Arsenal vs Crystal Palace: Drive them into the ground

Arsenal are coming off a high against Napoli, but they need to stay high to carry through Crystal Palace and into Wolverhampton.

If momentum is a real thing, then Arsenal will have momentum going into Crystal Palace at the Emirates, and from there, momentum should be build even further. Again, assuming that momentum is a real thing.

I keep feeling the urge to say ‘if’ because last time Arsenal had momentum, they went to Goodison and got embarrassed 1-0. Making momentum look like something you only build up with an end result of being let down.

But let’s assume that momentum can work for us this time, that maybe we’ve had our let down and that we have learned our lesson, and that Wolverhampton at Molineux is the major payoff to see all this talk about momentum actually mean something.

Well then Crystal Palace takes on a different light. There’s no hiding that this match is an easier fixture when compared to a lot of what we’ve been hacking through lately. Not least of all because their a safe, lower-half team, but also because it’s being played at home where the Gunners are something close to unstoppable.

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It’s not a match, then, that you can let off, take a breather, and hope to regroup before Wolverhampton. It’s a match that we should keep the pedal to the metal for, gunning the attack as if our very existence depends on it.

I’ve talked a lot about rotation, and keeping the club fresh for Wolverhampton, and that should still be in play for the Eagles visit, but so too should what we saw against Napoli – an attack-oriented XI with enough tools to really drive the opponent into the ground.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to see two strikers starting against Napoli, but it was such a beautiful thing to see when it was announced. Unai Emery was revving his engine for a match that had completely different objectives, but it didn’t change the overall game plan.

Take that same approach to Crystal Palace. It may be easy to want to let the foot off the gas a bit, but it would be far more beneficial to the omniscient “momentum” if we floor the gas and try to put up gobs of goals.

In this one, I do expect to see two strikers, as well as Mesut Ozil, our wingbacks, and the entire “drive them into the ground” crew. So hopefully it can mean something going forward.