield United have a decent chance of getting something from Manchester City while Bournemouth v Brighton should be grimly interesting too.
And if you’re actually not too fussed about football and tennis is more your thing, then you’re in luck. The Australian Open is in full swing, and you can watch every darn minute of it on Eurosport and Eurosport Player.
Scan me
Related Topics
Share this article