Nottingham Forest preview: Grind it out

Morning all.

After a disappointing defeat to West Ham, Mikel Arteta’s challenge this evening is to do better against a better side as we visit Nottingham Forest later on. Their position in the table might be something of a surprise in the grand scheme of things, but it is in no way undeserved. They’ve been superb this season, despite a few ups and downs, and I suppose we have to hope they have one of the latter performances this evening.

Nevertheless, I think they’ll be licking their lips at the prospect of playing this iteration of Arsenal. We struggled against Leicester until Mikel Merino came up with the goods, but when West Ham sat deep and said ‘Come break us down’, we couldn’t do that. When you consider Forest’s game-plan is about allowing teams to have possession then hitting them on the break – slugging them on the break might be even better – we’re going to have to be at our best defensively tonight.

Then it becomes a question of how we improve when we have the ball, and that’s the difficult one. Does he continue with Mikel Merino as a false 9/centre-forward? Options are so, so limited, and from everything we’ve seen he seems reluctant to pick Raheem Sterling it at all possible. If he did choose him on the left, could Merino as the left 8 play that Kai Havertz supporting role to Leandro Trossard up front? That would mean one of Declan Rice or Jorginho at the base of midfield – and in a game like this Rice would the obvious choice. It has worked to decent effect before, so it could be worth a try if he feels Sterling can be effective on the left (although I think that’s unlikely).

Beyond that, perhaps Merino continues up front, he goes with a Jorginho, Rice, Odegaard midfield trio, just to add that bit of passing range from deep? Is Ben White fit to start a game to give us a bit more overlapping thrust on the right? Could we do something a bit left-field and start Kieran Tierney as well, a more traditional left-back overlapping on the left would help us make the pitch bigger rather than more narrow which tends to happen when we face sides who sit off? But then does that give Forest more room to break into?

The reality is none of these options are ideal, but I don’t think we can pick the same team we did against West Ham and just expect it to be better. I did say after that game that the players had ought to have been capable of more, but at this point I really believe he has to make a tweak or two – and ensure that we have something effective on the bench if this is a game we need to change late on. That is easier said that done, although in his press conference yesterday he said he relishes the challenges this season has presented:

It’s been incredibly satisfying to work every day with the players, the coaches and the staff to try to overcome certain situations. If somebody tells you at the start of the season that by this time you will have played five times with a red card, over half an hour in each of them, and you have lost this amount of players, what’s the bet you are in the middle of the table at least, and you are out of the Champions League?

But that’s not the situation, so that tells you the resilience, the resources and the ambition the team and that every individual has, and that time has probably been one of my proudest moments to work, in that sense.

If those are qualities he’s proud of, and I can understand why he might be, he needs to elicit them in a big way from his players this evening. If we’re going to win, I think we’ll win ugly. I could be wrong, I often am, but I don’t see us putting together the kind of attacking performance that will blow a team like Forest away. It might be a war of attrition to some extent, and we have to ensure that we don’t give away a crap goal like the one we did against West Ham. After that, if we can nick one, and grind it out, I’d take that right now.

This feels like a period of the season, before we hit the Interlull in March, where the need to dig deep and show resilience – and a bit of professional pride after losing on Saturday – will be badly needed. We have a big Champions League game next, so going into that one on the back of a win would be very useful. It is worth pointing out that Saturday was our first defeat in 16 Premier League games, the slate is clean now, so let’s go again.

For more on this one, we’ve got a preview podcast for you over on Patreon, and as ever you can join us later for live blog coverage, plus all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News.

Until then, fingers crossed!

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