Away Form Could Crown Arsenal Champions

Match Review: Stoke City 0 Arsenal 0 - Premier League 17.01.16

A draw away at Stoke is a good result, not only in the context of Stoke’s home record this season, but in terms of our well publicised struggles at the Britannia. I think if you offered us a draw at the start of the year we’d have taken it without question. It puts us back on top, but our lead has been cut. The positive though is that we’ve got through two difficult away games without losing, which means fewer chances for us to slip up.

There was a significant blow for us before the game, as Mesut Özil was ruled out with what was termed as a slight foot injury. With no Alexis as well, it meant that we were without our two main attacking talents in a game against a strong defensive team. It made it all the more important to not lose, with reinforcements soon to come back and bolster the ranks.

The game itself ended up being a fairly drab affair, punctuated by some excellent bits of goalkeeping on both sides. Jack Butland continued his brilliant season with a number of good stops, with two preventing Giroud from continuing his goalscoring run. For us, Cech was busy in the second half and more than made up for a couple of mistakes at Liverpool with some world class saves, including a brilliant double stop that defied his advancing years.

Other than that, it was an uninspiring but stressful game. I maintain it was a pretty good result, the disappointment was not holding on at Liverpool. That still feels like a missed opportunity to me and four points from these two fixtures would have been an excellent return. Two points isn’t bad, but ‘not bad’ doesn’t cut it in a title race. I don’t think these two games will be the difference between winning the league and not, but away wins are priceless and would have given us a healthy cushion over City.

Looking ahead at our remaining fixtures, our away fixtures are tough. Bournemouth and Sunderland will both be fighting hard for Premier League survival, but present the best chance of routine wins. Everton and West Ham will both be tricky ties, but are definitely winnable, but the three biggest challenges come at Man Utd, Sp*rs and Man City. United and Sp*rs both come after potentially draining midweek ties too, one against Barcelona no less. My eagerness for building a cushion to City comes not just from thinking they’ll go on a good run, but because we play them away in the penultimate game of the season. What we really need going into that game is a healthy cushion to take the sting out of it, the last thing we want is to go there needing a win.

Fortunately our home run looks a lot kinder and we may need to earn the bulk of our points there. Leicester will provide a stern test, but the rest of the games look very winnable and that includes next weekend’s clash with Chelsea. I’m not even looking at this from the point of view that we hate Chelsea and want to add to the misery of their season. The only way to look at this game is that it is a home tie against a bottom half opponent in poor form. Forget that it’s Chelsea, forget wanting revenge or to humiliate them. We should simply be looking to win the game comfortably and move on.

Another positive is that City have nine away games to contend with and a questionable record in games away from the Etihad. By contrast, we have seven away and nine at home, which means there are 27 points up for grabs at the Emirates and 21 on the road. If we win out at home and we need 80 points to win the league, we’d need just three wins on the road. In all likelihood, we’ll at least draw another home game, meaning we’d need a couple more points away from home. Obviously this is entirely unscientific speculation on my part, but it shows the value of away points and our ability to pick up results on the road may well be the deciding factor in our title challenge.

Teams

Stoke City (4-5-1)
Butland, Johnson, Shawcross, Wollscheid, Pieters, Whelan, Afellay (Van Ginkel 88’), Walters, Krkic (Diouf 64’), Arnautovic (Adam 87’), Joselu
Subs
Muniesa, Odemwingie, Van Ginkel, Adam, Diouf, Crouch, Haugaard

Arsenal (4-3-3)
Cech, Bellerín, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Flamini, Ramsey, Campbell, Oxlade-Chamberlain (Chambers 91’), Walcott (Iwobi 72’), Giroud
Subs
Gibbs, Gabriel, Arteta, Ospina, Chambers, Elneny, Iwobi

Player Ratings

Cech - 9/10 - Earned us a point with some fantastic saves
Bellerin - 8/10 - Another eye-catching performance going both ways
Mertesacker - 7/10 - Solid, no complaints from me
Koscielny - 7/10 - Not perfect, but better than his recent showings
Monreal - 8/10 - Hands down the most consistent full back in the league at the moment
Flamini - 7/10 - Did well, kept his head
Ramsey - 7/10 - Ignored the mouth breathing Stoke fans and put in a solid performance
Chamberlain - 6/10 - Flashes of talent, but a lot of stray passes and mistakes
Walcott - 6/10 - Disappointing again, in a bad spell of form
Campbell - 8/10 - Most of our attacks went through him, a great performance
Giroud - 7/10 - Had a couple of good chances, but Butland made very good saves
Subs
Iwobi - 7/10 - Certainly highly thought of and showed some promise in his play
Chambers - N/A

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