Arsenal kick off the new Premier League season away at St James’ Park, taking on Steve Bruce’s Newcastle.
Unai Emery is without Mesut Ozil and Sead Kolasinac due to an ongoing security threat, and these are today’s official line-ups.
Newcastle: Dubravka, Manquillo, Schar, Lascelles, Dummett, Ritchie, Hayeden, Longstaff, Shelvey, Almiron, Joelinton
Subs: Darlow, Clark, Fernandez, Krafth, Willems, Saint-Maximin, Muto
Arsenal: Leno, Maitland-Niles, Chambers, Sokratis, Monreal, Xhaka, Guendouzi, Willock, Mkhitaryan, Nelson, Aubameyang
Subs: Martinez, Luiz, Ceballos, Torreira, Pepe, Martinelli, Lacazette
Doesn’t look like the strongest team ever, but COYG.
No, but lots of options on the bench which is nice.
To be fair, I’m not that intimidated by Newcastle’s line up, but they often pull big results at home. Can’t see a cleansheet but will happily take a 3-1 win with a Pepe debut goal off the bench!
Off subject slightly but do you reckon that Ozil and Kolasinac might be thinking about moving out of the country bearing in mind the horrendous situation they have been put in ?
I think we need to see how it pans out before leaping to any conclusions on how it will be resolved. The latest reports in the media are vague at best, particularly the gang war element; the two chaps arrested are of Kurdish descent and what I hear is that the fear is it is more a targeted, politically motivated attack than purely criminal. Ozil has drawn attention to himself being aligned with Erdogan following his wedding this summer. Green Lanes – where the attack happened – is the centre of the Turkish community in London and this is a… Read more »
Are you suggesting that this is Raul’s doing?
Why the fuck do we have to listen to the pearls of wisdom of a sacked United and sacked Chelsea manager?
I hate listening to him talk about our Arsenal.
Meh…
Not our Strongest starting 11, but should be enough to win this game!!
I actually cant wait…. football is back 🙂
COYG!
Luiz not starting is the only surprise for me. Laca & Pep lacking fitness.
I’m in a pub near St James Park & can’t wait to get to the ground.
Come on you reds!
By all means, a poor line-up.
This team doesn’t fill me with much confidence; the bench is strong though.
Second half might be key.
4 English lads in the XI, the British core lives on! Clean sheet and 3 points please boys let’s get rolling!
You were spot on!
Nice to see 3 lads from the academy in the team, but some people see that as a reason to complain.
Expect to see some subs at some point
Really sticking your neck out there
🙂
hot take
Cheers mate might back this with £5
The bench looks quite decent
I love the fact that Mustafi is not playing. Let’s see if his exclusion magically transforms our defense.
I’m disgusted by how many people think that one individual is responsible for what is so obviously a coaching problem. How could anyone have watched us defend so horribly last season and think to themselves ‘you know what, if they got rid of that one player, they would be so much better’
Anyway, I hope willock and Nelson do well. I love it when young players are given a chance. I have big hopes for Willock.
Not sure I think it will solve all our problems but it looks a fairly big step in the right direction
With all due to respect to Ballz, Tim Stillman was bang on about Mustafi. In the moments where he knows he’s beaten, his inner coward jumps out. Kudos to Emery for saying enough is enough.
It’s also pretty funny to criticise Emery for Mustafi’s mistakes while saying ‘I love it when young players are given a chance’, while totally ignoring the fact that Emery has also given young Calum Chambers a chance in Mustafi’s position. Guess that didn’t suit the narrative.
So playing young players is the same thing as not coaching the team in how to defend?
You are conflating many points. Nowhere did I criticize Emery for not giving young players a chance. I said I love it when young players are given a chance. This has nothing to do with Emery. Secondly, my criticism of Emery’s defensive coaching or even coaching in general stands. I watched at least 70% of all our games last season, and we were shit defensively regardless of who played. We were absolutely shit over and over again, repeatedly making the same mistakes. It’s very easy to blame individuals, but clearly our coaching sucks and if this was improved, we would… Read more »
So we shouldn’t blame individuals for our shit performances, but we should blame Emery for Mustafi’s defensive mistakes?
I think Arsenal should be lining up the best young coach we can find for next season, possibly ten Hag from Ajax. But let’s stop pretending Gooners blame Mustafi for *all* our problems. Emery has a lot to prove this year.
But we will never get back to where we need to be if we start swapping coaches out without ruthlessly upgrading the weakest links in the squad.
You can blame individuals for their individual mistakes. No player is perfect in that regard. But you can’t blame individuals for team deficiencies.
If our defensive performances were even marginally better without Mustafi, then clearly he would be the problem, but the point I’m making is that last season we were horrendous defensively regardless of personnel.
If he was ‘weakest link’, then we’d see clear improvement in our performances whenever he didn’t play. As far as I saw, there was zero improvement in defending when he was out injured or benched.
All fair enough points, but we’re not Chelsea or some tin-pot relegation club who changes coaches at the drop of a hat.
Let’s try to enjoy the season for what it is – the 2nd year of a transitional period.
I agree with you. I think changing managers frequently would hurt us big time, but I think Emery should change some of his tactics to better align with the strengths of his squad
Ballz I think you need to recognise that once Holding and Bellerin got injured we basically did not have a defence last year. Sokratis cannot do it all himself. Kos was wrecked and past his best anyway, Mustafi we all know and Nacho is at best a serviceable centre back and slow left back whilst Kola is a hopeless defender . Add in Xhaka, Iwobi and Ozil supposedly protecting the defence and it is a miracle we didn.t concede more goals than we actually did
That is a strong bench
triple substitution at half time
Luiz, Ceballos, Torreira, Laca and Pepe not 100%, so smart starting this one with Chambers, Willock, Guendouzi, Micki and Nelson. And what a bench we have. Let’s go!
It’s interesting that Mustafi is not even on the bench. The message from Unai that he is now well down the pecking order is being reinforced.
Telling him to forget any idea about staying at A.F.C. and get a move set up ASAP.
There is only ONE reason that you do not put your only match fit defender (who is not already starting) on the bench. (To keep him from being injured and losing out on 30M.)
Not close to the starting lineup we’ll see in a few months, but makes sense for today. No sense in risking Laca. Luiz and Pepe just got here. Ceballos probably still recovering a bit from that Lenglet tackle. Expect to see Pepe and Laca off the bench.
maybe one of the strongest benches we’ve had in Years
This has 1-1 all over it. Early Newcastle goal, and a late Arsenal equalizer.
You’re waiting to see your face when the halftime score with Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0
You must be a new fan living in dreamland.
Anticipating Arsenal dropping points is called a “Spurs Fan”.
Only one defender on the bench? We are trully fucked if someone got injured.
Yeah, but Luiz plays all over the place!
should of started ceballos, torreria and pepe but i like the faith in the youth! first match of the campaign, show us what you got Young Gunners!!! COYG!!!
4-3-3. Lots of players who need to make the most of their opportunity in that line up. I think Willock is going to announce himself to the league today! COYG.
Willock doesn’t look out of place at all
Mkhitaryan owes us a performance. Come on, please, just this once
He has some stiff competition now. Might see him step up.
Yes, that’s true. He’s supposed to be one of the players that could still leave this Summer so it will be interesting to see how he reacts on the pitch today.
He was absolutely shite today, by far our worst player.
Really pleased to see willock in the team. Hopefully he makes it impossible for us to drop him and then perhaps going forward we can get xhaka outta the team
My match routine is broken, I always check the team sheet here or the Live blog, before switching on the TV for the match.
I eventually checked the comments section on the daily blog for the team news and sitting in front of the TV.
Maybe we’ll win this and it will become my new routine for away games this season!
COYG, 3 points and a clean sheet will be nice.
An inspired selection to say the least. Far more attacking, than I ever imagined. Overall, I like this line up just for the fact that Emery is thinking more about us, rather than trying to block Newcastle to win.
Thank God the three points of today are sure.we don’t need are best team to win this game will only need to put in our best performance.
I like the fact that we’re different in the starting 11 and a really good bench. We’re unknown bunch to deal with these days. Would love Willock and Nelson to have absolute blinders
I hope we’re planning on standing a midfield player on Shelvey, because thats where all their attacking play will be coming from (on the counter with their speed up front).
Wow what an exciting line up! Hope they youngsters step up! If they do this could be a great season
Oh and please, non of this waiting for the second half nonsense. COYG!
An interesting team selection. Emery is ringing the changes, as he indicated that he would. I’ve a feeling we’ll take the three points today.
Eid Mubarak to Ozil, Kolasinac and Mustafi…..
Hmmm.
Xhaka still played…
It’s really quite frustrating that we have to continue to play mikhi. He absolutely doesn’t know what he’s doing
He and Xhaka are having a competition to see who can play worse today.
I think he does know what he is trying to do, just he often fails to do it. Far too often technical implementation does not match what he spots as on. Either that or there is just an opponent getting in the way of the pass.
He’s been our best attacking player, he’s the only one with the quality to make a pass
Well, that was pretty dire stuff in the first half. Scoreline just about sums it up. Seems like Emery’s looking for a sneaky 1-0 win. Could happen, but so could a sneaky 1-0 loss.
Underwhelmed.
Can Mkhi just frigging leave this club already, and take Xhaka along while doing that.