Brentford away a challenging start to the new year

Morning all, and happy new year.

We begin 2025 with a tricky away trip to Brentford. Despite a recent 2-0 defeat to high-flying Nottingham Forest, they have the joint best home record in the Premier League, garnering 22 points from their games so far – level with Liverpool (and just 1 point more than us).

A feature of their performances at home this season has been fast starts and early goals, something we need to be aware of, and it might inform our starting XI to an extent. When he picks his team today, will Mikel Arteta bring Riccardo Calafiori back into the fold at left-back, or stick with Myles Lewis-Skelly? They are going to share the games in January, that’s a no-brainer given how hectic the schedule is, but perhaps sticking with the player who has a bit of form and rhythm might be the right call when facing Bryan Mbeumo on Brentford’s right.

I suspect we’ll see a change in midfield, with either Thomas Partey or Mikel Merino preferred to Kai Havertz in there, but I expect the German to move up front with Gabriel Jesus dropping to the bench. The injury situation means we have almost nothing in reserve. Ethan Nwaneri was the only nominally attacking sub we had against Ipswich, and while that’s probably a risk you can take for a home game against a team in the bottom three, you need to have some way to change the game in fixtures like this, so starting Havertz and Jesus together doesn’t make sense to me unless the Brazilian is chosen in one of the wide positions.

That said, I expect Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli to play on the flanks, and Arteta was quite interesting on the Belgian who he called a ‘bit of a moaner‘ … but in a good way! Those two are the ones on whom a heavy burden falls in the absence of Bukayo Saka. Of course goalscoring is a collective responsibility, but their output this season hasn’t quite been where we’d want it, so upping that during the Zero Saka weeks is going to be important.

I think we can expect Brentford to press high, so that might provide opportunity if we can bypass it and use the space that leaves behind. They are good at it though, they do in an energetic and coordinated way, and even if you do beat it, they have such good organisation they drop back quickly and make it hard to break them down. This game last year was a struggle, it took a very late goal from substitute Kai Havertz to take all three points, and I don’t expect it to be any easier today.

Let’s hope we can kick off the new year in the right way, with a good performance, but most importantly all three points. This game feels a bit weird, out on an island of sorts in terms of timing, with everyone else having played two or three days ago. I don’t know if that makes it any more difficult or pressurised, but it’s a bit odd. Anyway, it is what it is, we have a job to do, so let’s hope we can do it well.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. We have a preview podcast available right now on Patreon. Join us later for live blog coverage, plus you’ll get the match report, goal clips, reaction, player ratings and much more over on Arseblog News.

Until then!

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