Swansea at the Emirates should have been an automatic multi-goal win. Instead, the Arsenal defense gave too many chances to the Swans in the first half, and they took one of them. The second half was apparently (I did not see this game, thanks to NBCSN's new policy of charging for the games not televised) a very different story. Man-of-the-match Sead Kolasinac pounced on a deflected pass and arrowed it home past two defenders and the excellent Fabianski; then he set up Ramsey for a classy finish just inside the near post. There should have been more goals, but a great save from our former keeper and some bad misses from our usual suspects kept it at 2-1. Three points, yeah, but the team we put out there really should have blown Swansea out of the stadium. I worry that the men are becoming complacent. It shouldn't be the case, seeing as how Stoke and Watford beat us, the latter outplaying us, and Liverpool wiped us off their boots fairly easily.
It's hard to imagine Red Star Belgrade troubling even our young guys, though you never know. They are in a battle with BATE to advance and they will scrap for every point. Why not start Nketiah? Or Akpom? Giroud played serious minutes today. And I will never get used to seeing Elneny as a center half. He can't like it.
Well, I'm loving Europa League. Long term, it's good to stay in these "lesser" competitions like it and the League Cup as long as possible, to give the fringe and young players meaningful minutes. A poor performance against City in our next league clash would pretty much settle the question of whether we can compete for the title, so why not shoot for some other silverware?
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