Arsene Wenger’s Gunners play Sunderland Saturday Feb 21st in league play, and Roma in the Champions League on Tuesday Feb 24th. The question is: what team will show up? The deadly attacking team with incisive beautiful football, or that other team that muddles through?
As the faithful know, Arsenal will return to form, the question is what kind of changes will be required to get them there. What players will be part of the solution, and will it all happen under Arsene?
The Gunners took care of Cardiff 4-0 in FA Cup play Monday in a much more convincing fashion than their previous 0-0 draw. What made the difference? The match marked the return of Eduardo Da Silva, now recovered from the broken leg he suffered last year in an ugly tackle, and Eduardo scored twice. More than the goals, perhaps his return gave the squad the lift in morale they’ve needed. One senses talent has not been in short supply at Arsenal, but maturity and grit may have been.
The next two games should test to see if they are a team reborn for the end of the season, as Sunderland and Roma should be increasingly challenging games; we’ll look to see if the defense is resolute and if the attack is again creative and deadly.
A team with such great potential but mediocre results seems destined for change in today’s world, and change may be precipitated in part by a change in ownership. Monday’s speculation, based on a small increase in holdings, is that majority shareholder Alisher Usmanov may undertake a takeover bid. One would assume new ownership would demand the team’s potential be realized. Will this entail investment in new players, or a change of manager?
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.