As our Europa League group stage campaign progresses, chances are Thomas Partey won’t feature too much as he’ll be needed for important Premier League games.
However, the former Atletico Madrid man has made the trip to Austria for Thursday’s encounter with Rapid Vienna, and it sounds as if he might start.
He came on in the 83rd minute of our 1-0 defeat to Man City last weekend, but that was due to his limited integration with the team.
Speaking today, Arteta spoke as if he was considering deploying the £45m man in midfield against the Austrians.
“He reacted really well, he came on and look strong and confident [against Man City] and he added something positive to the team,” he said.
“It was a very short turnaround for him since he joined the team, he had a day, a day-and-a-half only in training.
“He has done a few more training sessions and he looks ready to start.”
The strength of tomorrow night’s team might be an indication of Arteta’s thinking for the competition this season, with the Spaniard outlining his ambition to go all the way.
“We are very excited to be playing back in Europe again after a difficult season where we had to earn our right to play here through winning the FA Cup,” he said.
“It’s a big bonus for us. We want to make the best out of it and every competition that we are involved in.
“Our aim is to try to win it.”
Let’s hope so!
Delicious news! Start him!!
I think I’d prefer him to start against Leicester.
Maybe he’ll start both.
Assuming fitness is there it maybe smart to give a good number of minutes. It will take a bit of adaptation to adjust to a new team. See this as part of his training /integration. Maybe it will be the only EL group game he plays
I’d give him about 60-75 mins tonight, then start again against the sly foxes
Wiener Partey
I hate this headline because at first it seems like just another terrible Partey pun like the internet isn’t already saturated with those, but then if you look at it you realise it would be just a normal headline if his name wasn’t Partey, and now I’m conflicted because I don’t know if I’m justified in calling Blogs out on this. Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW Blogs did it on purpose. I KNOW he knew what he was doing. But I can’t prove anything, because he can just say well, that’s his name, isn’t it? It’s the perfect pun… Read more »
Let’s Get the Partey Started is so obvious, I think it’s unintended.
Let’s just call him Thomas, as he wears it on his shirt.
Tom?
Tommy?
Thomo?
This reminds me that someone said Arteta’s name translated to English would be ‘Michael Artist’ and I still don’t know if they were taking the piss
…the piss. Artist is Artista/o en español.
what about in Basque? Our man is from San Sebastian
I bet you’re fun at Partey’s
Any Cup this season to add to the 1st FA Cup that Arteta managed to win, will be awesome.
Let’s hope that it’s the Europa League Trophy he adds.
Im not writing the league off quite yet
🤣 Stop it, you’re making my sides ache.
…and we are ready to Partey.
Let’s hope we get a “good” win. We’ve been pretty flat so far and a convincing performance (and a win) should help to kick start the season.