It’s pretty dispiriting that a few weeks ago I assumed that we would be challenging for the title, and the disappointing failure to beat Liverpool along with the utterly blunt result against Newcastle seems to have ended that ambition. It’s not to say we definitely won’t challenge, we have a fairly good run of fixtures between now and the end of the year, but simply don’t know where the goals are coming from. The run at the beginning of the year was largely attributable to Saka, Trossard and Havertz who scored over half the goals in that run between them.
Havertz has gone off the boil with goals, and Trossard has gone off the boil in general. Whilst Odegaard of course allows us to create more chances, it’s more the failure to have more attacking players in general causing our chickens to come home to roost rather than Odegaard’s injury that caused this form.
We weren’t massively missing Odegaard when we won five out of the seven games in the period between September and early October. And there’s plenty of games where he’s been in the team and we’ve been utterly blunt. I think one of the other main factors is Merino, at least when we had just Rice and Partey in midfield we were creating chances, but I think Merino limits our attacking potential…honestly he shouldn’t be starting games…not a terrible player but should be no more than a squad player
Anyway I don’t know what will happen here, unbeaten against this scumbag club at their place in the last five. It’s touch and go whether Palmer is available, I don’t think his presence will really determine whether we win, lose or draw. Our defending isn’t the issue…it’s the bluntness of our attack.
If we go three games away from home without a goal, we are truly in deep shit
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Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
