Kevin Whitcher's Arsenal Blog

Slavia Prague 0 Arsenal 4 Europa League Quarter Final 2nd Leg Thursday 15th  April 2021 9pm local time Well, well, well. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of Arsenal showed us the sanity of Doctor Jekyll in Prague last night with 250 actual fans in attendance. I’ll cut straight to another fictitious MD here and get the good Doktor Scheide’s message to me at the conclusion of the game in early… Fair dues. Well done Arsenal. Great result and how good to see some return of what we all want to see in a football ground: fan presence in the stands and Willian sat firmly on the bench. After a decent performance at Sheffield United last weekend, Mikel Arteta made a solitary change, with Emile Smith Rowe starting the game as Gabriel Martinelli made way. The backline of Chambers, Holding, Mari and Xhaka was a surprise in spite of their clean sheet at Bramall Lane, and it has to be said that going forward, Chambers looks as effective as either Bellerin or Cedric, and defensively, his improvement in ...

Arsenal 1 Slavia Prague 1 Europa League Quarter Final 1st Leg Thursday 8th  April 2021 8pm Six changes from the team that started against Liverpool indicated that even Mikel Arteta realized his side needed a jolt in the arm. Given his display last weekend, it was no huge surprise to see Aubameyang dropped. Odegaard’s injury meant a start for Willian, and Granit Xhaka returned, as did Saka and Smith Rowe. Bellerin and Cedric came in at full back.   To think, people were delighted when the Europa League quarter final draw meant that Arsenal could avoid any of Man Utd, Roma or Ajax before the final. Hmmm. They could still go through in this tie, but in honesty, I wouldn’t even fancy them against Villarreal over two legs, not with Unai Emery’s record in this competition and his knowledge of the opposition his team would face.   Arsenal should have had enough to comfortably settle this tie in the first leg, but their finishing was poor, the general quality in the final third w...