Southampton away preview


AFTER A DISASTEROUS restart to the season, it does not get any easier for Arsenal this week as they travel to Southampton on Thursday evening before an FA Cup quarter final trip to Sheffield United on Sunday.

St Mary’s has not been a particularly happy hunting ground for us in recent years with only one win in the previous eight league visits. 

Last season’s trip saw the end of our 22-match unbeaten run under Unai Emery with a 3-2 defeat, while only a late goal from Olivier Giroud salvaged a 1-1 draw the season before.

However, I would not call it a bogey ground as no away ground has been particularly happy for us in recent years. 

In fact, since the start of 2017 we have lost away at 16 of the current Premier League grounds, plus at a further three clubs no longer in the Premier League. Quite frankly a shocking record for a club like Arsenal.

This season has seen our away form hit new lows with only one win outside of London in the Premier League and that was back in August at Newcastle United.

In fact, under the management of Mikel Arteta, we have failed to win away in the Premier League at all, losing twice and drawing the other four, although he has overseen FA Cup wins at both Bournemouth and Portsmouth.

Arteta has come under increasing pressure since the restart following two extremely poor performances at Manchester City and Brighton and Hove Albion, and with injuries now pilling up this is going to be a real test of his character.

The Spaniard was critical of his players on Saturday saying they lacked the concentration needed to win matches at this level, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to those comments this week. But the problems are much deeper than that.

A lack of creativity and a disharmony between the midfield and attack has seen us draw far too many games, yet the two players who could have potentially helped solve that conundrum have not been used since the restart: Mesut Ozil and Gabriel Martinelli. Arteta will be expected to start at least one them at Southampton on Thursday.

The other big concern is the injury to goalkeeper Bernd Leno. Out for the rest of the season and potentially a lot longer besides, that just leaves the inexperienced Emi Martinez and Matt Macey as back up. With Joe Hart now available on a free transfer, perhaps he could provide some much-needed experience in this particularly important position in the team.

Defensively we did okay in spells at Brighton. Against a tall, physical team set pieces were always going to be crucial and we coped reasonably well for most of the game. 

But one lapse in concentration led to the equaliser and then the old frailties returned.

While individual errors at the back have cost us for several years now, a lack of protection in front of them has been the wider issue. 

On Saturday, playing Dani Ceballos and Matteo Guendouzi as the shield helped to restrict the Seagulls to very few opportunities and it was only after Ceballos had been replaced by the even less defensively aware Joe Willock that we conceded the late winner.

It is easy to blame Rob Holding on his first start since November, for getting too tight to substitute Alex MacCallister, or Shkodran Mustafi for allowing Neal Maupay to run off him far too easily, but the gap in front of them should have been closed much sooner to stop the supply. This has been an ongoing problem in midfield for the last few seasons.

To get a result at Southampton will require those gaps to be filled. In James Ward-Prowse they have a midfield player capable of exploiting any spaces between the lines and they have one of the in-form strikers in the league in Danny Ings, who will be ready to take advantage of any opportunities that come his way. We will therefore need to be focused for the entire 90 minutes.

At Brighton we were also very profligate in front of goal. 

We created several good chances but were not clinical enough. 

Alexandre Lacazette was extremely wasteful, while it was surprising to see Pierre-Emrick Aubameyang failed to score in seven attempts at goal. 

And if you do not take your chances you do not win football matches.


With all the recent injuries and the fact the games are coming thick and fast this is the team I would start at St Mary's: 

Martinez - Bellerin, Mustafi, Holding, Tierney – Ceballos, Maitland-Niles, Guendouzi – Ozil, Aubameyang, Saka.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles will give us a stronger defence base in midfield, and I’d recall Ozil to add a little extra creativity behind Aubameyang, with Saka attacking from the left. 

This will be an extremely tough game so we will need produce a particularly good performance if we are to get a result. With confidence low I am not expecting a win but hopefully Arteta can fire them up as he did at the very start of his reign and we can at least regain some pride.

I am going for a 2-2 draw, although to be honest I would not be surprised by another defeat. I just will not look at the league table on Friday if that happens.

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