International Break: Will Arsenal Struggle Against Hull?

Arsenal face Hull at the weekend, returning to the Emirates after a week’s break for Internationals. European teams played their Euro 2016 qualifiers whilst South American and Asian teams played friendlies in far flung stadiums around the world. Usually there are a flurry of upsets as the smaller teams traditionally have fewer international level players, so will Arsenal be one’s to struggle at the Emirates?

Hull have put together a good squad and will cause Arsenal some trouble, even at the Emirates

Firstly it is a good thing to note that last year we did the double over Hull, and beat them in the FA Cup final to end a 9 year long drought of silverware, so the morale should be good. However it is also worth pointing out that this Hull side are already playing far better football than last year, and have made some dangerous additions to the team.

Up front they have a very functional strike partnership of Abel Hernandez and Jelavic, and it’s not one that should be ignored. They are consistently scoring goals and they are good goals as well. Jelavic’s strike against Newcastle was a decent shout for Goal of the Month.

In midfield they have a strong central partnership of Huddlestone and the newly acquired Mohammed Diame, Huddlestone holding back and controlling the play with Diame wreaking havoc in a box to box role that has seen him roam a lot freer than the roles he was allowed to play in at West Ham. We should underestimate this team at our peril.

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Now onto our own worries.

Arsenal currently have 9 players injured, and these are not bit players either. Welbeck, Ospina, Ozil, Arteta, Rosicky, Giroud, Debuch and Sanogo are all out according to physioroom, although Welbeck has stated he shouldn’t miss the game.

It will be a tough game, but Arsenal’s quality should still be enough to take the game. Even then we can’t take it lightly, because the nature of Hull is they will not let us rest and play our game. We have to go out and attack from the first moment, take the game to where we are strongest and go from there.

What do you think?

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